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Show concessions
journal contribution
posted on 2006-12-19, 16:07 authored by Charles Antaki, Margaret WetherellMaking a show of conceding by using a three-part structure of proposition, concession and reassertion has the effect – in contrast to other ways of conceding – of strengthening one’s own position at the expense of a counter-argument. This three-part structure can be also exploited so as to carry the battle to the enemy, as it were, and make the concession do more offensive work. We detail three such ways: Trojan Horses where the speaker imports a caricature of the opposition into the conceded material; stings in the tail, where the speaker specifically overturns the concession they have just made in the original claim; and cheapeners, where the speaker works pragmatically to devalue even a positive endorsement of the opposition’s case. In all their variety, what marks the concession as being hearably in the speaker’s own interest is the robust, normative three-part proposition – concession – reprise structure. It is available for use in supporting or demeaning any position, whether mundane or explicitly ideological.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Pages
261956 bytesCitation
ANTAKI, C. and WETHERELL, M., 1999. Show concessions. Discourse Studies, 1, pp. 7-27.Publisher
© SagePublication date
1999Notes
This is restricted access. This article was published in the journal, Discourse Studies [© Sage] and is available at: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/vol1/issue1/ISSN
1461-4456Language
- en