Cover not available
Part of
Persuasive Games in Political and Professional Dialogue
Edited by Răzvan Săftoiu, Maria-Ionela Neagu and Stanca Măda
[Dialogue Studies 26] 2015
► pp. 55–84

… every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong

Obama dialogically interacting in the last 2012 presidential debate

| University of Vlora “Ismail Qemali” (Albania)
This paper describes the function of some important metadiscoursal devices such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers and transition markers in Obama’s discourse in the last 2012 presidential debate. Given their relatively high frequency in his political discourse, I expect that these devices are used as productive resources to help the speaker build an effective personal ethos in the dialogical interaction with the electorate, an initial hypothesis already confirmed in the indicative bottom-up analysis part of this article. Also, the argumentative nature of Obama’s discourse gives even more prominence to the use of such metadiscoursal devices to strategically communicate with the electorate and to create the intended rhetorical effects on it for persuasive ends.
Published online: 1 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.26.04tos
References (43)
References
Ädel, Annelie. 2006. Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2006. Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, transl. by Mcgee, ed. by Caryl Emerson, and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bondi, Marina. 2008. “Emphatics in Academic Discourse: Integrating Corpus and Discourse Tools in the Study of Cross-disciplinary Variation.” In Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of Different Settings, ed. by Annelie Ädel, and Randi Reppen, 31–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eisenhart, Christopher, and Barbara Johnstone. 2008. “Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Studies.” In Rhetoric in Detail, ed. by Christopher Eisenhart, and Barbara Johnstone, 3–21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Peter Houtlosser, and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. 2007. Argumentative Indicators in Discourse. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fløttum, Kjersti, and Trine Dahl. 2012. “Different Context, Different “Stories”? A Linguistic Comparison of Two Development Reports on Climate Change.” Language and Communication 32 (1): 14–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1996. “Pragmatic Markers.” Pragmatics 6 (2): 167–190. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Hedging in Political Discourse: The Bush 2007 Press Conferences.” In Perspectives in Politics and Discourse, ed. by Urszula Okulska, and Piotr Cap, 201–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Holly, Werner. 1989. “Credibility and Political Language.” In Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse, ed. by Ruth Wodak, 115–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holquist, Michael. 2002. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 1998a. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998b. “Boosting, Hedging and the Negotiation of Academic Knowledge.” TEXT 18 (3): 349–382.Google Scholar
. 1998c. “Persuasion and Context: The Pragmatics of Academic Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 30: 437–455. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998d. “Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s Letter.” Journal of Business Communication 35 (2): 224–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005a. Metadiscourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
. 2005b. “Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic Discourse.” Discourse Studies 7 (2): 173–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Academic Discourse.” In The Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ken Hyland, and Brian Paltridge, 171–184. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jalilifar, Alireza, and Maryam Alavi-Nia. 2012. “ We Are Surprised; Wasn’t Iran Disgraced There? A Functional Analysis of Hedges and Boosters in Televised Iranian and American Presidential Debates.” Discourse and Communication 6 (2): 135–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2006. Language and Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise J. Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.Google Scholar
Martin, James R., and David Rose. 2007. Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Myers, Greg. 2010. The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
O’Barr, William M. 1976. “The Study of Language and Politics.” In Language and Politics, ed. by William M. O’Barr, and Jean F. O’Barr, 1–27. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Ongstad, Sigmund. 2004. “Bakhtin’s Triadic Epistemology and Ideologies of Dialogism.” In Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language and Culture: Meaning in Language, Art and New Media, ed. by Finn Bostad, Craig Brandist, Lars Sigfred Evensen, and Hege Charlotte Faber, 65–88. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Quaglio, Paulo. 2008. “Television Dialogue and Natural Conversation: Linguistic Similarities and Functional Differences.” In Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of Different Settings, ed. by Annelie Ädel, and Randi Reppen, 189–210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schäffner, Christina. 1997. “Editorial: Political Speeches and Discourse Analysis.” In Analysing Political Speeches, ed. by Christina Schäffner, 1–4. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. “Discourse Marker Research and Theory: Revisiting and .” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 315–338. Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd.Google Scholar
Sornig, Karl. 1989. “Some Remarks on Language Strategies of Persuasion.” In Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse, ed. by Ruth Wodak, 95–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Third Presidential Debate: Full Transcript. [URL]
Toska, Bledar. 2008. “Dialogizing Communication through Pragmatic Markers.” ELOPE 5 (1-2): 89–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Bakhtinian Dialogical Communication and Pragmatic Markers.” In Advances in Discourse Approaches, ed. by Marta Dynel, 227–244. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
. 2012a. “Connectivity and the Alternative Voice in Political Argumentative Texts.” In Voicing the Alternative: Essays in Language and Literary Studies, ed. by Aleksandra Nikčević-Batričević, and Marija Krivokapić, 33–40. Nikšić: Faculty of Philosophy.Google Scholar
. 2012b. “Epistemic Hedges and Boosters as Stance Markers in Legal Argumentative Discourse.” Topics in Linguistics 10 (2): 57–62.Google Scholar
. 2012c. “The Dialogic Paradigm of the Imaginary in Discourse: A Pragmalinguistic Perspective.” Language and Literature: European Landmarks of Identity 10: 26–34.Google Scholar
Vertessen, Dieter, and Christ’l Landtsheer. 2008. “A Metaphorical Election Style: Use of Metaphor at Election Time.” In Political Language and Metaphor: Interpreting and Changing the World, ed. by Terrell Carver, and Jernej Pikalo, 271–285. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vološhinov, Valentin. N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, transl. by Matejka and Titunik. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Waring, Hansun Z. 2003. “Also as a Discourse Marker: Its Use in Disjunctive and Disaffiliative Environments.” Discourse Studies 5 (3): 415–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Young, Amanda. 2008. “Disciplinary Rhetorics, Rhetorical Agency, and the Construction of Voice.” In Rhetoric in Detail, ed. by Christopher Eisenhart, and Barbara Johnstone, 227–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappen, James P. 2004. The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Vasilyeva, Alena L.
2016. Confrontation and collaboration in the course of the election debate. Language and Dialogue 6:3 ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.