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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

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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.

Published online: 20 August 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60.02gru
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