Policy-oriented argumentation or ironic evaluation: A study of verbal quoting and positioning in Austrian politicians’ parliamentary debate contributions

Positioning theory and politicians’ public face work

The concept of discursive positioning was introduced as an alternative to the static role concept of traditional sociology (see e.g. Davies and Harré, 1990). According to Davies and Harré (1990), each utterance of an interactant places their interlocutor in a certain interactive position (interactive positioning) but simultaneously positions the speaker themselves (reflexive positioning). By focusing on the interactive production of subject positions in and through discourse, positioning theory stresses the non-linearity and fragmented nature of human identities which are performed anew in each interaction in which a person participates.

Whereas positioning theory stresses the ephemeral and even contradictory aspects of human identities as performative achievements, research in political discourse (especially in politicians’ speeches) has shown that politicians attempt to create a coherent public positive self-image through their speeches (Charteris-Black, 2014; Chilton, 2004; Gruber, 1993b; Illie, 2010; Plug, 2010). The aim of establishing and maintaining one’s own ‘public positive face’ (Gruber, 1993b) does not necessarily contradict the basic tenets of positioning theory as frontstage political discourse is mainly composed of pre-planned discourse contributions delivered by trained and (more or less) seasoned orators. The more skilled a political orator is, the less they will seem to appear trained and instructed by communication coaches. Hence, seasoned political speakers will pursue their overarching face-work strategies as individual acts of discursive positioning and self-positioning produced during semi-spontaneous speech events. Weizman (2008) has shown how interviewees position others by means of irony and through terms of address. This article focuses on MPs’ reflexive self-positioning (i.e. alignment and dis-alignment with previous speaker’s stance) through different formal ways of referring to previous utterances of fellow MPs. Taking up (parts of) a previous statement and integrating it into one’s own establishes an intertextual link between two utterances and recontextualizes the quoted parts of the previous utterance into the actual one. Recontextualization as a social practice and intertextuality as a formal relation between texts will therefore be discussed next.

Recontextualization and intertextuality

Recontextualization (in its discourse analytic sense) refers to any relocation practice through which discourse elements are transposed from a source into a target discourse (Van Leeuwen, 2008). Van Leeuwen discusses three aspects that are relevant for the semiotic changes and social effects of a recontextualization practice: which elements are taken out of the source discourse, the transformations to which these elements are subjected by the recontextualization practice, and the genre into which the recontextualized elements are inserted. The first and the third aspects highlight the relationship between recontextualization and different forms of manifest intertextuality (Fairclough, 1993).

Forms of intertextuality, that is, the ways in which a portion of an original text is integrated into a current text, may trigger specific recontextualization effects. Based on Leech and Short (1981), Fairclough (1988) provides a formal typology of discourse representation in media. His categories can be ranked on a scale comprising different degrees of current speaker’s responsibility for the accurateness of the reported content. Direct quotations impose the highest responsibility (and expectation) of accuracy on current speaker/writer and this expectation decreases gradually with other forms of discourse representation. Very short direct quotes (‘scare quotes’), however, do not only trigger the expectation of accurateness, but also have the rhetorical effect of author’s dissociation from quoted speaker’s utterance (or tone of utterance; Gruber, 1993a; Weizman and Dascal, 1991).

The aforementioned forms of discourse representation have been mainly investigated in the context of written (media) texts. Both recontextualization (as a social practice) and intertextuality (as a specific formal relation between texts), however, can occur in written and spoken discourse. The next sub-section will discuss aspects of quoting in spoken discourse.

Quoting and evaluative meaning in spoken discourse

Verbal quotes in spoken discourse have been investigated at the level of the quotative construction (Spronck, 2012) and at the pragmatic level of their rhetorical function and sequential placement in conversations (e.g. Álvarez-Cáccamo, 1996; Tannen, 2007). In a quotative construction, a ‘source construction’ (i.e. the representation of a previous utterance from speaker B) is combined through a reporting verb or particle with a ‘message construction’ (i.e. the current utterance of speaker A who reports B’s previous utterance). Current speaker may express (a) quoted speaker’s evaluation of the reported proposition and/or (b) current speaker’s own evaluation of the reported proposition and/or speaker through the choice of specific reporting verbs or by modifications of the reported message (Spronck, 2012; see also Buttny and Williams, 2000). The examples and data from various languages on which Spronck’s discussion is based, however, always contain full clauses (propositions) as source constructions and direct quotations of parts of clauses (nominal or verbal groups, etc.), and their evaluative effects are not discussed. Partial repetitions (‘resonating utterances’) of a previous speaker’s evaluative utterance are discussed by Du Bois (2007) in his work on stance-taking. He claims that in a ‘resonating utterance’, key elements of the first utterance are taken up by subsequent speaker who expresses his or her alignment (or dis-alignment) with previous speaker and his or her evaluation of an object.

At the pragmatic level, the use of verbal quotes in spoken discourse has been characterized as ‘constructed dialogue’ (Tannen, 2007) that enhances the liveliness of a narration and in which the original source (and hence the correctness of the quotation) is often not retrievable. In conversation analytic studies (Buttny, 1997; Buttny and Williams, 2000; Holt, 1996), the use of direct quotations has been claimed to provide listeners with a more authentic piece of information than indirect quotations would do.

In the context of political discourse, it was shown that British MPs use verbal quotes from political opponents in antagonistic (dis-aligning) utterances to back their own argumentation and to point at inconsistencies in their opponents’ political standpoints (Antaki and Leudar, 2001). In an investigation of presidential candidates’ use of reported speech in election debates in Taiwan, Kuo (2001) found that direct quotes were mainly used by debaters as seemingly impartial and authoritative evidence for their own glorification or the vilification of political opponents. As in Antaki and Leudar’s (2001) study, the verbal quotations in her investigation comprised at least one proposition, but in most cases many propositions which were argumentatively integrated into the quoting utterance.

Studies of verbal quoting in the context of interactional sociolinguistics have focused on the ideological meanings which may become evident through language choice in verbal quotations in multi-lingual situations. Investigating verbal quotations in Spanish–Galician bilingual speech situations, Álvarez-Cáccamo (1996) shows that by choosing a certain language for representing a speaker’s previous utterance, current speakers can insinuate that quoted speaker holds a certain attitude/ideology toward the current discourse topic. Current speaker’s code-choice for the represented utterance thus treats this code as an ‘emblem’ indexing that reported speaker bears certain features of a social persona that is associated with this specific code or register (Agha, 2007). Any sign in behavior can acquire an ‘emblematic function’ as long as it combines the following elements: (a) a perceivable thing (a ‘diacritic’), (b) a social persona, and (c) someone who perceives the combination of (a) and (b) as an emblem. If diacritics are widely recognized as indices of emblems, they are ‘enregistered emblems’ that can combine to form discourse registers (Agha, 2007: 235).

These latter concepts of enregistered emblems and discourse registers refer to the indexical aspect of signs in a Peircean sense (cf. Nagl, 1992), whereas all of the approaches to verbal quoting discussed before deal with symbolic sign aspects and the recontextualization effects they can be subjected to. As will be shown, the differentiation between these two sign aspects is of crucial importance for explaining the rhetorical effects of recontextualization practices in the data investigated in this article.

Before proceeding, the different theoretical strands of this section will be shortly summarized with regard to the specifics of follow-ups in the inaugural debates. On the formal level of intertextuality (i.e. discourse representation), direct other quotations can range from the full integration of a reported proposition into the current utterance (i.e. a full quotative construction) to the ‘displaying’ of single words or phrases from a reference statement/text in the current utterance. These various intertextual relationships result in different recontextualization practices through which speakers align or dis-align with previous speaker(s) and hence publicly construe their roles as ‘government’ or ‘opposition’ party MPs. But the specific formal ways in which they perform their opposition or government party MP role show how they position themselves in and toward their role: either as policy-oriented arguers or as evaluation-oriented ironic commentators (see later). The investigation of the systematic relations between the different levels and aspects of verbal quoting in MPs’ follow-ups and their public positioning as specific kinds of political personae constitutes the overarching purpose of this article.

Integrated direct quotes

Excerpt 1 presents a typical example of a direct quotation serving as the starting point for an own argumentation that aims at presenting a policy alternative:

Excerpt 1:

I tell you: this is exactly the point which is listed under ‘aims’ in the ‘health’ chapter that is wrongly defined, because it says: ‘the focus of the government’s health policy is on the patients’ demands’. Wrong! – The focus should be on the highest possible degree of health and … ⁹ (Öllinger, Green Party, Faymann debate, 16.45)

The direct quotation (underlined) comprises a complete clause from the government program. The elaborate introduction of the discourse unit first mentions the source of the quote (‘the point which is listed under “aims” in the “health” chapter’) and then prospectively evaluates it (‘that is wrongly defined’). Immediately after the direct quote, the evaluation is repeated as an exclamation (‘Wrong!’) which is followed by the formulation of his own (his party’s) allegedly better policy and the reasons for the superiority of his suggestion (not represented here). The quotation is thus completely integrated into the evaluative and argumentative content of Öllinger’s statement.

By presenting the verbal quote as a starting point for his own argumentation, Öllinger creates a form of double resonance (in the sense of Du Bois, 2007) with the reference text. The direct quote anchors his statement firmly to the government program and inserts the original evaluative meaning (focus of health policy on patients’ demands) into his statement. By repeating the first noun (‘focus’) of the theme element (Martin, 1992) of the quotation, he establishes a firm cohesive tie between the quotation and his own statement and shifts the evaluative focus toward a different element (from ‘patients’ demands’ to ‘highest possible degree of health’). This two-step resonance signals a high counter-alignment with the reference text ¹⁰ and a pronounced counter-evaluation of the topic under discussion. By incorporating a stretch of the reference text into his own statement, Öllinger signals his high engagement with this text and introduces an explicit dialogical moment into his statement which is reinforced by the introduction ‘I tell you’ which addresses the new government.

The analysis of the first two levels of direct quotation use (quotative construction, rhetorical/argumentative function) shows that the current speaker aims at creating an argumentative counter-alignment with the reference text. In the context of the communication situation, Öllinger positions himself as a rationally arguing, fact-oriented opposition politician who deals with one specific policy plan of the new government and presents an own alternative.

Integrated quoted nominal groups

Direct quotes in follow-up discourse units do not always contain whole clauses, as excerpt 2 shows:

Excerpt 2:

You coin this cost sharing a ‘sick person punishment tax’. I really appeal to you: Stop this! Let’s stop scaring people. (Trinkl, ÖVP, Schüssel I debate, 16.52)

In this excerpt from ÖVP MP Trinkl’s statement during the 2000 inaugural debate (which represents one of the very rare instances where a government MP uses a direct quotation), a complex nominal group (‘sick person punishment tax’ which is realized as a compound noun in German) from the reference statement(s) is included in the follow-up discourse unit. It is attributed to a generalized ‘you’, which refers to several MPs who had used this term for a planned fee for patients who first visited (in the case of illness) an outpatient clinic instead of their general practitioner (GP). The neologism ‘sick person punishment tax’, which was coined by opposition party MPs (and others who opposed the planned fee), combines two elements (‘sick person’ and ‘punishment’) with inscribed evaluation (Martin and White, 2007) and thus represents an emotionally charged term. MP Trinkl’s appeal ‘Stop this! Let’s stop scaring people’ refers to this inscribed emotionality and thematizes its probable negative consequences (‘scaring people’).

As in the previous excerpt, the nominal group (compound noun) is syntactically integrated into the quotative construction of the actual statement and thus establishes topical coherence (and a cohesive tie) with the reference statements. By repeating and explicitly marking the contested term as the language use of the opposition party MPs and confronting it with the government’s coinage of this fee (‘cost sharing’), the MP again resonates with the reference utterances and creates a counter-alignment with them. In this case, however, the current speaker does not use the verbal quote as a starting point for a counter-argumentation, but rather as a basis for an appeal in which the evaluative meaning of the reference phrase (i.e. the direct quotation) is addressed. The direct addressing of and the appeal to the previous speakers position the current speaker as a responsible politician who aims at avoiding negative emotions in the general public.

As in the previous excerpt, the direct quotation and the following appeal introduce an explicit dialogical moment into the current statement and show high involvement with the reference statement(s). In contrast to the previous example, however, the direct quote in excerpt 2 does not serve as a starting point for a counter-argumentation, but rather questions the appropriateness of the term and addresses its possible negative consequences for a wider audience.

Quoted nominal groups as objects of evaluation

Not all MPs integrate quoted nominal groups into the syntactic construction and the argumentation of their statements; sometimes the quotes are simply commented on, as the following excerpt illustrates:

Excerpt 3:

I hope for you that you will make something of this meager paper which is available here. I just quote some juicy tidbits now: […] ‘New offers for employed students (e.g. E-learning, part-time-studies)’ – hopefully, this will decrease the number of drop-outs and increase the number of graduates! I do not believe in it. (Graf, FPÖ, Gusenbauer debate, 21.22)

In this excerpt, FPÖ MP Graf introduces a whole series of verbal quotes with two evaluating (‘meager paper’) ironic (‘juicy tidbits’) clauses. Each quote comprises only one nominal group from the government program. Each quoted nominal group is followed by an evaluative, sometimes ironic comment. Excerpt 3 presents one of 22 similar follow-up discourse units. As all nominal groups are presented without their original co-texts, the current utterance cannot resonate with the original formulations and the nominal groups simply serve as objects of evaluation rather than as means of aligning or dis-aligning with the stance of the reference text.

Through the use of direct quotations, MP Graf establishes a multi-voiced but not a dialogical utterance ¹¹ in which the verbal quotes are nonetheless integrated into the current utterance at the content level. Verbal quotes and ironic comments are presented as a series of funny remarks and thus position him as an opposition MP who criticizes and ironically comments on the government program without presenting an own policy alternative.

Quoted nominal groups and short sentences as objects of metacommunicative irony

The following excerpt presents a follow-up unit which represents an intermediate case between the integrated use of quotations discussed in the examples so far and the emblematic use of quotations which will be discussed in the last two sub-sections:

Excerpt 4:

Please express your concerns which you listed rather inadequately and incompletely in a rudimentary form on 40 pages at least in correct German! […] On page 8 you can read: ‘Relief of the police from activities foreign to the species’. What are ‘activities foreign to the species’ of police men? (Moser, Green Party, Schüssel II debate, 18.40)

In this excerpt, Green Party MP Moser criticizes the linguistic correctness and stylistic appropriateness of expressions in one chapter in the government program (‘Internal security’) and quotes one clause from which she further picks out one nominal group (‘activities foreign to the species’) for her critique. In contrast to the previous examples, her critique is not aimed at the content of the reported stretch of discourse (i.e. the level of planned policies which are formulated in the government program), but at the alleged inappropriateness of the linguistic expression for the planned policies. The metapragmatic (and ironic) orientation of this follow-up discourse unit is introduced by the metapragmatic stylistic critique in the introductory stretch of excerpt 4 (the first two lines), and the metapragmatic question presents the criticized term as a breach of the Gricean maxim of manner (‘Be perspicuous, avoid obscurity’). The metapragmatic orientation of Moser’s critique also becomes visible at the level of discourse representation. Although the whole clause in which the criticized nominal group occurs is presented as a complete quotative construction at the beginning of excerpt 4, the criticized nominal group is metapragmatically presented as a questionable term (‘What are X?’) in the following clause, rather than used to establish a cohesive tie between the reference statement and her own debate contribution. In contrast to the first two examples, the quotation thus does not serve to express a (counter-)alignment with a previous speaker’s evaluation of an object (real or imagined), but rather the quotation is presented as a linguistic object that is metapragmatically evaluated.

In contrast to excerpt 3 earlier, the metapragmatic critique explicitly expresses the target of the current speaker’s critique and irony (namely, the alleged linguistic and stylistic inability of the government program’s authors) and thus establishes a dialogical moment which is not oriented toward the content plane of the reference text but toward its (alleged) stylistic inadequacy. This general metapragmatic (ironic) orientation is reinforced by the (schoolmasterly) introduction of the discourse unit.

Excerpt 4 represents the first discourse unit of a five-minute debate contribution. In the second discourse unit of her contribution, MP Moser again ironically criticizes a particular expression in the government program, but in the rest of her statement she presents a critical evaluation of a specific policy aspect of the government program. Current speaker thus positions herself as an opposition MP who is concerned with formal aspects of policy formulation as well as with political contents. This shows that content-oriented argumentation and ironic evaluation do not represent mutually exclusive aspects of the public persona of an MP, but rather are two options which are available for each speaker.

Quoted complete sentences and their enregistration as a discourse style

In excerpt 5, the transition from topical and metapragmatic uses of quotations toward their emblematic use becomes clear. As in excerpt 4, FPÖ MP Stadler criticizes a formulation in the government program but explicitly classifies it as a certain type of ‘political lingo’:

Excerpt 5:

The platitudes which this government program contains come close to Viktor Klima: ‘If I no longer have any ideas, I use some political lingo’ Minister Plassnik, page 7 reads verbatim – I quote -: ‘The aim is to guarantee the optimal achievement of Austrian interests by means of maximal coherence and efficiency’. What does this mean if anything? What do you do with such a sentence? (Stadler, FPÖ, Gusenbauer debate, 14.10)

The passage in excerpt 5 contains two formal instances of verbal quoting, but only the second one (the quotation from the government program) is a factual quote. The first instance (the alleged quotation from former Austrian SPÖ chancellor Viktor Klima who was notorious for his technocratic rhetoric) represents a ‘hypothetical quote’ (Baynham, 1996), that is, a quotation which is obviously invented by current speaker and attributed to reported speaker. In the hypothetical quote, Stadler insinuates that politicians use abstract, difficult to understand language in political statements when they do not have own ideas. Through this allegation, Stadler links (‘enregisters’ in the sense of Agha, 2007) the register of ‘political lingo’ to a stereotypical indexical value, namely, a certain kind of ‘politicians without ideas’.

The second (factual) quotation resembles formally the quotation in excerpt 4. Stadler provides the exact page on which he found the quotation, reads the whole sentence, and asks two critical metapragmatic questions. As in excerpt 4, the quotation does not serve as an indication of topic-continuity that expresses (counter-)alignment with the reference text, but it is rather presented as a criticizable linguistic object. The hypothetical and the actual quotations in excerpt 5 establish a ‘constructed dialogue’ in Tannen’s (1989) sense as the second (actual) quote is presented as an instance of the (alleged) general ‘rule’ Stadler presents in the first (hypothetical) quotation. In contrast to excerpt 4, the quotation not only is ironically presented as an example of a certain (poor) style of expressing one’s thoughts, but rather serves as an ‘enregistered emblem’ (Agha, 2007: 235) for a specific type of political discourse (and politicians).

The follow-up discourse unit represented in excerpt 5 is followed by a second verbatim quote from the government program and a series of ironic commentaries on this second quote by MP Stadler (not represented here). The two actual quotations, however, do not establish a dialogical moment with the reference text (and its authors) as MP Stadler presents them as emblems without establishing any (rhetorical or factual) rapport to its authors. Through the metapragmatic typification (Agha, 2007: 150) of the verbal quotation, Stadler positions himself as an opposition MP who not only criticizes the government program, but distances himself from an entire group of politicians who use a certain (alleged) style of political language which (in turn) characterizes a certain kind of negatively evaluated politicians.

Scare quotes as enregistered emblems of a political register

Whereas excerpt 5 showed emblematic enregisterment ‘in the making’, that is, the rhetorical attempt of a speaker to present a (factual) verbal quote from the government program as an instance of an (alleged) register of discourse (‘political lingo’), excerpt 6 shows how decontextualized short direct quotes (scare quotes) are used as indexical values of a certain (negatively evaluated) political register:

Excerpt 6:

Do really have a close look at this government program! I hope that everybody read it. Then you will come across 75 cases of: something is ‘evaluated’, something is ‘checked’, something is ‘conceptualized’, something is ‘coordinated’, something is ‘optimized’ and 75 task forces are established […] There you have to ask yourself: Is it necessary that this is written into a government program […] – Yes, it is really embarrassing, as our colleague Peter Westenthaler says. (Bucher, BZÖ, Faymann debate, 11.32)

In this follow-up discourse unit, MP Bucher produces a series of direct quotes (scare quotes) in which only single verbs from the government program are reproduced. As in all previous examples the source is explicitly mentioned; the quoted verbs, however, do not and cannot provide the slightest glimpse of their actual discursive function in the context of the reference text. In contrast to excerpt 3, the verbal quotes are not objects of ironic commentaries, but they are treated as emblems of a register of political discourse in which political problems are mainly treated at an abstract level of conceptualization which does not lead to a practical solution of these problems. The mentioning of the ‘75 task forces’ (‘Arbeitskreise’) is a case in point: the original German term ‘Arbeitskreis’ has an extremely negative connotation in Austrian political discourse as the establishment of a ‘task force’ is normally viewed as an indication (an ‘emblem’ in Agha’s (2007) terminology) of political undecidedness and unwillingness to deal with a political problem. In excerpt 6, the formal properties of the verbal quotes (decontextualized verbs) and their conventional meaning indicate their use as emblems of a discourse register (and hence their use as indices rather than as symbols) rather than as resonating elements of (dis-)alignment with the reference text.

As in excerpts 3 and 5, the quotes establish a multi-voiced but non-dialogical utterance. This is underscored by the closing part of excerpt 6: MP Bucher does not ask the government (or the chancellor) if it is necessary to use these verbs in a government program, but rather he presents the rhetorical question ‘you have to ask yourself: Is it necessary […]’. As in excerpt 5, the current speaker positions himself as a critic of a certain style of ‘doing politics’, yet in contrast to excerpt 5, he does not metapragmatically classify the criticized terms as indices of a certain register but takes the enregistration of these elements for granted with his audience (i.e. he presupposes a specific language ideology (see Spitzmüller, 2013) in his audience).