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Structures in Discourse: Interaction, adaptability, and pragmatic functions
Edited by Martin Gill, Aino Malmivirta and Brita Wårvik
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 345] 2024
► pp. 18–35

Evaluation as a persuasive tactic in the 2012 Obama-Romney debates

| Sam Houston State University

The focus of this article is the deictic evaluative construction that’s, as used by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential debates. A summative clause, often toward the end of a discourse turn, opened by the distal demonstrative pronoun that, has a persuasive function, evaluating the immediately preceding discourse content. This construction allows the speaker to evaluate his own message positively and the opponent’s message negatively; it also structures the content clearly and concisely, helping to portray the speaker as one with a strong and clear agenda. A quantitative comparison of the usage of the that’s construction with regard to Obama and Romney shows that both used it equally during the first debate; however, in the second debate, Obama doubled its use. This chapter brings together a concept from narrative theory (evaluation) and a concept from rhetoric (the persuasive function of language), as these two concepts intersect within the persuasive genre of presidential debates.

Keywords: evaluation, persuasion, presidential debates, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, discourse structure, distal demonstrative that
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.That’s as part of an evaluation for a persuasive purpose
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Summarizing and structuring
    • 4.2Underscoring the reasons: That’s why
    • 4.3Pathways to goals: That’s how
    • 4.4The negative that’s not
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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