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Show concessions

journal contribution
posted on 2006-12-19, 16:07 authored by Charles Antaki, Margaret Wetherell
Making 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 bytes

Citation

ANTAKI, C. and WETHERELL, M., 1999. Show concessions. Discourse Studies, 1, pp. 7-27.

Publisher

© Sage

Publication date

1999

Notes

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

1461-4456

Language

  • en