Manipulative uses of pragmatic markers in political discourse
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Date
2017-06
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Abstract
Pragmatic markers comprise a functional class of linguistic items that do not
typically change the propositional meaning of an utterance but are essential for the organization and structuring of discourse, for marking the speaker’s attitudes to the proposition
being expressed as well as for facilitating processes of pragmatic inferences. Pragmatic
marker research has been characterised by descriptive approaches: even case studies that
take their data from political discourse tend to focus on linguistic patterns of co-occurrence
and sequentiality rather than social-institutional norms or broader societal concerns. The
novelty of this article is, therefore, in linking pragmatic marker research, a primarily discourse
analytical, language-oriented field to the broader field of Discourse Studies with a focus on
manipulative social practices and their manifestations in discursive strategies. This article
analyses evidential markers, general extenders, quotation markers and markers of (un)certainty1 in political interviews broadcasted by the BBC, CNN and Hungarian ATV. After a short
overview of the formal and functional characteristics of pragmatic markers and their
relevance to Discourse Studies in general and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) research in
particular, characteristics of the political interview as political discourse, institutional
discourse and media(tised) discourse are discussed. In the second part, the results of
previous (primarily descriptive and genre analytical) research are reconsidered from the
perspective of CDA and particular pragmatic markers are associated with manifestations of
manipulative intent, such as suppression, polarization, recontextualising, conversationalisation and intended ambiguity. An important finding of this study is that a single pragmatic
marker can serve several manipulative functions, while a given manipulative strategy is
potentially realized by a variety of pragmatic items. Potential manipulative uses are
exemplified with a view to applying the heuristic to the analysis of representations of
particular political events and happenings, which is a direction for further research.