Mohamed El Behi, Researcher and Teacher, English Department, Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities, University of Sfax, Université de Route de l’Aéroport Km 0.5 BP 1169.3029 Sfax Sfax, 3029, Tunisia Sfax, Tunisia
This paper sets out to examine how the discursive aspects of a presidential debate are done by means of argumentation. Currently, a debate is treated contingently as a single discourse. The second presidential debate whose protagonists are Trump and Biden is taken as a sample for analysis by focusing upon the topic covid-19. Argumentation of the debaters is investigated within a discursive framework by referring to the ten classified argumentative models introduced by Cockcroft et al. (2014). It is found that the candidates’ wordings, the talk distribution and the moderator’s animation not only frame the argumentative process but also form a terrain for unravelling the discourse implicitness of the presidential debate. Finally, it is suggested that the argumentative strategies of the two presidential candidates mark out the dynamics of cracking a discourse and turning it into two conflicting ones.
Argumentation, Discourse, Discursive-split, Entangled, Flexibility, Incongruity, Mediation
