PRACTICAL REASONING SCHEMES IN TURKISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE: PRACTICAL ARGUMENTS USED BY THE MAYORAL CANDIDATES OF İSTANBUL

Öz

Politics is a social domain whose practices are discursively realized. In political discourse, politicians use argumentation strategies to justify their views or refute opposing views to persuade their voters. In this social domain, politicians as political actors try to persuade the masses to whom they address in the direction of their own opinions and ideologies. Political discourse, with this aspect, is one of the areas of Critical Discourse Analysis. Political discourse which is based on the persuasion of public, politicians often use argumentation to justify their own views or refute opposing views. Therefore, political discourse is a type of argumentative text type. In this study, the argumentation strategies were investigated using Practical Reasoning Model (PRM) (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) to identify the practical reasoning structures used by the candidates of the Public and Nation Alliances in İstanbul before the 2019 Local Elections. To this end, the TV interviews of the two candidates were analyzed using PRM. The findings of the study show that similar claims were asserted by both alliance candidates about the local issues, projects, and voters; however, the claims of the candidates about general politics differed because the candidates are representatives of different political parties and that the claims about the election itself were asserted only by the candidate of Nation Alliance. In this respect, these findings show that ideological differences are discursively constructed in local elections, and that within the context of local elections, not only campaigns and election promises on local issues but also ideologies of the parties exhibited.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Political Discourse
• Argumentative Discourse
• Practical Reasoning Model
• Practical Argument
• Turkish Local Elections

Kaynakça

1. Bal, H. (2016). Nitel Araştırma Yöntem ve Teknikleri. İstanbul: Sentez Yayınları.
2. Barry, V. E., & Rudinov, J. (2007). Invitation to Critical Thinking. USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
3. Berg, K. E., & Latin, R. W. (2008). Essentials of Research Methods in Health, Physical Education, Exercise Science and Recreation (3rd edition). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
4. Büyükkantarcıoğlu, N., & Yarar, E. (2006). Dil ve İkna: Türk Politika Söyleminin İkna Edici Boyutları. Dilbilim Araştırmaları, 91-114.
5. Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing Political Discourse. London: Routledge.
6. Chilton, P., & Schäffner, C. (2002). Introduction: Themes and Principles in the Analysis of Political Discourse. Chilton, P. & Schäffner, C. (Ed.). Politics as Text and Talk: Analytical Approaches to Political Discourse. (pp. 1-41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
7. Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th edition). California: Sage.
8. Fairclough, I. & Fairclough, N. (2011). Practical reasoning in political discourse: The UK Government’s response to the economic crisis in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report. Discourse and Society. 22(3): 243-268.

9. Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2012). Political Discourse Analysis: A Method of Advanced Students. London: Routledge.
10. Gökçe, O. (2006). İçerik Analizi. Ankara: Siyasal Kitabevi.
11. Heywood, A. (2013). Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
12. Johnson, D. D., & Vanderstoep, S. W. (2009). Research Methods for Everyday Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
13. Jucker, A. H. (1997). “Persuasion by Inference: Analysis of a Party Political Broadcast.” Belgian Journal of Linguistics. 11: 121-137.
14. Kumar, R. (2011). Research Methodology a step-by-step guide for beginners. London: Sage Publications.
15. Lune, H., & Berg, B L. (2017). Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences (9th edition). Essex: Pearson.
16. Rubinelli, S. (2012). Rhetoric as a Civic Art from Antiquity to the Beginning of Modernity. Forchtner, B., & Wodak, R. (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics. (pp. 17-29). Oxon: Routledge.
17. Uncu, B. A. (2018). KONDA Voter Clusters: Voters of Justice and Development Party. İstanbul: KONDA Research and Consultancy.
18. van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What is Political Discourse Analysis.” Belgian Journal of Linguistics. 11(1): 11-52.
19. van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Politics, Ideology and Discourse. Wodak, R. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics: Volume on Politics and Language. (pp. 728–740). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
20. van Eemeren, F., Grootendorst, R. & Henkemas, F. S. (2002). Argumentation: Analysis, Evaluation, Presentation. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
21. Wodak, R. (2009). The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.