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Persuasion in Specialized Discourse: A multidisciplinary perspective
Edited by Chiara Degano, Dora Renna and Francesca Santulli
[Argumentation in Context 22] 2024
► pp. 46–70

Chapter 2
Establishing starting points in Editorials

An analysis of the Brexit debate in the UK

| University of Roma Tre

If argumentation has to have a chance of success in solving a difference of opinion, there must be a common ground between the participants, i.e. one or more objects of agreement between the parties, which can be exploited argumentatively. This chapter focuses on how starting points are established in editorials and comments, taking as a case study a corpus of UK newspaper articles on populism in the context of the 2016 referendum on Brexit.

The results suggest that starting points are discursively constructed either with a bona-fide intent of signalling that the receiver should accept a proposition as a starting point, or the non-bona fide purpose of mocking those who would subscribe to a given proposition. In either case, the ratified addressee typically belongs to the writer’s ‘party’, thus confirming editorials as a genre with a strong epideictic component.

Keywords: editorials, agreement, starting points, Brexit, populism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical frame
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Questions as indicators of a proposal to accept a proposition as a starting point
      • 4.1.1Rhetorical questions with ‘then’
      • 4.1.2Rhetorical questions with tag questions
    • 4.2Expressions suggesting that a starting point has been accepted
    • 4.4Accepting starting points with restrictions
  • 5.Starting points and the intended audience in editorials
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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