Argumentation, metadiscourse and social cognition: organizing knowledge in political communication

Abstract

The present article attempts to contribute to a multidisciplinary approach to communication phenomena that emphasizes the interplay among cognition, discourse and society. I propose an examination of the role that these three elements play in argumentation and meta-discourse as a useful starting point for understanding, first, how arguments are formed and second, the role that meta-discursive devices play in this process. In the first two sections I conduct a brief review of literature on the concepts of argumentation and meta-discourse to show how a socio-cognitive approach can enlighten our understanding of both. This model is then applied in the analysis section to look at a plenary session at the European Parliament. I conduct a socio-cognitive discourse analysis, based on which I identify different relevant paths followed by speakers when constructing arguments: (re)framings, (re)definitions, quotations and references to previous events. The findings demonstrate how the different levels of meta-discourse -intra-textual, inter-textual and contextual -are equally relevant for argumentative communication. Through meta-discourse, speakers invoke knowledge about both the ongoing interaction and other past or future communicative events. These other discourses, however, are not only constituted by the actual words uttered, but they encompass the context and situation models (Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983) that allow participants to make sense of them. argumentation, discourse analysis, European Parliament, meta-discourse, political communication, social cognition The necessity to examine the ways in which knowledge, discourse and society relate to each other has been pointed out by different authors in several disciplines (cf. Billig, 2003;De Beaugrande, 1997;Van Dijk, 2001). However, communication scholars are still reticent to acknowledge the importance of taking cognition into account when examining all kinds of communicative

‘To thine own self be true’: The perceived meanings and functions of political consistency

“…Politicians’ meta-discursive comments served as a source for interpreting how they define consistency and evaluate its consequences. The meta-discursive approach is defined as ways in which participants in discourse are involved in a negotiation over norms and meanings (Craig 2008; Martinez Guillem 2009), manifested in their stances with respect to (the re/definition of) terms and concepts (Ilie 2003). This analytic approach enables the disclosure of how politicians present themselves as consistent within their professional environment.…”

“…The categories were built inductively, based on politicians’ meta-discursive meanings and consequences attributed to consistency. Our analysis was based on the theoretical assumption that political actors present their knowledge and attitudes about the functional meanings and consequences of concepts when speaking about them (Ilie 2003; Martinez Guillem 2009). Resorting to semantic concepts (such as lexical choices, idioms, and metaphors) and the defining elements of consistency (actor, action, space, and time), this stage facilitated an examination of how political actors define the relations between state of mind, actions, and the political implications of consistent behavior.…”

Interaction in early modern news discourse: the case of English witchcraft pamphlets and their prefaces (1566–1621)

“…Some scholars (Craig 2008;Martinez-Guillem 2009) conceptualize metadiscourse as instances of discourse about discourse-in-general (such as people trading stories about poorly run business meetings). Others view metadiscourse as referring to various kinds of signposts that a writer uses in her text to guide readers, and help them organize, interpret, and evaluate the information given (Mauranen 1993;Vande Kopple 1985;Crismore et al 1993;and Hyland 2005).…”

Constructing contexts, (re)defining immigrants: Mental models and social representations in immigration policy defense

“…In the above statements, Bush repeatedly models a generalized political other, indexed by terms such as ‘those,’ ‘they,’ ‘some,’ or ‘people,’ and whose different position with regards to the proposed bill is made explicit through a series of meta-discursive moves (see Martínez Guillem, 2009). Thus, the different descriptors are coupled with a series of reporting verbs that supposedly indicate the specifics of an ‘against the bill’ attitude made relevant as context in this speech.…”