Degradation of ethos in adversarial contexts

'Ethos' is the traditional rhetorical term for the moral character of the speaker. This dissertation examines linguistic, rhetorical, and narrative devices by which ethos is degraded. The data analyzed are examples of adversarial polemic: two civil jury trials, a radio interview show, a political debate, and a short text. For the trials, the focus is on cross examination, although the cross examinations are placed within the legal context of the entire litigation, The other examples extend the analysis of the trials, and afford a basis of comparison. The methods employed for analyzing the data include conversation analysis, rhetorical analysis, and narrative analysis, all of which are necessary in order to explain the outcome of the trials. The cross examinations in the trials are particularly appropriate data for analysis according to techniques of conversation analysis, and such analysis reveals persuasive effects crucial to the outcome of at least one of the trials. Close analysis of the data reveals various devices of degradation of ethos in the context of strategies of argumentation, as the speakers select the agent to be degraded and deflect the scene and other agents, and as the speakers search for incompatibilities in the opponent's arguments and acts. Of those incompatibilities, the ones that arguably can be made to constitute an ironic narrative are the most tellable.