Cover not available

In:Discourse Studies in Public Communication
Edited by Eliecer Crespo-Fernández
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 92] 2021
► pp. 103–128

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 5
Persuasive discourse in Daniel Defoe’s political essays

Boosting and hedging

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Published online: 7 April 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.92.05lop
Abstract
The main concern of this paper is to gain an insight into two of the most common rhetorical strategies used by Daniel Defoe as a political journalist in the first decades of eighteenth-century Britain: boosting and hedging. I draw attention to these two different persuasive verbal devices employed by the writer in a sample of Defoe’s political essays published in 1709 excerpted from The Review (1704–1713), one of the leading journals during the reign of Anne Stuart, when political propaganda relied heavily on pamphlets and periodicals. The results obtained reveal that Defoe used language as a political weapon, resorting to boosting, on the one hand, to make his stance clear, add emphasis, confer certainty to his arguments, and convince the readership of the evidence of his statements; and to hedging, on the other, to soften potential conflicts produced by his assertions, connect with the readers, and attain persuasion.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Palatine emigration of 1709: Sociopolitical context
  • 3.Daniel Defoe and immigration
  • 4.Theoretical framework, data, and methods
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Boosters
    • 5.2Hedging
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (40)
References
Addison, Joseph. The Spectator. London. 1711. Retrieved from Morley, Henry (ed), The Spectator . A New Edition Reproducing the Original Text Both as First Issued and as Corrected by its Authors with Introduction, Notes and Index edited by Henry Morley. Volume I. 1891. [URL]
Alker, Sharon, and Holly Faith Nelson. 2011. “Pamphlet Wars: Topological Union in Defoe’s Anglo-Scottish Works.” In Positioning Daniel Defoe’s Non-Fiction. Form, Function and Genre, ed. by Aino Makikalli, and Andreas Mueller, 39–58. Newcastle-on-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barker, Hannah. 2000. Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 1695–1855. Harlow: Longman. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Peter, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2011. Politicians and Rhetoric. The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer. 2005. “Euphemistic Strategies in Politeness and Face Concerns.” Pragmalingüística 13: 77–86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer, and Rosa María López-Campillo. 2011. “Persuasive Rhetoric in George Ridpath’s Political Writings”. ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 32: 43–66.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Downie, James Alan. 1979. Robert Harley and the Press. Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “Critical Discourse Analysis, Organization Discourse and Organizational Change.” Organization Studies 26: 915–935. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Getkham, Kunyarut. 2011. “Hedging Devices in Applied Linguistics Research Articles.” Interdisciplinary Discourses in Language and Communication, 141–154.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erwin. 1955. “On Face-work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction.” Psychiatry 18: 213–231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics. Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1991. Language, Context, and Text. Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harris, Tim. 1993. Politics under the Later Stuarts. Party Conflict in a Divided Society. 1660–1715. Harlow: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellín García, María José. 2009. “Fight Metaphors in Spain’s Presidential Speeches: J. L. Rodríguez Zapatero (2004–2007).” Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 22: 127–153. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet. 1984. “Modifying Illocutionary Force.” Journal of Pragmatics 8: 345–365. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoppit, Julian. 2000. A Land of Liberty? England 1689–1727. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 1998. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kozubíková Šandová, Jana. 2014. Speaker Involvement in Political Interviews. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michal, and Bernard Forchtner. 2016. “Theories and Concepts in Critical Discourse Studies: Facing Challenges, Moving beyond Foundations.” Discourse and Society 7 (3): 253–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leslie, Charles. 1750. A View of the Times, their Principles and Practices, in the First Volume of the Rehearsals. London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
López-Campillo, Rosa María. 2015. Imagen y propaganda política en la guerra de Sucesión española: Defoe al servicio del gobierno de Ana Estuardo [Image and political propaganda during the War of the Spanish Sucession: Defoe at the service of Anne Stuart’s Ministry]. Madrid: Silex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Political Discourse in John Tutchin: Hedges as Euphemistic and Persuasive Devices”. In Taboo in Discourse. Studies on Attenuation and Offence in Communication, ed. by Eliecer Crespo-Fernández, 77–100. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKim, Anne M. 2008. “War of Words. Daniel Defoe and the 1707 Act of Union.” Journal of Irish Scottish Studies 1 (2): 29–44.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müllenbrock, Heinz-Joachim. 1997. The Culture of Contention. A Rhetorical Analysis of the Public Controversy about the Ending of the War of Spanish Succession, 1710–1713. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Payne, William Lytton. 1947. Mr Review. Daniel Defoe as Author of The Review. New York: King’s Crown Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peacey, James. 2004. Politicians and Pamphleteers. Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum. Cornwall: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pritchard, Penny. 2011. “Voices of Dissent: Rhetorical Strategies in Defoe’s Writing before 1719.” In Positioning Daniel Defoe’s Non-Fiction. Form, Function and Genre, ed. by Aino Makikalli, and Andreas Mueller, 17–38. Newcastle-on-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salager-Meyer, Françoise. 1994. “Hedges and Textual Communicative Function in Medical English Written Discourse.” English for Specific Purposes 13 (2): 149–171. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. “I Think that Perhaps You Should: A Study of Hedges in Written Discourse.” Functional Approaches to Written Texts: Classroom Applications 1: 127–143.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Speck, W. A. 1970. Tory and Whig. The Struggle in the Constituencies 1701–1715. Macmillan: London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Statt, Daniel. 1991. “Daniel Defoe and Immigration.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 24 (3): 293–313. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Urbanová, Ludmila. 2003. On Expressing Meaning in English Conversation: Semantic Indeterminacy. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waddell, Neal, and Bernard McKenna. 2009. “The Colour of Rhetoric in the Contemporary Agora.” Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 22: 271–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilamová, Sirma. 2005. “On the Function of Hedging in Negatively Polite Discourse.” Brno Studies in English 31: 85–93.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2009. “What CDA is about. A Summary of its History, Important Concepts and Developments.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd ed), ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 1–13. London: SAGE. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2015. “Critical Discourse Studies: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology”. In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 1–22. London: SAGE.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue