Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates
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Christoph Schubert
Christoph Schubert received his PhD from the University of Würzburg and is currently Full Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vechta. His research interests include discourse studies, pragmatics, and stylistics. He is co-editor of the special issue
Cognitive Perspectives on Political Discourse (2014,Journal of Language and Politics ), co-editor of the volumeVariational Text Linguistics (2016, De Gruyter Mouton), and co-author ofIntroduction to Discourse Studies (2018, John Benjamins).
Abstract
Presidential primary debates in the USA are commonly concluded by brief closing statements, in which the competitors outline the central messages of their election campaigns. These statements constitute a subgenre characterized by a set of recurring rhetorical moves, which are defined as functional units geared towards the respective communicative objective, in this case political persuasion. Located at the interface of rhetorical move analysis and political discourse studies, this paper demonstrates that moves and embedded steps in closing statements fulfill the persuasive function of legitimizing the respective candidate as the most preferable presidential successor. The study is based on the transcripts of 98 closing statements, which were extracted from eight Democratic and eleven Republican primary debates held between August 2015 and April 2016. Typical moves, such as projecting the speaker’s future political agenda or diagnosing the current situation in America, are presented with the help of illustrative examples, frequencies of occurrence, and a sample analysis of a complete closing statement.
About the author
Christoph Schubert received his PhD from the University of Würzburg and is currently Full Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vechta. His research interests include discourse studies, pragmatics, and stylistics. He is co-editor of the special issue Cognitive Perspectives on Political Discourse (2014, Journal of Language and Politics), co-editor of the volume Variational Text Linguistics (2016, De Gruyter Mouton), and co-author of Introduction to Discourse Studies (2018, John Benjamins).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- “We are here to help you”: understanding the role of careers and employability services in UK universities
- From image to text to speech: the effects of speech prosody on information sequencing in audio description
- Using written task answer sheets as notes while speaking: changing task-report practices in a second language book club
- Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- “We are here to help you”: understanding the role of careers and employability services in UK universities
- From image to text to speech: the effects of speech prosody on information sequencing in audio description
- Using written task answer sheets as notes while speaking: changing task-report practices in a second language book club
- Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates
- The use of the text-function in Video Relay Service calls
- How did 1MDB’s CEO manage impressions of culpability in an accountability interview?
