Framing Polemical Discourse

Weaponizing doubt: Shifting the boundaries of legitimate political discourse by ‘just asking questions’

The current study extends research on the use practices of questioning in institutional occasions (Clayman & Heritage, 2010) by examining how participants exploit the features of interrogatives to advance claims and thereby circumvent the boundaries of ’legitimate’ institutional discourse (cf. Roth, 1998; Lehman, 2010; van Burgsteden & te Molder, 2022; Hunt & Demasi 2024)—and how the use of this practice may be contested by others. Drawing on video-recorded political interactions within public government debates and news interviews, we examine claims by one party that the other is using practices of questioning to covertly advance a claim about the world that they could not, or would not, defend if formulated as a declarative claim, treating the query as disingenuous and the position conveyed by it as beyond the pale. In turn, questioners may counter such challenges by insisting they are ‘just asking questions,’ suggesting that the other party is unjustly limiting discussion and, by extension, treating the latter party as evasive or unwilling to engage in open discussion. In these exchanges, a contest emerges over the action accomplished by the interrogative. The party posing the query claims it is used to seek information as part of a genuine effort to learn about and understand the state of affairs it formulates, while another party insists that the query is a disingenuous vehicle for advancing claims that the speaker should know to be untrue, because they are implausible or impossible, or concern matters that are beyond question or already settled. In taking up these matters, our analysis focuses on how participants can use practices of questioning to ‘weaponize doubt’: by framing their contributions as ‘mere questions’, questioners cast doubt on certain claims without committing themselves to a(n alternative) position.

To what extent can an automated procedure detect polemical discourse? The contribution of Discourse Analysis

This presentation problematizes the question of whether discursive markers can detect polemical texts and to what extent such an attempt can be automated. I will draw on my previous work, In Defense of Polemics (2021, original French version 2014), which defines polemical discourse as an argumentative mode. Polemics is a public debate characterized by dichotomization (it is white or black), polarization (it divides people into antagonistic parties: we/them), disqualification of the Other, and, often but not necessarily, verbal violence and pathos. To what extent are these features supported by specific linguistic and rhetorical cues that can be identified and listed so they can be applied to textual sequences? The task is complicated by the fact that polemics deploys a situated discourse that cannot be grasped outside of its immediate context and by the fact that it is the result of a configuration of features, so that no single marker (such as an attack on the other) is sufficient to identify it.

However, the capacity limits of any AI’s procedure have to be tested. Can an automated procedure detect allusions, presuppositions, or a glossary characteristic of a trend or of a group? Can it take into account the context, the intertextual web, the intrinsic discursive dialogism, or the heterogeneity of voices that are indispensable to a polemical construction? Moreover, detection might not be sufficient to determine a global polemical orientation: we will raise the question of the role of the analyst’s interpretation in determining the polemical nature of a given discourse or verbal exchange.