Part of
Unlocking the History of English: Pragmatics, prescriptivism and text typesEdited by Luisella Caon, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 364] 2024
► pp. 86–100
Edited by Luisella Caon, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 364] 2024
► pp. 86–100
A manipulative technique in a congressional debate
A case study from 1789
This article examines a debate in the United States House of Representatives in 1789 and presents a case study of ad socordiam, which is shown to be an informal fallacy in the language of politics. This fallacy is based on inferences about covert intentions of speakers, depending in part on the level of the hearer’s epistemic vigilance. The study shows how an inference about a speaker’s intention can be substantiated on the basis of evidence even in the case of a historical debate. The present study advocates a view of pragmatics and discourse analysis that regards inferences about covert intentions as a legitimate object of investigation to provide a fuller picture of political debates involving deep disagreements and manipulation.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.An argument by James Jackson in the debate of June 8, 1789
- 3.Conclusion
-
References
References
Banning, L.
1995 The sacred fire of liberty: James Madison and the founding of the federal republic. Cornell University Press.
Bentham, J.
1824/1962 The handbook of political fallacies, rev. edn. by H. A. Larrabee. Harper Torchbooks. (Original work published in 1824)
Beville, A.
2021 An infinite and endless liar: Paroles as a case study of the pragmatics of lying in Shakespeare. Linguæ &-Rivista di lingue e culture modern 20(2). 79–101. 
Bickford, C.
1999 Throwing open the doors: The first federal Congress and the eighteenth-century media. In K. Bowling, & D. Kennon (eds.), Inventing Congress: Origins and establishment of the first federal congress, 166–190. Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by Ohio University Press.
Bowling, K.
1990 Politics in the first congress. Garland Publishing.
Copi, I. & K. Burgess-Jackson
1995 Informal logic, 3rd edn. Prentice-Hall.
Curtis, M.
2000 Free speech, “the people’s darling privilege”: Struggles for freedom of expression in American history. Duke University Press.
Debates 1834 = The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, with an Appendix, Containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature
, vol. 1. Compiled from authentic materials by Joseph Gales Sr. 1834 Gales and Seaton.
DenBoer, G.
(ed.) 1984 The documentary history of the first federal elections 1788–1790, vol. 2. University of Wisconsin Press.
Dynel, M.
2020 To say the least: Where deceptively withholding information ends and lying begins. Topics in Cognitive Science 12. 555–582.
Elkins, S. & McKitrick, E.
1993 The age of federalism: The early American Republic, 1788–1800. Oxford University Press.
Fallis, D.
2018 Lying and omissions. In J. Meibauer (ed.), The Oxford handbook of lying, 183–192. Oxford University Press.
Franke, M., G. Dulcinati & N. Pouscalo
2020 Strategies of deception: Under-informativity, uninformativity, and lies – misleading with different kinds of implicature. Topics in Cognitive Science 12. 583–607.
Gibbs, R.
1999 Intentions in the experience of meaning. Cambridge University Press.
Grice, H. P.
1975 Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics. Volume 3: Speech acts, 41–58. Academic Press.
Grimshaw, A.
1990 Research on conflict talk: Antecedents, resources, findings, directions. In A. Grimshaw (ed.), Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations, 280–324. Cambridge University Press.
Hansen, H.
Horn, L.
2017a Telling it slant: Toward a taxonomy of deception. In J. Giltrow & D. Stein (eds.), The pragmatic turn in law: Inference and interpretation in legal discourse, 25–55. de Gruyter Mouton.
2017b What lies beyond: Untangling the web. In R. Giora & M. Haugh (eds.), Doing pragmatics interculturally: Cognitive, philosophical, and sociopragmatic perspectives, 151–174. de Gruyter Mouton.
Ketcham, R.
1971/1990 James Madison. A biography. University Press of Virginia. (Original work published 1971)
Madison, J.
1840/1966 Notes on the debates in the federal convention of 1787 reported by James Madison. With an introduction by A. Koch. Ohio University Press. (Original work published 1840)
Maillat, D. & S. Oswald
2009 Defining manipulative discourse: The pragmatics of cognitive illusions. International Journal of Pragmatics 1. 348–370.
Nowak, J. & R. Rotunda
1995 Constitutional law, 5th edn. West Publishing.
Oswald, S., D. Maillat & L. de Saussure
2016 Deceptive and uncooperative verbal communication. In A. Rocci & L. de Saussure (eds.), Verbal communication, 509–534. de Gruyter Mouton.
OED = Oxford English Dictionary
Rudanko, J.
2005 The fallacy of ad socordiam and two types of speaker intentions: A case study from the first congressional debate on the Bill of Rights in 1789. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 723–736.
2006 Aggravated impoliteness and two types of speaker intentions in two episodes of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Journal of Pragmatics 38. 825–841.
2007 Concepts for analyzing deception in discourses intended to be persuasive. Two case studies from Shakespearean drama. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 8(1). 108–126.
2012 Discourses of freedom of speech: From the enactment of the Bill of Rights to the Sedition Act of 1918. Palgrave Macmillan.
2017 Towards characterizing a type of aggravated impoliteness with examples from Timon of Athens. Language and Literature 26(1). 3–17.
2021 Fallacies and free speech: Selected discourses in early America. Palgrave Macmillan.
Rudanko, J. & P. Rickman
2022 Manipulative fallacies in early America: Studies on selected congressional debates 1789 to 1799. Palgrave Macmillan.
de Saussure, L.
2005 Manipulation and cognitive pragmatics: Preliminary hypotheses. In P. Schulz & L. de Saussure (eds.), Manipulation and ideologies in the twentieth century: Discourse, language, mind, 113–145. John Benjamins.
Sperber, D., F. Clément, C. Heinz, O. Mascaro, H. Mercier, G. Origgi & D. Wilson
2010 Epistemic vigilance. Mind and Language 25(4). 359–393.
Van Eemeren, F. & R. Grootendorst
2004 A systematic theory of argumentation. Cambridge University Press.
Vincent, J. & C. Castelfranchi
1981 On the art of deception: How to lie while saying the truth. In H. Parret, M. Sbizá & J. Verschuren (eds.), Possibilities and limitations of pragmatics. Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics, 740–777. John Benjamins.
Walton, D.
1995 A pragmatic theory of fallacy. The University of Alabama Press.
2015 Goal-based reasoning for argumentation. Cambridge University Press.