Abstract
This article deals with the discussion of abortion in a number of US presidential and vice-presidential debates, from a scaling perspective. The interest in scales, as (co)constructed and negotiated by participants in the course of interaction, is a component of occasioned semantics. I found that, in the political debates that I examined, there are a number of different scales anchored by the contrast between ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ positions. These are as follows: (1) Stage of pregnancy, (2) Prescribed action, (3) Special circumstances, (4) Locus of enforcement and (5) Frequency. These scales are manipulated in various ways by the candidates to make their own stances seem reasonable and moral and their opponents’ unreasonable and immoral. A position may be made to appear more moderate by adding a more extreme alternative to the scale, which is then rejected (‘negative upgrading’). Also, common goals (in particular, reduction of abortion frequency) may be emphasized. The debaters also use ‘negative downgrading’ – rejection of a more moderate position – to suggest an opponent’s unreasonableness. It is noted that the availability of several scales affords various ways of formulating the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a particular position. The article continues with a close examination of an extended debate sequence, illustrating the crucial role of implicature in the manipulation of scales, the attribution of attitude, and the practice of argumentation, and the possibility of dealing with implicature within a conversation analytic framework. The discussion is, at all points, grounded in and illustrated by the actual talk of the political candidates. It is suggested that viewing specific occasions of interaction in terms of the creation and negotiation of scales can yield a unique and revealing perspective on what is taking place.
Introduction
Occasioned semantics
The primary data for this study are extracts from several US presidential and vice-presidential debates (including those excerpted in Appendices 1–3. I have analyzed the data in Appendix 1 in an earlier article (Bilmes, 2001), primarily in sequential terms.) It is not my intention to lay out the American struggle over abortion in all its complexity and historical detail. I find more than enough complexity in these political debates. The discussions under examination are about abortion; however, this study is not primarily aimed at contributing to that discussion, although it may do so in an incidental way. My interest here is in analysis. In particular, it is in how attention to scaling practices can illuminate what is going on in these discussions. Most of my previous writing on what I have called occasioned semantics (OS), the study of the structure of meaning in actual episodes of discourse, has focused on co-categorization, contrast and hierarchy, using, when appropriate, taxonomic representation, but with full attention to the occasioned, indexical nature of the data (Bilmes, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2015). Occasioned taxonomy is not ‘formal analysis’ in the usual sense. First, it is not part of some ideal, generalized system. It is derived from actual talk on specific occasions, and the discovered taxonomy may have no application outside of the particular occasion in which it is discovered. Second, it is not generated through elicitation specifically designed to produce taxonomies. It is generated by members in the course of their ‘natural’ talk. Taxonomy is a normal product of categorization as a member’s practice. The same considerations apply to scales, which are my primary interest in this article. For previous work in scaling from an OS perspective, the reader is referred to Bilmes (1993, 2010, 2019), Hauser and Prior (2019), Izumi (2017, 2019), Lee (2019), Matsutani (2019) and Prior (2016, 2019). My interest is in occasioned scales, that is, scales that are created or invoked, and manifested in the locally occurring talk, in contrast to linguistic and linguistic pragmatic approaches.
My approach to scaling is rooted, in part, in the work of Grice (1975) and his elaborators (e.g. Horn, 1972; Levinson, 2000; and many others). 1 There are, however, crucial differences between the Gricean approach to scales and that of OS. 2 Gricean scales are usually conceived in terms of informativeness. The OS notion of scaling includes relations of intensity, strength, extremity and, in a word, all more–less relations. Furthermore, the OS approach does not deal in invented or decontexted examples; it finds its cases in actual occasions of talk (or, in theory, writing and even gesture (Hauser, 2019)). The influence of local circumstances as well as cultural setting is constantly relevant. Scales, even those that are recognizable cultural orderings (e.g. private, sergeant, lieutenant, etc.) must be invoked on the spot, in some interactional/discursive sequence, with local consequences. Other scales may be assembled in the moment, with no cultural or linguistic precedent.
A further source for OS studies of scaling is conversation analysis. (The work of Harvey Sacks (1992), in particular, has been my major inspiration in the development of OS, and his influence, as well as that of Wittgenstein (1958) and Garfinkel (1967), will be recognizable in my previous remarks.) Conversation analysis has taken note of certain scaling phenomena, upgrading/downgrading (regrading) in particular, but without much conceptual elaboration. That is, with the exception of the special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics (2019) on conversational regrading and a few other papers on OS, cited above, conversation analysts have not shown much interest in the nature of scaling; how it is carried off; or its logical, semantic or implicational properties. 3 These are precisely the matters of interest in OS and the motivation for this article.
Abortion
The standard positions in the American debate over abortion are pro-life and pro-choice. Obviously, these terms are chosen for rhetorical effect. The anti-abortion position is never characterized by its advocates as anti-choice, any more than the abortion-rights position is characterized by its advocates as anti-life or even pro-abortion. And, of course, pro-life is to be interpreted in a very particular way. The lives concerned are strictly human. Moreover, it is the lives of the unborn which are to be protected; to be pro-life, in this sense, is not necessarily to be against war or capital punishment. Pro-choice has a similarly restricted meaning – it refers to the right to choose to have an abortion. 4 In some other areas of social life, pro-lifers (some, at least) may actually prefer more freedom of choice than most pro-choicers. 5 But, of course, there are intermediate positions between pro-life and pro-choice. Much of the political discussion has been devoted to negotiating those positions. It is my impression that it is primarily pro-life politicians who propose these compromise stances. The reason for this, I think, is not that they are inherently more conciliatory or less committed, but that they are in a weaker position in terms both of legal precedent and public opinion. 6 However, for pro-lifers, these compromises are generally and transparently wedges, since the pro-life position is usually grounded in the notion that abortion is a kind of murder, the taking of helpless, innocent life.
Abortion scales
It would be wrong to suppose that there is a single scale with the form: pro-life ↔ intermediate positions ↔ pro-choice. There are, as we shall see, multiple scales defined by pro-life/pro-choice. I will, for want of a better term, refer to these scales in general as abortion scales. In laying out these scales, we will understand pro-life and pro-choice in their strongest senses. Pro-life is the position that all abortions are immoral and should be outlawed. Pro-choice is the position that a woman may freely choose to have an abortion for any reason, at any stage of her pregnancy, and medical practitioners may choose to provide abortions without penalty. 7 Although we may treat the poles as fixed, what falls between them varies in ways that make for conceptually different scales. This is not an exercise in imagination; I find the scales in the debates that I examined.
We start with the first debate between George Bush and then-vice-president Al Gore, in 2000.
This invokes a stage-of-pregnancy scale, 8 frequently formulated in terms of trimester. The major Supreme Court decisions on abortion, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, actually use this scale – either trimester or point of fetal viability. There is, in fact, a whole family of time scales (days, weeks, months. At the time of writing, several states are considering proposals or have passed bills to limit legal abortion to the period before the fetal heartbeat is detectable. Partial birth abortions, that is, abortions in the final moments of pregnancy, are also frequently mentioned.)
Bush continues
Reducing abortions invokes a frequency scale, from none to the present rate of abortion. I put present rate as an end point because reduction is understood in relation to present rate. Of course, in theory, the rate could go up. It is to be noted that, unlike the other scales we will be considering, this one is not defined by pro-life/pro-choice. In fact, in the Quayle–Gore debate, although Gore (mostly) takes a full-out pro-choice position, he also favors reducing the frequency of abortion.
Jimmy Carter takes a similar position:
In each case, the reduction is to be achieved through education and other non-coercive procedures. This discussion suggests that there are ‘shades’ of pro-choice – (1) pro-choice/anti-abortion, (2) pro-choice/neutral and (3) pro-choice/pro-abortion. 9 It appeared that even pro-choice candidates felt that abortion was not something to be done casually; it should be done only reluctantly, after careful consideration. The other two positions – neutrality and pro-abortion – are theoretical, but seemingly unrealized, possibilities.
We note also a rudimentary illustration of scale interaction; the stage-of-pregnancy scale (and indeed all the other abortion scales) interacts with the frequency scale. This is made explicit by Bush in lines 27–30, quoted above (‘I believe (.) banning partial birth abortions would be (.) a p
The relationship of frequency reduction to the pro-life/pro-choice positions is complex. As Gore says in segment (3) above, although he is pro-choice, he wants to reduce the frequency of abortion. So, for Gore, reducing frequency of abortion shades, but does not compromise, his pro-choice stance. This is because the goal of reduction is to be realized through non-coercive, incentivizing means. Compare this with Quayle’s position:
Since the pro-life position is to outlaw abortion, what Quayle is doing here, in effect, is offering a compromise – reduction rather than full-out prohibition.
10
Note that this conclusion – reduction, not prohibition – is an implicature. It does not follow
Quayle’s solution, though, unlike Gore’s, is based not on incentives but on restrictions and prescriptions.
Bush, in his debate with Gore, proposes something very similar:
The relevant scale here has to do with requirements. Abortions will be available, but only after certain legal hurdles are cleared. The restrictions are based on certain prescribed actions rather than on stage of pregnancy. Required waiting periods 11 and parental notification place certain limitations on free choice, but they concede the legality of abortion. (Of course, as Bush says, the hope, from the pro-life point of view, is to eventually outlaw abortion. But Quayle does not acknowledge that, saying that reduction is his objective.) The scale, then, runs from illegality of abortion under all circumstances through legality only after certain prescribed actions are performed to legality without restriction.
Another scale type proposes intermediate positions based on special circumstances:
The special circumstances in this case are rape and incest, but other circumstances might be proposed.
12
This scale is different from the first two we considered in that there is no obvious internal ordering among the intermediate items. So, for example, there is no clear ordering in terms of extremity between rape and incest (at least none is proposed). The scale, then, would consist of prohibit all abortions ↔ permit abortion in any of a given set of special circumstances ↔ permit abortion under all circumstances. We can further elaborate this scale by considering part of President Reagan’s statement in his first debate with former Senator Mondale. Reagan expresses a full-out, from-conception, pro-life position, but he goes on to qualify it as follows:
I’ve always believed that a mother if medically it is determined her life is at risk if she goes through with the pregnancy, she has the right then to take the life of even her own unborn child in defense of her own.
Although he does not say so explicitly, it appears that he is not willing to make a similar exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, since he has mentioned only the one exception to his pro-life position. Also, the reason for his exception is that the woman is acting in self-defense, a reason that does not apply in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Now, the scale looks like this:
Prohibit all abortion ↔ permit abortion to save life of mother ↔ permit abortion in cases of rape and incest ↔ permit abortion under all circumstances.
Another scale is implied, in somewhat contradictory fashion, by President Ford in his debate with Jimmy Carter:
After stating his support for the Republican platform calling for outlawing abortion, he then advocates turning the decision on abortion over to the states. This, then, defines a new scale involving the locus of legal authority: prohibit all abortions ↔ let individual states decide ↔ permit abortion (in all states). Presumably, the outcome of the policy advocated by Ford would be that abortion would be outlawed in some states and permitted in others.
To recap, we can derive from these debates a number of distinct scales based on the contrast between pro-life and pro-choice.
Stage of pregnancy scale: abortions are permitted until some specified point in the pregnancy.
Prescribed action scale: abortions are permitted only after certain actions are performed.
Special circumstances scale: abortions are permitted only in certain special circumstances. The ones usually mentioned are rape, incest and endangering the life of the mother.
Locus of enforcement scale: At one end of this scale, no one has legal access to abortion; at the other, everyone does. By changing the locus of legal authority from the federal government to the states, the universal standard is eliminated. Some will have legal access to abortion; some will not.
Frequency of abortion scale: frequency is a scale in its own right, but reduction in the number of abortions may be offered as an objective or a compromise position. For the pro-lifer, this involves a real compromise of principle, but not necessarily for the pro-choicer, since reduction may be achieved through non-coercive means. This scale interacts with scales 1 to 4 in that each of the other scales affects frequency.
In addition, we found that pro-choice has shades (at least theoretically), from anti- to pro-abortion.
It is of some interest to note that the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision provides for three interacting scales. The right to abortion is completely protected during the first trimester (stage of pregnancy scale). Thereafter, the individual states may limit that right (locus of enforcement scale). However, until viability, the state’s interest is limited to insuring maternal health. After viability, the state’s interest extends to the protection of fetal life. This seems to introduce yet another scale, specifying the extent of the state’s legitimate interest: no state interest ↔ interest in protecting health of pregnant woman ↔ interest in protecting fetus (as well as woman). Furthermore, it should be noted that the stage of pregnancy scale actually comprises at least two subscales – state of pregnancy by trimester and by fetus viability.
Redefining the scales
I have been treating pro-life and pro-choice as the extreme positions of various scales. To fully subscribe to one or the other of those positions is, seemingly, to take an uncompromising, ‘extreme’ stance. The problem for politicians, then, is how to position themselves in such a way as to satisfy their constituencies while not appearing extreme. One solution is to find a more extreme position and disavow it.
Consider this extract from the Carter/Ford debate:
Although Carter is pro-choice, in that he doesn’t favor a constitutional amendment denying abortion rights, he portrays his stance as non-extreme by denying that he is pro-abortion and, in fact, insisting that he is against abortion and that he is against government encouragement of abortion. That is, he mentions a stronger position, one that he specifically rejects. I have referred to this practice elsewhere (Bilmes, 2019) as ‘negative upgrading’. (As we shall see in the next section, negative downgrading is another rhetorical device used by candidates.)
Similarly, Gore, in his debate with Quayle, says,
Again, we get a disavowal of a position more extreme than pro-choice (as usually understood). It is notable that, in each of these examples, the disavowal is not in response to a specific question or attribution. The candidate himself raises the possibility of the more extreme stance that he is disavowing. He brings it up in order to disavow it.
In (10), Carter begins with an anti-abortion statement, then states his pro-choice position, followed again by an anti-abortion, pro-reduction statement. In (11), Gore states a (pro-choice) position and then disavows a more extreme position. Although the formatting is somewhat different, in each case, the contrast is made explicit by juxtaposing a position taken with a more extreme position not taken.
Both Carter and Gore express a desire to reduce the number of abortions. I do not view this as a compromise position, since their basic stance (guarantee the right to abortion) remains unchanged. I would characterize this instead as a conciliatory gesture. They are offering to pursue a goal frequently espoused by pro-lifers, such as Quayle and Bush, but to do it non-coercively.
Carter, however, continues on a different tack:
Carter articulates, and disavows, here another ‘extreme’ position; government financing of abortion, and, once again, he mentions it in explicit contrast to his own position. These rhetorical moves by both Carter and Gore have the effect of moving their positions on abortion away from the extreme, toward the reasonable middle.
On the pro-life side, there are also more extreme positions, such as those professed by the Catholic Church. We must not, according to Church doctrine, destroy the procreative potential of sexual intercourse, and therefore any method of artificial birth control is forbidden, although abortion is a more serious sin than methods meant to prevent pregnancy. However, I do not find any instances in these debates, or others that I have examined, of candidates saying (in effect) ‘I want to outlaw abortion, but not contraception’. In fact, it might seem reasonable for pro-lifers to promote contraception as an alternative to abortion, but contraception is normally advocated by pro-choicers. Perhaps the pro-life candidates do not want to run afoul of the Church.
Another possible ‘extreme’ position is making the woman criminally responsible for having an abortion. Donald Trump, in an interview with Chris Mathews on MSNBC, briefly espoused this position. Indeed, criminal responsibility on the part of the prospective mother would seem to follow from the logic of the pro-life stance – that abortion is the taking of innocent human life. Aside from Trump, though, I know of no major candidate for president or vice-president who has adopted this position. 13
Instead, they offer compromises aimed at regulating, but not eliminating, the occurrence of abortion. Both Bush and Quayle call for a waiting period and parental notification. In addition, Bush wants to outlaw partial birth abortions. Both are explicitly conciliatory; Bush calls for finding ‘common ground’ (Appendix 2, line 20); Quayle ‘hopes we can agree’. 14 But both begin by expressing their standard pro-life positions. Their offers of compromise are, first of all, an acceptance of political reality. The majority of voters do not favor outlawing abortion and, in addition, guarantee of abortion rights is the law of the land. In addition, given their initially stated position, these compromises might be seen (both by supporters and opponents) as a foot in the door. As Bush says, ‘I know we gotta change a lot of minds before we get [to the point where all unborn lives are protected by law]’.
So, to recap, the pro-choice candidates make themselves appear reasonable and sensitive to opposing views in two ways: (1) through negative upgrading – mentioning and disavowing more extreme positions, and (2) by emphasizing a common goal – reducing the number of abortions – while rejecting coercive means. The pro-life candidates, by contrast, offer real concessions, although without moderating their principles. It is reasonable to assume, then, that they will not rest content if their proposed compromises are enacted into law.
Scaling in the 1992 Quayle–Gore debate
I have already written two articles (Bilmes, 1999, 2001) on the 1992 vice-presidential debate between vice-president Dan Quayle and Senator Al Gore 15 (see Appendix 1 for partial transcript). I was drawn to this particular debate because of its highly interactive nature. In the 2001 paper, I focused largely on the exchanges related to abortion. Once again, that is my focus, but from a scaling perspective. I am interested in particular in the way that scaling is related to implicature and sequence.
The moderator raises the issue of abortion and calls first on Gore. What follows is Gore’s opening statement on the topic:
Gore begins by stating his position (women have a right to choose), and disclaiming a more extreme (pro-abortion) position. He advocates reducing the number of abortions by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and suggests that the Bush administration’s policies have the opposite effect. So, the frequency scale is made relevant almost from the start. He then implicates that his pro-choice position is not absolute. He does this by invoking a stage-of-pregnancy scale. He says, ‘we believe that during the early stages of a pregnancy that government has no business coming in and ordering a woman to do what the government thinks is best’. Although this statement is logically consistent with an all-out pro-choice position, by affirming non-interference in early stage pregnancy, Gore implicates that he is tolerant of government interference in later stages of pregnancy, though certain other aspects of his statement strongly suggest a more thoroughgoing pro-choice position.
16
The implicature results from positioning on a stage-of-pregnancy scale. He calls for ‘common ground . . . in efforts to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies’, but that common ground (presumably) is to consist of non-coercive measures, and so, does not impinge on a pro-choice stance. The two relevant scales in Gore’s opening statement on this topic are frequency of abortions and stage-of-pregnancy. He finishes with a question/challenge directed to Quayle: ‘But Dan, you can clear this up very simply by repeating after me: (.) I: suppor:t -the ri:ght of a w
The moderator then calls on Quayle to make his opening statement:
Like Gore, Quayle begins with a straightforward statement of his position – he is pro-life. Then, also like Gore, he fuzzes his position with an implicature. His objective, he says, is to try to reduce the frequency of abortion. Although he has not logically contradicted his initial position, he has implicated (by Grice’s quantity maxim) that he favors a less extreme position. That is, he wants merely to reduce rather than outlaw abortions. But, though he and Gore agree on the desirability of reduction, he suggests more coercive means of achieving reduction (24-hour waiting period, parental notification). Thus, he invokes what I have called a ‘prescribed action scale’.
After the third candidate, Admiral James Stockdale, makes his opening statement, the moderator calls on Gore to begin the discussion period. Gore ignores Stockdale and refers to and eventually directly addresses Quayle:
Let us start with ‘. . . he and George Bush have turned
There are various interesting sequential features in lines 72–99, including Quayle’s use of interruptive questions to change the topic (see my 2001 discussion). Gore begins with the observation that Quayle did not declare support for a woman’s right to choose. Of course, there are an infinite number of things that Quayle did not say. This particular thing may be notable because it was something that Quayle might relevantly have said. However, Gore’s observation is more immediately and strongly warranted by the fact that Gore finished his opening statement with an invitation, in the form of a question, for Quayle to declare such support. Given the debate structure, there was no normative requirement for Quayle to answer Gore’s question. Quayle was making his (no doubt pre-rehearsed) opening statement on the topic, in response to the moderator’s topic-setting question. The interactive exchanges were to take place after the opening statements were complete. Nevertheless, Gore treats Quayle’s statement as a failure to respond to his invitation/challenge.
Gore goes on to invoke a special circumstances scale. Short of allowing abortions in all circumstances, one might allow them in special circumstances, but the Republican platform, endorsed by Quayle, will not go even this far, even in cases of rape and incest. 19 Just as a negative upgrade can be used to suggest that a position is not extreme, a negative downgrade can be used to suggest that an opponent’s position is extreme. 20 Allowing exceptions in special circumstances would be a downgrading of a rigid pro-life position. The Republican platform position on abortion is made to appear extreme by mentioning a more moderate position which is rejected. 21 There is some suggestion (by Gore) that this is not Quayle’s preferred position; he is following orders (and thus he is made to appear weak and ineffectual, a captive of his party’s most extreme elements).
Gore uses Quayle’s refusal to state support for the right-to-choose to lead into an observation concerning the rigid pro-life position inscribed in the Republican platform. It is of some interest that he chose the special circumstances scale. He might, for instance, have noted that abortion was to be prohibited even in the early stages of pregnancy, or even if various onerous pre-abortion requirements were met, or even if individual states chose to allow abortion. Presumably, he judged that prohibition of abortion even in cases of incest or rape was more repugnant to a greater number of people. The important point is that the availability of several scales afforded various ways of formulating the extremity (or reasonableness) of a particular position.
Gore goes on to accuse Quayle of waffling, giving ‘the impression that you don’t really mean what ya say’. This appears to be a reference to Quayle’s pro-life declaration, followed by his implicature that he does not want to outlaw abortion, but merely reduce its frequency (through prescribed procedures). We have here an example of how implicature can be dealt with within a conversation analytic framework, using the ‘next turn proof procedure’. That is, we can see that Gore is oriented to the implicature in Quayle’s statement. 22
Even before Gore brings up waffling, Quayle invokes the prescribed action scale with his interruptive question: ‘Do you support a 24 hour waiting period?’ This question is aimed at deflecting Gore’s line of talk (see Bilmes, 2001, for a fuller discussion). In addition, if Gore were to reject a waiting period, that would highlight the extremity of his position. (It would be, in effect, a negative downgrade). Gore’s point is that Quayle is inconsistent; he has located himself at two different positions on the scale – he is pro-life, and therefore wants to outlaw abortion, but his ‘objective’ is to merely reduce abortion by means of various requirements. Quayle’s point is that Gore refuses to make his position on special requirements clear; the lack of clarity is caused not by what he has said but by what he won’t say. (Gore never does answer Quayle’s question, although it is subsequently repeated several times.)
Quayle goes on to accuse Gore of waffling:
Quayle accuses Gore of inconsistency, and Gore insists that his position has not changed. What is of interest, in the present context, is that Quayle counts being opposed to government funding of abortion as a pro-life position. Gore’s position (supposedly) has changed because he used to be more pro-life than he is now. Gore does not agree. First, his position has not changed. Second, being against government funding of abortion ‘in some circumstances’ does not attenuate his pro-choice stance. As he subsequently says,
It is notable that Quayle imposes a binary category contrast on what might be taken to be distinctions of degree. Since pro-lifers oppose government funding of abortion, anyone who agrees has taken a pro-life position. This is somewhat like saying that Quayle has taken a pro-choice position because he doesn’t favor legal punishment of women who have abortions. Such categorical imposition is used for rhetorical purposes.
This might be seen as an argument about the composition of a pro-life/pro-choice scale. As is indicated in Jimmy Carter’s statement in segment (12), government funding of abortion is a step beyond supporting a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. This, apparently, is (‘in some circumstances’) Gore’s position as well. From Quayle’s perspective, though, opposing government funding of abortion mitigates a pro-choice stance and in fact constitutes a pro-life position.
Conclusion
In a recent paper (Bilmes, 2019), I pointed out that upgrading and downgrading (regrading), and scaling in general, are prevalent features of interactive talk, far more common than has been generally recognized in the published research on interactive talk. There are settings like the rehabilitation hospital studied by Izumi (2017, 2019) where scaling is virtually the major business of the professional staff. Perhaps the same is true of academic admissions officers and hiring specialists. But even where rating, grading and scaling are not the explicit object of the activity, as, for instance, in the debates we have been examining, we find interactions and negotiations that are best understood in terms of scales.
Political debates on abortion tend to be quite different from academic debates. (I base this generalization on my sampling of debates on YouTube.) The latter tend to focus on definitions of ‘human being’ and ‘person’, of self-defense and so on. There is an extensive use of analogy and metaphor. The positions are usually rigidly categorical – pro-life versus pro-choice. Political debates, to be sure, also make reference to ‘beating hearts’, ‘the culture of life’ 23 and protection of the unborn, as well as rights of the woman to control her own body. (Interestingly, it was Ronald Reagan, not famous for his intellectual depth, who, in the political debates I examined, seemed to be most interested in laying out a consistent philosophical justification for his position – see, for example, note 13). Although political debaters also labeled themselves as pro-life and pro-choice, the talk mostly dealt with scales, compromise positions, degrees of extremity and commitment to practical action. Politicians, after all, must walk the line between inoffensiveness and spinelessness.
One thing of importance that I hope was learned from this exercise is that, for some scales, pro-life ↔ pro-choice being the case in point, specifying the end points does not necessarily specify the scale. For others, for example, cold ↔ hot, perhaps it does (given that we understand cold and hot as referring to temperature and not, for example, to personality). And, it seems, what appear to be the end points of the scale(s), as with (100%) pro-life and (100%) pro-choice, may be made intermediate points in an extended scale by adding more extreme possibilities such as federal funding of abortion or legal punishment of women who have abortions. These considerations provide for a variety of rhetorical resources. The analysis of the Quayle–Gore exchange illustrated the availability and use of multiple scales in sequential context and also demonstrated some ways in which scaling is used to produce implicature in actual talk.
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Arnulf Deppermann and Gabriele Kasper for their insightful comments on the draft manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.