Argumentation and Fallacies in Television Interviews: for a Dialogue Between the Toulmin Model and the Textual-Interactive Perspective

Abstract

This paper proposes an articulation between the Toulmin model of argumentation and the textual-interactive perspective for the analysis of a polemic television interview granted by Fernando Haddad to César Tralli, in the news program SPTV, transmitted by Globo Network, during his campaign for mayor in 2012. This proposal is justified insofar as the Toulmin model allows a schematic formalization of the argumentative structure that supports a critical analysis of the process, whereas the textual-interactive perspective allows comprehending the dynamics of the local production and interpretation of meaning in the conversational text, providing explanatory tools for the construction of the argumentative scheme, which involves the variation in the explicitation of the components of the model and in the configuration of its reciprocal relations. Thus, we could conclude that: (1) the interviewer tends to build the Claim through a question, so that the guest may answer it in form of a Rebuttal, in a process permeated by a face-work dynamics, oriented towards the preservation of his own face, of the interviewer’s face and of his party’s face, whereby the guest aims to characterize the interviewer’s reasoning as fallacious; (2) Warrants and, especially, Backings tend to be implicit; and (3) the argumentative schemes tend to be construed under complex chains.