Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 37, Issue 1, 2015

The analysis of strategic manoeuvring with pragmatic arguments

This article examines how strategic maneuvering with an argument can be analyzed systematically. According to Van Eemeren (2010), strategic maneuvering takes place in the discussion as a whole, in each discussion stage, but also in each individual discussion move, such as providing an argument. This article gives an overview of the steps to be taken in analyzing strategic maneuvering and offers a method for analyzing the maneuvering with an argument. It is argued that maneuvering with arguments can be analyzed more precisely with the help of the argument scheme. Pragmatic argumentation is used as an example. The maneuvering is described by examining which choices have been made with respect to the three aspects of strategic maneuvering in concretizing the central premise in the scheme, in this case ‘Action X leads to desirable consequence Y’. As an example, the article provides an analysis of maneuvering with pragmatic arguments in the British vaccination brochure Arm against cervical cancer. Your guide to the HPV vaccination (2012). The analysis shows how the maneuvering helps to create a much more positive image of the (effects of the) vaccination than is justified. With the method presented here, strategic maneuvering can be described much more systematically and precisely and potential rhetorical effects can be better explained.

Linguistic-stylistic analysis: the Wilders / Pechtold case

This article focuses on a form of stylistic investigation named ‘linguistic stylistics’. This form of stylistics does not involve experiments; rather, it is made plausible, on the basis of linguistic analysis, that stylistic choices create particular effects. Linguistic-stylistic research boasts a rich tradition in the Anglo-Saxon world. To this day, however, Dutch discourse studies have barely adopted this form of text analysis. The main objective of this article is to argue and demonstrate that a linguistic-stylistic approach is fruitful for analysing Dutch discourse. A detailed analysis of the speeches held by the Dutch politicians Geert Wilders (PVV, the Dutch Party for Freedom) and Alexander Pechtold (D66, Democrats ‘66) in parliament during the General Political Debates of 2008 and 2009 serves as an example. It is argued that in the Lower Chamber politicians need to adopt a certain stance towards two heterogeneous, functionally distinct types of audiences: their fellow politicians and ‘the public at large’. Analysis of media opinions shows that in their speeches Geert Wilders and Alexander Pechtold gave the impression of adopting different stances towards these two types of audiences. Wilders came across as a ‘political outsider’ who kept himself aloof from his colleagues in The Hague, and as a politician who as a ‘man of the people’ was close to society. Alexander Pechtold came across as an ‘insider’ in the Dutch Parliament who kept a certain distance from society. It is argued that numerous stylistic devices are likely to contribute to these general impressions – including stylistic devices that to this day have received scant attention in the analysis of political discourse.

The disguised ad baculum fallacy empirically investigated

In argumentative discourse fallacies occur regularly. They often seem not to be noticed by the participants in the discourse. This also goes for the ad baculum fallacy. Threatening the other party with unpleasant consequences if that party doesn’t retract his standpoint is generally considered as a very unreasonable discussion move. In this paper it is argued that this paradox can be explained by analysing ad baculum threats as a mode of strategic maneuvering which takes on a reasonable appearance when it mimics, as it often does, legitimate pragmatic argumentation. The following hypothesis was tested in two experiments: ad baculum fallacies are regarded as less unreasonable than clear cases if they are presented as well-meant advices in which the speaker can’t be held responsible for the occurrence of the unpleasant consequences.