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Part of
Doing Politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse
Edited by Michael Kranert and Geraldine Horan
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 80] 2018
► pp. 281–300

Chapter 12
Mediated campaign debate subgenre and their importance for analytic considerations

editor

Mediated political debates are among the most widely followed campaign events in the United States, with the bulk of research focusing on presidential and vice-presidential races. A comparison of these debates to those for gubernatorial executive offices proves useful. Non-presidential debates assist in finding greater diversity in party ideology, gender and ethnic identity, and a larger number of candidates in a single debate. Moreover, non-presidential debates exhibit more diverse debate structures given the greater frequency of their occurrence and their design by a wider group of organisations and individuals. Variation in the debate structure and in the number of candidates leads to a differing picture of speaking opportunities and strategies for expressing stance and types of alignment with others.

Keywords: campaign debate subgenres, laminated discourse, turn-taking, politic/polite/impolite stance, candidate, diversity
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Campaign debate genre
  • Wider event contexts and considerations
  • Discourse about campaign debates
  • Debate design
  • Production: What is said and what is responded to
    • Office-related expectations
    • Importance of equity
    • Strategies for conveying stance
    • Presidential and vice-presidential debate subgenre
    • Gubernatorial debate subgenre
      • Other strategies for negative appraisals
      • Reconsidering Dailey, Hinck and Hinck’s levels 4 and 5
      • Supporting one face and threatening another
    • Formality or not: Honorific and non-honorific strategies
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.80.12ada
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