Partington Alan. The Linguistics of Political Argument: The Spin-Doctor and the Wolf-Pack at the White House

Routledge. 2002. — 290 p. — (Routledge Advances in Corpus Linguistics). — ISBN: 0415287138This book examines the relationship between the White House, in the person of its press secretary, and the press corps through a linguistic analysis of the language used by both sides. A corpus was compiled of around fifty press briefings from the late Clinton years. A wide range of topics are discussed from the Kosovo crisis to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.This work is highly original in demonstrating how concordance technology and the detailed linguistic evidence available in corpora can be used to study discourse features of text and the communicative strategies of speakers. It will be of vital interest to all linguists interested in corpus-based linguistics and pragmatics, as well as sociolinguists and students and scholars of communications, politics and the media.Introduction: corpora, discourse, politics and the press
Briefings as a type of discourse
Footing: who says what to whom
Voices of the press
Voices of the podium
Footing shift for attribution: ‘according to the New York Times this morning…’
‘Rules of engagement’: the interpersonal relationship between the podium and the press
Politics, power and politeness
Conflict talk
The form of words
Metaphors of the world
Rhetoric, bluster and on-line gaffes
Evasion and pursuit
General conclusions