The Pragmatics of Manipulation in British and American Political Debates

The main concern of this work is to tackle manipulation in communicative events as one of the means used by politicians to achieve certain goals such as influencing the behavior, desire, belief and emotions of others to their self-interests without evident detection of their communicative intention. As a communicative event and from a pragmatic point of view, manipulation in the political field has not been given enough attention. Thus, this study scrutinizes the pragmatic aspects of manipulation in British and American political debates. As such, it sets itself the task of achieving several aims, the most important of which are: (1) specifying the pragmatic criterion/criteria according to whose presence a certain political debate is considered as manipulative, (2) identifying the manipulation types used by politicians and the pragmatic strategies via which each type is fulfilled, (3) exhibiting the whole pragmatic structure of manipulative, whether British or American, political debates, (4) pinpointing both the manipulative pragmatic strategies used to fulfill each sub-stage (component) and manipulative strategies adopted to attain all the sub-stages (components) of the entire pragmatic structure of manipulation, (5) highlighting the manipulative pragmatic strategies, the manipulative strategies, as well as the manipulation types highly resorted to by politicians in political debates, (6) showing transparent inter/intra-differences that can be detected in terms of the debater's employment of manipulation types, the whole pragmatic structure of manipulation, the manipulative pragmatic strategies, and the manipulative strategies used by the debaters, and (7) developing a pragmatic model for identifying the types of manipulation and the pragmatic strategies used to fulfill each type; in addition to another eclectic model to analyze the pragmatic structure and strategies of the data under scrutiny.

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Chapter 4. Data and Analysis:
The practical part of the current work is distinctly displayed in this chapter wherein the data are collected, described and analyzed by means of pragmatic as well as statistical methods of analysis. On the basis of the analysis, the findings are presented and discussed. The results are estimated in accordance with the aims and hypotheses specified in Chapter One.
However, in view of the fact that the data to be analyzed in this work are represented by British and American political debates, and before embarking on data collection, description and analysis, the nature and characteristics of the language of politics is introduced first.
4.1 Debates as a Form Political Discourse:
According to Van Dijk (2002: 225), "political discourse" is not primarily defined by a topic or style, but rather by identifying the participants, the context and the intended aims. In other words, political discourse is especially 'political' because of its functions in the political situations.
Actually, it has been claimed in earlier works that political discourse subsumes different terms with the same intent and content. Graber (1981: 204), for instance, has asserted that political discourse, political rhetoric, political speech, and political language, all share somehow the same meaning despite the potential difference in traditional roots.
Thereafter, the term 'Political language' has gained particular attention when introduced by pioneers of both propaganda research and the social sciences. For them, in a political situation, when the aim is to influence power, politics then becomes a matter of words via which negotiations are held, speeches are made and debates take place. Thus, the political function of language is revealed (Chilton & Schaffer (1997: 31).
Other scholars like Beard (2000: 44), view political language as being defaced by its very nature as a means for achieving certain manipulative ends which usually serve the politicians' desires. Thus, it can be defined as the written or spoken language, verbal or non-verbal, used in politics to steer the emotions of audience and affect their opinions and attitudes. It is distinguished from other language genres, as being intentional and manipulative directed to a certain group of people.
As such, as Mckinny (2007: 222) concludes, the main peculiarity of political language is that it mostly contains utterances which have a prevailing manipulative intention. Accordingly, it revolves around being manipulative, and thus, represents the tricky and involute use of language.
Bearing what has been said above in mind, and compatible with the pragmatic scope of this study, the term 'political language' will be abided by. In fact, the term "political language" has been dealt with differently by different scholars. However, the kind which is to be dealt with in this study is confined to political debates.
Owing to the rather tricky nature of politics, a politician, represents the most evasive and elusive user of language. He constantly employs an attentively and manipulatively molded language in his attempt to gain the agreement and empowerment of the hearers.
As such, in a typical political debate situation, a witty politician stashes himself behind manipulative skills so as not to attach himself to any kind of commitment. He communicates indirectly by using certain pragmatic strategies to attack other rival politician's face in order to improve his; or simply to simulate the feelings of his people and get them to believe in him or agitates them to follow his beliefs. Consequently, a manipulative debate represents politician's argumentative conflicts, disputes, acquiescence, praise and vilification to affect the hearers and persuade them via certain manipulative strategies about the truth and/or falsity of their beliefs which serves their interests (Johnson, 2009: 23).
4.2 Data:
4.2.1 Data Collection and Description:
The data collected to be analy