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Article published In:
Thematic issue: New perspectives on conflict
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:2] 2021
► pp. 237–270

Discussion, dispute or controversy?

Paradigms of conflict-driven parliamentary practices

ORCID logo | Strömstad Academy, Sweden

As parliamentary debates increasingly display rising levels of political conflict, the polarized and aggressive polemical exchanges in Prime Minister’s Questions are impacting the current agenda-setting and consequently public perceptions and assessments. To get a deeper understanding of the discourse strategies and argumentation practices used in the conflict-driven interaction between opposition MPs (particularly the Leader of the Opposition) and the Prime Minister, the present investigation has been carried out at macro- and micro-levels in an interdisciplinary perspective integrating Dascal’s (1998, 2008) typology of polemical exchanges and Ilie’s (2015a, 2018) pragma-rhetorical approach. At the macro-level, the aim is to account for the context-specific functions of three main types of polemical exchanges, i.e. discussions (focused on establishing the truth), disputes (focused on winning the argument) and controversies (focused on persuading the adversary/audience). At the micro-level, the aim is to examine the interplay and the extent to which the three polemical exchanges crisscross, overlap and/or complement each other through the use of three recurring metadiscourse strategies, i.e. definitions, quotations and parentheticals.

Keywords: polemical exchange, parliamentary, discussion, dispute, controversy, definitions, quotations, parentheticals
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical approaches to conflict and polemics
  • 3.Data and analytical approaches to polemical forms of political interaction
  • 4.Parliamentary macro-level polemical practices
    • 4.1PMQs as a conflict-driven parliamentary discourse sub-genre
    • 4.2Typology of conflict-driven polemical exchanges
      • 4.2.1PMQs as a hub of conflict-driven polemical exchanges
      • 4.2.2Polemical shifts in PMQs
  • 5.Parliamentary micro-level polemical exchange strategies
    • 5.1Purpose-built definitions
    • 5.2Polarizing quotations
    • 5.3Challenging parentheticals
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 29 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00047.ili
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Ilie, Cornelia
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2022. How to Argue with Questions and Answers: Argumentation Strategies in Parliamentary Deliberation. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 205 ff. DOI logo
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