Mitchell Welle

While Presidential debates present policy positions, they also construct group identities. This article asks how argumentative structures and linguistic choices work together to produce the “We” identity and “Them” identity that is characteristic of polarised political discourse. We analyse the 2024 Trump–Harris debate by integrating only argumentation schemes into the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) for its approach to argumentation. Three questions guide our analysis: how argumentation schemes construct in-group and out-group identities; how do lexical choices, analysed through DHA’s nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities; and whether patterned relationships exist between scheme types and discursive strategies. Drawing on 24 reconstructed arguments and six in-depth analyses, we observe that ad hominem attacks and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, while arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. We term these patterned relationships schematic affinities and offer the concept as a hypothesis warranting systematic investigation rather than a confirmed finding. Lexical devices, including terms that categorise actors as criminals, victims, or workers, reinforce the opposition that arguments establish. The framework demonstrates how argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies can inform one another, and it opens pathways for research on national identity formation, racism, and discriminatory discourse.

In an age where information spreads faster than ever, the subtle manipulation of truth through rephrasing plays a pivotal role in amplifying misinformation. Starting from the observation that the spread of “fake news” may be significantly reinforced through reformulating a message for the sake of its misrepresentation, we seek to address the problem of the spread of “fake news” from the perspective of the rephrasing of news for purposes of misinformation. Given such a potentially dangerous role for misuses of rephrasing, the following research question arises: what is the relation between “fake news” and reformulated messages? This question will be addressed by analysing to what extent (i) definitions of “fake news” in the computer-science and philosophy-related literature, and (ii) recent linguistic studies of rephrase (as it is sometimes known), are helpful in identifying the main features of “fake news” as these relate to the latter. In this regard, we propose a research programme for addressing rephrase as a linguistic phenomenon—one that will serve as a tool for the study of communication in respect of “fake news.”