Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion

A very important aspect when presenting own power and in this sense representing also particular ideology is the fact that this effort should be done rather indirectly and not so openly because ideology is most effective when it is not so clear that to persuade others is a goal of one of the ideologies. Such indirectness could be reached when ideological cues are brought to the speech as background assumptions. They force, on one hand, the speaker to say something in a particular way and, on the other, the listener to interpret what has been said in a particular way. Obviously, presentation of ideological views is thus not among the components of the speech and it is, to the great extent, up to the hearer to recognize it behind the cues (Fairclough 86).

Generally, to end an argument means to persuade the others to accept a standpoint to which they have been opposing or at least to reach a particular compromise of mutual points of views; nevertheless, sometimes a confrontation ends up either without an evident winner and looser or without any resolution. Instead, the opponents just reaffirm the correctness of their arguments or even refocus their disagreements onto a new basis and reciprocal agreement is not reached as well (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 35). Whether such communication should be remarked as unsuccessful or not is hard to answer.

However, if the speaker is able to influence the attitudes, knowledge or even to undermine recipient's previous ideology, he is obviously able to control their future actions. He may be considered to be a winner because the so-called mentally mediated control of actions of people could be marked as the ultimate form of power. Such access is the feature of various manipulations which are successful in their effort especially due to the fact that it takes place without people's awareness that they are being manipulated to (Caldas-Coulthard 90).

From various approaches to definitions of power and arguments, it may be beneficial to explain the difference between the so-called rhetorical and oppositional argument. Firstly, it must be stressed out that this distinction cannot be guaranteed by serious empirical investigation in each case, yet in most cases it is possible. A rhetorical argument may be defined as a type of discourse in which a speaker uses an intact monologue in order to support his disputable opinion. An oppositional argument, on the contrary, is a type of discourse where participants (but it also may be even one participant) strive to support openly their position; nevertheless, despite of this distinction both types usually consist of some of the same principles of discourse organization and rely on some of the same crucial assumptions (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 38). Since political speeches in the majority of cases are a matter of individual's monologues - not considering occasional demonstration of agreement or disagreement (sometimes even prearranged by politician's supporters or opponents) - it seems then that Political speeches may be defined as a discourse using rhetorical argument.