A Pragma-dialectical Study On The Strategic Maneuvering In Personal Attack In The US Presidential Debates

Television debate is one of the main channels for the US government to elect the president,clarify the position of the presidential candidate,and gain the public’s trust and votes.It is also an important source of information for the public to understand the candidate’s political plan.2020 is a quadrennial presidential election year in the United States.When answering the questions of the host,the candidates are definitely not talking about themselves,but fully consider the possible doubts or objections and make targeted explanations or rebuttals.From this point of view,the candidate’s response is actually a typical argumentative discourse,and the opponent is another candidate who may question or oppose his position during the presidential televised debate.In response to sensitive issues from moderator,such as medical insurance,the epidemic,and the economy,candidates often use “personal attack” arguments to refute them,that is,to deny or question the position or argument put forward by the other party by denying the other party’s personality or quality.At present,the academic community has not paid enough attention to this phenomenon.In view of this,this study uses the basic research framework of pragmatic argumentation and uses the two presidential television debates in the 2020 US presidential election as the research corpus to demonstrate the “personal attack” that appeared in them.Argument analysis and rationality evaluation were carried out.The thesis aims to analyze the following three questions: first,what types of strategic maneuvering in personal attack in logical fallacy are typically used in Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential debates? Second,how many personal attacks in logical fallacy were used in Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential debate? Third,what are the functions for strategic maneuvering in personal attack in logical fallacy in Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential debates?The study quote that Biden and Trump use three types of personal attack arguments typically: abusive,situational,and “You Too” to reduce the opponent’s credibility in 2020 televised presidential debates.Abusive personal attacks can be divided into four categories: attacks on the person’s personality,beliefs,intelligence,and professionalism;situational personal attacks can be divided into two categories:suspicion of the other’s motives and suspicion of the other’s potential interests;“You Too” can be divided into four categories: inconsistent words and deeds,inconsistent behaviors,inconsistent behaviors,inconsistent words,and just talking but not practicing.Among them,abusive personal attacks are direct personal attacks,while situational personal attacks and “You Too” are indirect personal attacks.The study cites different evaluation criteria for different types of personal attacks,which are used to test whether the words about personal attacks made by the two candidates during the televised presidential debate are reasonable or fallacious.It turned out that most of the personal attacks used by the two candidates were fallacies.The fallacy committed by Trump includes the fallacy that the opponent has a bad character,that the opponent has dubious interests and motives,and the fallacy of inconsistent words;the fallacy committed by Biden includes the fallacy that the opponent has dubious motives,and the words and actions are inconsistent.According to the general reasonable evaluation standard of “personal attack” argument,this study puts forward the rationality standard of “personal attack” argument used by candidates in the presidential election televised debate according to different evaluation standards based on the previous research.This study has important implications in theory and practice.In theory,this study bridges the dialogue between the study of debate discourse and the study of presidential election debate,providing a new research perspective for the study of presidential election debate,as well as a new research path for the study of other argumentation strategies in presidential election debate;at the same time,the rationality standard of“personal attack” argumentation is formulated,which provides a new research method for evaluating the rationality of other argumentation strategies.In practice,this study provides effective guidance for presidential candidates on how to use personal attack arguments reasonably and avoid fallacies.