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25 - Argumentative, Political and Legal Discourse

from Part II - Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Anita Fetzer  and
Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
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Summary

This chapter examines the contextual constraints and requirements of argumentative, political and legal discourse, focusing on their bridging points as well as on where they depart. While political discourse and legal discourse are representatives of public discourse and institutional discourse with political discourse also constituting media discourse, argumentative discourse can be found across various discourse domains ranging from political and legal discourse to mundane, everyday talk. The first part provides an analysis of the pragmatics of argumentative discourse, concentrating on the communicative function of argumentative strategies and their generalized and particularized realizations across different discourse domains. The second part examines political discourse as communicative action considering the multilayeredness of production and reception formats, and the third part gives an analysis of legal discourse. In the final part the strategic use of argumentative strategies is discussed in the context of political and legal discourse.

Keywords

legal discoursepolitical discourseinstitutional discoursecontext
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 520 - 543
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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