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This paper was at first intended to explore the nature and functioning of parenthetical discoursal units in the political debate genre. However, upon closer inspection of the functioning of these units, it was thought appropriate to pin down a more general criterion under which the concept of "parenthetical" could be subsumed. The notion deemed here appropriate for this purpose is that of discontinuous designation or referential twist, which will be referred to throughout this paper as referential leap or leap for short. The research presented here is not meant to be a statistical study based on large quantities of data and backed up in a scientifically rigorous way. Rather, it sets out to offer some impressionistic insights into referential discontinuities, including parentheticals, as attested in the political discussion broadcast on TVE on December 14th, 2015, between the leaders of the up to then two major political parties in Spain, namely, Mariano Rajoy, as the representative of the conservative party (PP), and Pedro Sánchez, as the representative of the socialist party (PSOE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an initial draft of the research that Professor Lopez Eire was carrying out at the request of the editors of this monographic study (vol. 12 of Oralia) at the time of his tragic death in a traffic accident. We asked his widow for permission to include this theoretical part, which was planned to be included in a more extensive paper including examples of interventions by Spanish political leaders in the mass media. His widow told us that professor López Eire had spent part of the summer of 2008 working on the video analysis and draft notes of the various DVDs that we had sent to him at his request. Unfortunately, those personal notes were never transformed into a final analytical text. The publication of this part of his work is a posthumous tribute to one of the most eminent researchers of rhetoric in Spanish academia. His scientific production covered both ancient rhetoric (he was a Professor of Greek at Salamanca University) and pioneering, ground-breaking studies in rhetoric and communication. His prolific activity, reflected in numerous books and papers, and his reputation as an organizer and promoter of conferences, associations, and journals had a lasting impact on the Spanish university of the late 20th century. This paper is also confirmation of his interdisciplinary skills, and reveals his thoughts on the relationship between rhetorical and cognitive studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the conversational strategy known as "intensification" from a sociolinguistic perspective. The data consists of a collection of informal conversations among Spanish women from Madrid, together with a set of oral interviews with women from the same speech community. The results illustrate the social change that have developed in Madrid, as they are codified in the Spanish spoken in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Moral Politics. How Liberals and Conservatives Think, George Lakoff points out that when we think and talk about politics, we usually resort to lexicon and issues belonging to the semantic field of morality and family. When applying this concept to American political discourse, Lakoff found out that behind conservative and liberal worldviews there are two different sets of moral values, each one based on a family model. The conservative model would be die strict father family and the liberal one, the nurturant parent family. In this paper we will try to apply Lakoffs model for conservative and liberal thinking to die Spanish left- and right-wing policies. We will also try to establish if the leaders of the two most important Spanish political parties are aware of die close relation between morality and politics, and if moral values are present in their speeches. According to Lakoff's view, this is the way to empathize with the electorate. We will also pay attention to the way different political issues are framed in the strict father morality and in die nurturant parent morality, and if our politicians are aware of die importance of reframing an issue in order to achieve persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper covers key aspects about the appearance which a discursive battle takes on in a political-electoral debate. More specifically, it centres on the role of linguistic (dis) courtesy within dialectic manoeuvres such as disagreement and criticism or interruption, as well as analysing other related phenomena. Thus, the principles of linguistic courtesy constitute the theoretical pivot around which this analysis revolves, duly linked to the analytical tools which the analysis of conversation offers. The author once again takes up some of the main contributions to this topic from one of his previous studies (Fernández García, 2000:105-191), elaborating, refining and expanding on them in the light of new material: whereas in the previous study only data from the election campaign of 1996 were used, in this present one we will find the addition of other data, firstly from the debates in 1993 between Felipe González and José María Aznar, and secondly, from those of 2008 between José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze, as an example of oral political discourse, the songs of two main Spanish politics parties, during the general 2008 elections. As other texts of political discourse (such as speech, interviews, meetings, posters, advertisings, etc.), these songs that accompanied the electoral propaganda are part of a public and ideological discourse aimed at the election of a candidate (perlocutive object). The elector voting for the candidate must believe that he is the best option available. Thus, the candidate's discourse is directed so the elector knows that the candidate and his party are the best options (legitimation), while it presents the opposing candidate as the worst one (delegitimation). The results of the analysis show that these strategies, quite typical in political discourse, have some new elements such as their resemblance to commercial advertising, i.e. the testimonials by famous people. Even if the political songs are a traditional genre with conventional communicative aims (propaganda and persuasion), they display some typical features in contemporary and postmodern communication: colloquiality, informality, "carnivalization", syncretism and hibridation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the arguments put forward by Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the Partido Popular (currently Spain's major opposition party and the principal representative of the country's right wing), in response to questions about the atmosphere of tension posed by a group of citizens during Tengo una pregunta para usted (2007), a television programme in which 100 representatives from a cross section of society quiz leading politicians on a wide range of issues. The theoretical-methodological approach is based on concepts taken from discourse analysis and a cognitive perspective, as well as from rhetoric, argumentation theory and pragmadialectics. This interdisciplinary approach enables us to better address the complexity of the various levels of discursive significance and their interrelation with ideological meaning in discourse whose persuasive intentionality targets agreement between the speaker and recipients. The analysis and interpretation of the data reveals Rajoy's general lack of attention to the citizen's point of view and his tendency to break the frameworks they activate, repeatedly replacing them with his own. This indicates his interest in presenting his political programme before the television audience, rather than offering each citizen a coherent (and well-structured within a critical argument) response. In establishing his ideological position, he frequently resorts to the use of supposedly objective data (extrinsic proof), as well as the use of argumentative places, and especially the overuse of the place of essence (which for Rajoy has an overriding argumentative value). From a pragmatic perspective, he breaks the expectations generated by the speech acts used by the citizens in their questions, thereby failing to answer what he has been asked. In addition, he fails to comply with several rules by misinterpreting the citizen's intention and digressing inappropriately. Where he does accept die approach put forward, he tends to minimise die possible threat the act represents to his party's image by using a range of attenuating elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to measure the extent to which pronunciation -especially joint-phonics- influences the reception, interpretation and appraisal, of political speeches. We have used a descriptive cross-sectional design, and a questionnaire to poll 240 people of varying ages, cultural level and ideological inclinations. Respondents were selected according to a stratified random sampling system, and we considered the various category variables as strata. The first conclusion we can draw from these data is the major importance that the vast majority of citizens of this area place on politicians' voices and the influence they attach to the quality of voice in the acceptance or rejection of the contents of their discourse. The second conclusion is that the audience also "hears" the speech with their eyes: they place considerable importance on their image, facial expression, movements and gestures. Particularly worthy of note is the large number of listeners who are convinced that ideology influences the pronunciation of these speeches. The third conclusion is that politicians' voices sound different to more than three times the number of those who fail to detect any differences with the discourse of teachers, judges, doctors or journalists. However, the difference between those that believe that any kind of educated voice is suitable for political speeches and those that believe otherwise, is extremely small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is it that characterizes adolescents' small talk? Adolescent language is often accused of being sloppy, that is, not only badly articulated or vague, often with cut-off sentences, but also full of slang, taboo and swear words, and not least sprinkled with unnecessary pragmatic markers. As highlighted in the recently collected corpus, Madrid adolescents' small talk has similar characteristics, represented, for instance, by the frequent vagueness marker "y eso," the pragmatic marker "en plan," and the slang intensifier "mazo." It is also characterized by an abundant use of contact-creating expressions, both in the form of contact-checking tags such as "eh" and "no" and, in particular, vocatives such as "tía" and "tronco." But all these devices are used for a purpose. In addition to facilitating and keeping the conversation going, they are used to involve the listeners and create rapport between speaker and listener. In other words, besides the strategic discourse function, they have a strong social and bonding effect. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the use of these strategies leads to a successful outcome of small talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of persuasion of those texts which take the form of enumerative series finds its best expression in political discourse. This article is aimed to analyze the specific function of the above-mentioned enumerative series with special focus on the talks held between Rajoy and Zapatero at the Spanish Parliament after the terrorist organization ETA planted a bomb in Barajas airport, with two Ecuadorian living in Spain being killed. The different interpretations of the terrorist attack as well as of its consequences furnished by these two political leaders can be shown to shape two significantly different types of discourse, especially concerning the use of the amount as well as the type of enumerative series. This paper analyzes a number of aspects in the above-mentioned discourses, such as the characterizing features of the series employed, the reiteration of ideas, the repetition of elements with an increasing effect or the connection of these series with the argumentative fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]