Prosody, Relevance and Manipulation in Political Discourse

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of intonation in political discourse in River Plate Spanish as a means to manipulate audiences into accepting questionable assumptions. The analysis of intonation is carried out in the Autosegmental-Metrical model applied to Argentinian Spanish and its interpretation is made in the framework of Relevance Theory. Some extracts from three interviews of two politicians and a presidential address are analysed, using PRAAT (BOERSMA; WEENINCK, 2020), a software for speech analysis, and interpreted using the Sp_ToBI transcription system. The analysis shows that level and rising intonation, often associated with background information, can be used to indicate, together with other linguistic devices, that information is to be processed as forming part of the common ground shared with the audience, and thus beyond questioning. In this way, information favourable to the speaker is made more accessible and attention is diverted from critical information.