Discourse connectives in presidential debates: do politicians use them differently when arguing for or against an issue?
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2020-06-08
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en
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Discourse connectives are used to establish coherence in texts. They are used in various genres, including persuasive communication. The use of connectives is subject to contextual matters. This research deals with connective use in persuasive communication, namely presidential debates. It is investigated to what extent the contextual variable of whether the politician is arguing for or against an issue affects the use of connectives. By analyzing the speech in six U.S. presidential debates, based on the Penn Discourse Treebank Annotation of Prasad et al. (2007), this research aims to measure the differences in number and types of connectives used. The results show that politicians use significantly more discourse connectives when they are arguing for an issue, compared to when they argue against an issue. Furthermore, the difference in types of connectives used is mostly driven by the class level temporal, which politicians used more when arguing for compared to arguing against an issue. The same is true for expanding and conjunction connectives. However, the synchronous and comparing connectives are used more when arguing against an issue than when arguing for an issue. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the use of connectives is subject to the politician’s perspective on an issue. These results may suggest that politicians find it more necessary to explicitly formulate their statements when arguing for an issue, compared to arguing against a matter.
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Faculteit der Letteren