Although political argumentation is not institutionalized in a formal sense, it does have recurrent patterns and characteristics. Its constraints include the absence of time limits, the lack of a clear terminus, heterogeneous audiences, and the assumption that access is open to all. These constraints make creative strategic maneuvering both possible and necessary. Among the common types of strategic maneuvering are changing the subject, modifying the relevant audience, appealing to liberal and conservative presumptions, reframing the argument, using condensation symbols, employing the (...) locus of the irreparable, and argumentative use of figures and tropes. It is difficult to evaluate strategic maneuvering in political argumentation, however, because the activity types dictate wide latitude for the arguers, so there are few cases of unquestionable derailment. (shrink)

Van Eemeren and Houtlosser concentrate on the tension inherent in argumentative discourse between the pursuit of success and the maintenance of reasonableness. They elaborate on their earlier claim that this tension leads to ‘strategic manoeuvring’ that can be explained by making use of insights from dialectic and rhetoric. As a new step in their treatment of strategic manoeuvring they take account of the fact that the manoeuvring always takes place in one of the various argumentative ‘activity types’ that can be (...) distinguished in argumentative practice. Unlike theoretical constructs such as a critical discussion and other ideal models, which are based on analytic considerations regarding the most pertinent presentation of the constitutive parts of a problem-valid procedure for carrying out a particular kind of discursive task, the activity types and their associated speech events are cultural artefacts that can be identified on the basis of careful empirical observation of argumentative practice. By concentrating on three conventionalised activity types that are more or less institutionalised, van Eemeren and Houtlosser show how strategic manoeuvring is affected by the opportunities and constraints of the activity type in which it takes place. (shrink)