On Linguistic and Discursive Constructions of Concession and Adversativity : Towards a Multilevel Analysis of English in the UK Parliament

• This study analyses concessive and adversarial language in UK parliamentary debates and thereby enriches the theoretical and analytical body of knowledge on the language of concession and adversativity in contemporary English. It contributes to existent scholarship on both grammatical constructions of concession/adversativity and on the dynamics of contemporary British parliamentary and political discourse. The study proposes an integrated, multilevel theoretical and analytical model that covers both the micro- and macro-linguistic analysis of concession and adversativity. It fills a significant gap in the existent body of scholarship by arguing that concession and adversativity need to be considered as multilevel phenomena that are linguistic (esp. grammatical) as well as discursive (incl. argumentative/rhetorical) in nature. In its multilevel approach, the study deploys corpus-linguistic methods and utilises tools specially created for the purpose of analysis as well as established instruments and techniques of corpus analysis. All of these are applied to a custom-made corpus of selected UK parliamentary debates covering a variety of debate genres that nest various constructions and dynamics of concession and adversativity. The study concludes that concession is essentially a ‘weak’ yet an indispensable form of adversativity that allows the studied parliamentary language to escape rigidity of expressing either total ‘yes’ or total ‘no’. The often interrelated use of concession and adversativity hence allows political speakers to draw on a continuum of linguistic and discursive resources available in English and indispensable to navigate through complex genre of parliamentary debates. It also enables the specific themes and arguments deployed by speakers in their discourse to be expressed and constructed while relying on linguistic constructions of concession and adversativity that help avoiding the use of language of total opposition or open disagreement.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

concession

adversativity

political discourse

parliamentary discourse

UK Parliament

Corpus Linguistics

Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis

English

Engelska

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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