‘We Are Going to Do a Lot of Things for College Tuition’: Vague Language in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Debates

Parvaresh, Vahid

doi:10.1007/s41701-017-0029-4

Cited by 13 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…As stated by Wicaksono et al (2018), in PD, candidates convey their vision and mission to their voter candidates. In other words, PD facilitates presidential candidates to fight in knowledge regarding to their proposals if they were elected (Parvaresh, 2018). It can be said that PD is a "display window" for voters to decide which candidates can convince them more on proposal they present.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering Usa Presidential Debate Genre

Surtikanti,

Purnomo

2023

LANGLIT

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Presidential debate (PD) draws the most attention compared to other political discourses as the candidates present their profile and proposals using rhetorical communicative strategy to convince voter candidates and defeat their adversaries. However, the generic structure of PD is seldomly being the perspective of linguistics studies. The paper aims at scrutinizing the genre of USA Presidential debate using the genre analysis framework proposed by Swales and Bhatia. Thus, the study employs two parts of genre analysis: move, and strategies analysis. The present study finds that there are six moves of USA PD namely greetings-informing the debate format, introducing the topic, thesis, argumentation, and closure. The communicative purpose of the moves is persuading the American voters in the election day. The finding implies pivotal stages of PD to construct political discourse. This study is expected to contribute to EFL teaching and learning especially in teaching genre exposition integrated in four English skills.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering Usa Presidential Debate Genre

Surtikanti,

Purnomo

2023

LANGLIT

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“…A second ambiguity tactic is to make indisputable “vague” pledges or valence statements that lack any policy substance. Such vague statements could emphasize the end-states of certain policies without providing specific policy proposals (e.g., Parvaresh, 2018). Consider, for example, the following statement from the German Alternative for Germany (AfD): “We commit ourselves with all our energy to reform our country in the spirit of freedom and democracy.” 8 This rhetorical style is common in real-world politics, and represents a viable option when the party cannot remain silent, but needs to address the controversy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of Ambiguity: How do Voters Evaluate Ambiguous Policy Statements?

Nasr

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Scholars voice increasing interest in strategic ambiguity—a strategy whereby parties intentionally conceal their positions on divisive issues. Scholars contend that strategic ambiguity can help European parties broaden their electoral appeals. Although they identify several tactics and styles of position-blurring, the observational literature has yet failed to capture different variants of ambiguous rhetoric, let alone evaluate their effect on the vote. In this article, I rely on cross-country survey experiments that utilize representative samples of around 22,000 respondents from 14 European countries to evaluate the effect of four varieties of ambiguity: vagueness, ambivalence, flip-flopping, and negative messaging. I investigate the impact of ambiguous rhetoric vis-a-vis the context of competition facing the party. The findings reveal that the consequences of ambiguity vary by the actual form it takes and the context of competition facing the party. First, among the varieties, vague and ambivalent variants were superior to negative messaging or flip-flopping. Second, ambiguity helped the party in the absence of popular policy offers in the party system, while it backfired when competitors explicitly agreed with the voter. The findings imply that ambiguity is generally a useful strategy, but its benefits do not extend to rhetorical tactics that harm the party’s valence image.

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