Confrontational Argumentative Strategies in the Discourse of Foreign Policy Experts

Samira Allani

doi:10.2478/rela-2019-0004

Authors

Samira Allani Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/rela-2019-0004

Keywords:

argumentation, discourse, experts, foreign policy, strategic maneuvering

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the discursive practices of foreign policy experts. While policy decisions involving war and peace keep people alarmed all over the globe, most of these decisions are shaped by policy experts who work on influencing public opinion through the media (Manheim, 2011). This study adopts a critical discursive stance and uses argumentation analysis to examine the ideological backdrop to the discourse of thirty opinion articles authored by American foreign policy experts in print media. Drawing on the Pragma-dialectical method of augmentation analysis (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004), and more particularly on its notion of strategic maneuvering, the analysis examines the confrontational strategies used by this group of experts and attempts to determine the rhetorical goals pursued by these strategic maneuvers.

References

Audit Bureau of Circulation. 2014. The Top Ten US Newspapers By Largest Reported Circulation as of 2007. [Online] Available at: http://www.auditbureau.org/ [Accessed on: 2 July 2014]
Google Scholar

Blowers, Andrew, Boersema, Jan and Adrian Martin. 2005. Experts, Decision Making and Deliberative Democracy. Environmental Sciences 2. 1-3.
Google Scholar

Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Chilton, Paul. 1996. Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House. New York: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Chilton, Paul and Christina Schäffner. 2002. Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse (Vol. 4). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun. A. van and Walter Kintsch. 1983. Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun. A. van. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.
Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun. A. van. 2006. Discourse, Context and Cognition. Discourse Studies. 8 (1). 159-77.
Google Scholar

Dijk, Teun. A. van. 1995. ‘Elite Discourse and the Reproduction of Racism.’ In Rita Whillock and David Slayden (eds.), Hate Speech, 1-27. Newbury Park: Sage.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, Frans. H. van and Peter Houtlosser. 1999. Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse. Discourse Studies. 1 (4). 479-497.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, Frans. H. van and Peter Houtlosser 2006. Strategic Maneuvering: A Synthetic Recapitulation. Argumentation 20 (4). 381-392.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-dialectical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, Frans H. van. 2018. Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Springer.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, Frans H. van, et. al. 1993. Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa: University of Albama Press.
Google Scholar

Eemeren, F.H. van, Grootendorst, Rob and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. 1996. Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory. A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar

Fairclough, Isabela and Norman Fairclough. 2012. Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman and Ruth Wodak. 1997. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis.’ In Teun Adrianus van Dijk (ed.). Discourse as Social Interaction. Discourse Studies. A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Vol. 2. 258-284. London: Sage.
Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change (Vol. 10). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Google Scholar

Hample, Dale. 2001. A Pragma-dialectical Analysis of the Inquisition. Argumentation 15. 135-149
Google Scholar

Hart, Christopher. 2013. Argumentation Meets Adapted Cognition: Manipulation in Media Discourse on Immigration. Journal of Pragmatics 59. 200-209.
Google Scholar

Ihnen, Constanza and John E. Richardson. 2011. ‘On Combining Pragma-dialectics with Critical Discourse Analysis.’ In Eveline Feteris, Bart Garssen, and Francisca Snoeck Hannemans (eds.), Keeping in Touch with Pragma-dialectics: In Honor of Frans H. van Eemeren, 213-244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Johnson, Ralph. 2000. Manifest Rationality: A Pragmatic Theory of Argument. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar

King, Andrew and Floyd D. Anderson. 1971. Nixon, Agnew, and the “Silent Majority”: A Case Study in the Rhetoric of Polarization. Western Speech 35(4). 243-255.
Google Scholar

Lauerbach, Gerda and Anita Fetzer. 2007. ‘Political Discourse in the Media: Cross-cultural Perspectives.’ In Anita Fetzer and Gerda Lauerbach (eds.), Political Discourse in the Media, 3-28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Lewiński, Marcin and Dima Mohammed. 2016. ‘Argumentation Theory.’ In Klaus Jensen, Robert Craig, Jefferson Pooley and Eric Rothenbuhler (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, 1-15. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Google Scholar

Manheim, Jarod. 2011. Strategy in Information and Influence Campaigns: How Policy Advocates, Social Movements, Insurgent Groups, Corporations, Governments and Others Get what They Want. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

McNair, Brian. 2000. Journalism and Democracy: a Millennial Audit. Journalism Studies 1 (2). 197- 211
Google Scholar

Morin, Jean Frédéric and Jonathan Paquin. 2018. Foreign Policy Analysis: A Toolbox. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.
Google Scholar

Mussolff, Andreas. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan
Google Scholar

Oswald, Steve, Herman, Thierry and Jérôme Jacquin. (eds.) 2018. Argumentation and Language – Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations. Cham: Springer.
Google Scholar

Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1969. La Nouvelle Rhétorique: Traité de l‘Argumentation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Trans by J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver, as The New Rhetoric, Notre Dame, London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Google Scholar

Prior, Markus. 2013. Media and Political Polarization. Annual Review of Political Science 16. 101- 127.
Google Scholar

Reisigl, Martin. 2008. ‘Rhetoric of Political Speeches.’ In Ruth Wodak and Veronika Koller (eds.), Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, 243-270. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Google Scholar

Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Rhetoricae Silva (2003). The Forest of Rhetoric. [online]. Available from http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm [Accessed: 19th July 2017].
Google Scholar

Toulmin, Stephen. E. 1958. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Turner, Stephen. 2001. What is the Problem with Experts? Social Studies of Science 31 (1). 123-49.
Google Scholar

Walton, Douglas. 2015. Methods of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Walton, Douglas. 2007. Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion and Rhetoric. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Wilson, John. 1990. Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Wilson, Patrick. 1983. Second-Hand Knowledge. An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.
Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2011. The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2009. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory, and Methodology.’ In Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds.), Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis, 1-33. London: Sage (2nd revised edition).
Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2016. ‘Argumentation, Political.’ In Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Kevin. G. Barnhurst, Ken´ichi Ikeda, Rousiley Maia, and Harmut Wessler (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, 43-52. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth and Bernhard Forchtner. 2017. ‘Introducing the language-politics nexus.’ In Ruth Wodak, and Bernhard Forchtner (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics, 1-14. (Routledge handbooks in linguistics). Abingdon: Routledge
Google Scholar

Zarefsky, David. 2008. Strategic Maneuvering in Political Argumentation. Argumentation 22 (3).317-330.
Google Scholar