Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates

Christoph Schubert

doi:10.1515/text-2019-0189

Article

Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates

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 volume Variational Text Linguistics (2016, De Gruyter Mouton), and co-author of Introduction to Discourse Studies (2018, John Benjamins).

Published/Copyright: February 2, 2021

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 41 Issue 3

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.

Keywords: closing statement; legitimization; move structure; persuasion; primary election debate; rhetorical move; US political discourse

Corresponding author: Christoph Schubert, English Department, University of Vechta, Driverstr. 22. D-49377 Vechta, Germany, E-mail: christoph.schubert@uni-vechta.de

About the author

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 volume Variational Text Linguistics (2016, De Gruyter Mouton), and co-author of Introduction to Discourse Studies (2018, John Benjamins).

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Received: 2019-05-21

Accepted: 2021-01-13

Published Online: 2021-02-02

Published in Print: 2021-05-26

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2019-0189

Keywords for this article

closing statement; legitimization; move structure; persuasion; primary election debate; rhetorical move; US political discourse