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Responding to Questions at Press Conferences
Confrontational maneuvering by Chinese spokespersons
Responding to Questions at Press Conferences makes clear how the spokespersons at China’s diplomatic press conferences maneuver strategically in defining the issues in the empirical counterpart of the confrontation stage when responding to the journalists’ questions and how this confrontational maneuvering is meant to be instrumental in convincing the intended audience. The detailed and systematic analysis of the various modes of confrontational maneuvering adopted by the spokespersons elucidate how China’s recently established “progressive” diplomatic style is shaped by its spokespersons’ argumentative discourse.
[Argumentation in Context, 21] 2023. xiv, 188 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 7 March 2023
Published online on 7 March 2023
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface | pp. xi–xiv
- Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–29
- Chapter 2. China’s MoFA’s press conferences as a communicative activity type | pp. 30–42
- Chapter 3. Confrontational maneuvering by dissociation | pp. 43–62
- Chapter 4. Confrontational maneuvering by personal attack | pp. 63–85
- Chapter 5. Confrontational maneuvering by declaring a standpoint unallowed or indisputable | pp. 86–115
- Chapter 6. Other modes of confrontational maneuvering and combinations of modes | pp. 116–146
- Chapter 7. Uncompromising detached confrontational argumentative style | pp. 147–160
- Chapter 8. Conclusion | pp. 161–176
- References | pp. 177–183
- Index | pp. 185–188
“Peng Wu presents a sound and interesting analysis of Chinese spokepersons’ contemporary public discourse in the framework of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation. His study extends the most recent assets of this approach and provides new insights in how they can be applied analytically to acquire a deeper understanding of diplomatic argumentative discourse than could be reached in previous studies.”
Anca Gâță, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Dunărea de Jos University of Galați, ILIAS
“This is a fascinating and truly innovative book. Peng Wu promotes argumentation theory by applying the extended theory of Pragma-Dialectics, with its recently developed notions of strategic maneuvering and argumentative style, to the analysis of a new set of politically important empirical data. In addition, he provides in the analysis of these data for the first time a detailed typology of the argumentative strategies used by the spokespersons of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at their regular press conferences.”
Manfred Kienpointner, University of Innsbruck
“This book is an innovative and valuable addition to the fields of pragmatics and discourse studies. It has opened up new perspectives for diplomatic argumentative discourse studies and will serve as an excellent reference for students, teachers and researchers wishing to keep abreast of the latest developments in these fields.”
NIng Ye, Zhejiang Police College, in Journal of Pragmatics 216 (2023)
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Li, Tao & Feng Pan
Wu, Peng & Jing Ping
van Eemeren, Frans H. & Ton van Haaften
van Eemeren, Frans & Bart Garssen
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.