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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 33:1 (2023) ► pp.1–22

The use of boosters and evidentials in British campaign debates on the Brexit referendum

ORCID logo | Universitat Politècnica de València
ORCID logo | Universitat Politècnica de València

Little attention has been given to the role of metadiscoursal devices in non-academic discourses with an overtly persuasive component such as political discourse. We address this gap by analysing the presence and function of evidentials and boosters in the 2016 campaign debates on the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (also known as the Brexit referendum). In this vein, our objectives are first, to analyse the evidentials and boosters most frequently used in these debates and relate them to the speakers’ goals, and second, to contrast the use of these devices with the results of the referendum. Data were quantitatively analysed with METOOL, a tool specifically developed to detect metadiscoursal strategies. The results showed how the strategies identified here tended to work in combination towards the representation of a credible self, challenging opposing views on the same issue. Finally, conclusions were drawn.

Keywords: political discourse, evidential devices, boosters, Brexit referendum, campaign debates
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evidential devices, boosters, and political discourse
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Results and discussion of boosters used in the BBC’s “Great Debate”
      • 4.1.1Boosters in the anti-Brexit sub-corpus
      • 4.1.2Boosters in the pro-Brexit sub-corpus
    • 4.2Results and discussion of evidential devices used in the BBC’s “Great Debate”
      • 4.2.1Evidentials in the anti-Brexit sub-corpus
      • 4.2.2Evidentials in the pro-Brexit sub-corpus
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 8 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21008.car
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