In:Follow-ups in Political Discourse: Explorations across contexts and discourse domains
Edited by Elda Weizman and Anita Fetzer
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 60] 2015
► pp. 25–56
Intertextual references in Austrian parliamentary debates
Between evaluation and argumentation
Published online: 20 August 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60.02gru
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60.02gru
In this chapter, the contributions Austrian MPs deliver during the debate after
the inaugural speech of a new federal chancellor are investigated under a discourse
analytic and rhetorical-argumentative perspective. As the debate contributions
refer only to a limited set of reference text, this specific communication
situation provides a quasi-experimental setting in which “follow-up” moves in
political discourse can be studied. MPs’ follow-up moves during one inaugural
speech debate (approx. 12 hours) are investigated on three dimensions: source
of reference, linguistic form of reference, rhetorical/argumentative function of
statement. Political affiliations of MPs and the time of statement delivery (during
or after live TV broadcast) are taken as independent variables of the analysis.
Results show that evaluation patterns change during time and that there are
two “genres” of debate contributions: the “alternative policy focussed statement”
and the “evaluation focussed statement” which display different linguistic and
rhetorical/argumentative characteristics.
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