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Persuasion in Public Discourse: Cognitive and functional perspectives
Edited by Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 79] 2018
► pp. 85–108

Chapter 4
Fictionalizing scenarios in political discourse

Catalan self-determination

This chapter shows how political discourse uses covert fictional construals to persuade audiences. It argues that the use of specific linguistic and conceptual strategies guides their interpretive processes to a point where the distinction between reality and fiction becomes unclear. The study focusses on four areas of a specific discourse event and shows that they can assist in the generation of persuasive effects. The chapter deals with the organization of information in the specific speech event, the way attention patterns and focal adjustment collaborate as potential resources of persuasion, the role of deixis in the speech event, and how the deontic force of modal verbs may be minimized to help engage the audience into the belief of the existence of an alternative reality.

Keywords: mental spaces, focal adjustment, deontic modality, political discourse, Catalan self-determination
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and method
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Configuring the “reality world”
    • 3.2Attention patterns
    • 3.3Deictic pronouns and verb endings
    • 3.4Enabling a new reality scenario
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.79.05ros
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Cited by 2 other publications

Kashiha, Hadi
2022. On persuasive strategies: Metadiscourse practices in political speeches. Discourse and Interaction 15:1 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Salama, Amir H. Y.
2022. Cross-textual reconceptualisation of the deictic space of “victory” in political discourse: Donald Trump versus Joseph Biden. Discourse and Interaction 15:1 ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo

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