Telling Examples. Strategic manoeuvring in plenary debates in the European Parliament
Members of Parliament may make use of argumentation from examples to justify policies and legislation. In this contribution I concentrate on how argumentation from example may be used to manoeuvre strategically in plenary legislative debates in the European parliament. As a framework for the analysis of the strategic use of examples in the institutional setting of the European parliament, I shall make use of van Eemeren and Houtlosser’s (1999, 2002) concept of strategic manoeuvring.
Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse.
The “argumentative predicament” is that in every argumentative move strategic manoeuvring has to take place in order to keep the balance between aiming for effectiveness and maintaining reasonableness. In order to do justice to the strategic manoeuvring, next to dialectical insights about maintaining reasonableness also rhetorical insights about achieving effectiveness need to be incorporated in the theorizing. In strategic manoeuvring three aspects can be analytically distinguished: selection from the available “topical potential”, adaptation to “audience demand” and utilizing “presentational devices”. More encompassing argumentative strategies involve coordinated strategic manoeuvring with regard to these three aspects in a succession of argumentative moves. Strategic manoeuvring derails when a rule for critical discussion is violated. As is illustrated in an extension of the reconstruction of an argumentative text provided in the previous chapter, including an account of the strategic manoeuvring results in a richer and more accurate analysis which can be better accounted for and leads to a more pertinent evaluation.
The use of evidence
'This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Radiography. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Radiography, 17 3 (2011) 10.1016/j.radi.2011.05.003'