The prompt as a multimodal rhetorical-discursive device: from the conversational paradigm to a grammar of algorithmic negotiation
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https://doi.org/10.59516/invelec.triade.N2.36Keywords:
multimodal prompt, discursive friction, rhetorical-digital intelligence (RDI), algorithmic persuasion, digital doxaAbstract
Drawing from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates Digital Discourse Analysis and Classical Rhetoric, this article explores the prompt as a multimodal artifact that updates the Aristotelian triad (ethos, pathos, and logos) within the generative artificial intelligence ecosystem.
By establishing critical continuity with previous research on comments in virtual environments —a core genre of the social web— this study examines the shift from dialogic interaction toward a grammar of automated negotiation where human agency and language processing collide. Through the study of its techno-discursive properties, the notion of friction is introduced to explain the tensions produced when traditional persuasive functions (docere, delectare, movere) operate on systems that, as evidenced by Raffini et al. (2025), deploy formulaic argumentative macrostructures under a stochastic form of reasoning. In this scenario, AI production oscillates between vacuous discourse (Hicks et al., 2024) and the simulation of subjectivity through persuasive surfaces (Gottschling y Kramer, 2025). The research demonstrates how the design of these instructions requires a resemantization of the discursive phases of composition (intellectio, inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio) and structure (exordium, narratio, argumentatio, and peroratio), highlighting their reconfiguration within the algorithmic environment. In line with Kim (2025) and Almatrafi et al. (2024), this work defines digital-rhetorical intelligence (DRI) as an essential civic competence for navigation cartography (Gupta y Shivers-McNair, 2024) in contexts where the word is managed as a mere statistical pattern. It is concluded that DRI constitutes a vital epistemic filter against the automation of common opinion or doxa (Alford, 2024) and a tool of resistance against technological dehumanization (Vallor, 2024).
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