This paper addresses two key issues in the study of discursive constructions: the strategic use of ‘justificatory support’ aimed at the legitimisation of assertions, and the mystification of responsibility for epistemic stance acts in the discourse. The paper argues that the use of epistemic stance resources contributes to the speaker's strategic aim of legitimising assertions, which plays an indirect role in the legitimisation of actions. An additional dimension of legitimisation is the inter/subjective anchoring of these stance acts, which by default (...) index the speaker as conceptualiser, thus assigning responsibility and accountability for the validity of the communicated information. This paper explores these issues and presents results on the stancetaking patterns and the expression of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the discourse of a parliamentary inquiry and a public inquiry. (shrink)

This article assesses the role of fear and envy in the British broadsheets' construction of the 2008 Beijing Olympics by examining coverage of conflict in Tibet and the opening ceremony of the Games, and considering them in the light of the wider socio-economic context of the time. Drawing on elements of evolutionary psychology, combined with aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar as well as intertextuality, it demonstrates how China is presented as a war-mongering force and is thus an object of fear. (...) In addition, the analysis demonstrates how the opening ceremony is effectively ‘spoiled’ by negative appraisal, which is characteristic of envy. In evolutionary terms, envy and fear, in this case, emerge as useful emotions which effectively serve to ‘disarm’ China at a time when China is on the verge of becoming the world's next superpower and Britain finds itself in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Added to this, London 2012 was on the horizon. (shrink)

This paper advances a cognitive account of the rhetorical effectiveness of fallacious arguments and takes the example of source-related fallacies. Drawing on cognitive psychology and evolutionary linguistics, we claim that a fallacy enforces accessibility and epistemic cognitive constraints on argument processing targeted at preventing the addressee from spotting its fallaciousness, by managing to prevent or circumvent critical reactions. We address the evolutionary bases of biases and the way that these are exploited in fallacious argumentation.