Argumentation and Language in Identity Construction: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Polarisation in the 2024 Trump-Harris Debate 

Argumentation and Language in Identity Construction: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Polarisation in the 2024 Trump-Harris Debate | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Argumentation and Language in Identity Construction: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Polarisation in the 2024 Trump-Harris Debate Mitchell Thomas Welle, Nina Shtok This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8779817/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract While Presidential debates present policy positions, they also construct group identities. This article asks how argumentative structures and linguistic choices work together to produce the “We” identity and “Them” identity that is characteristic of polarised political discourse. We analyse the 2024 Trump–Harris debate by integrating only argumentation schemes into the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) for its approach to argumentation. Three questions guide our analysis: how argumentation schemes construct in-group and out-group identities; how do lexical choices, analysed through DHA's nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities; and whether patterned relationships exist between scheme types and discursive strategies. Drawing on 24 reconstructed arguments and six in-depth analyses, we observe that ad hominem attacks and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, while arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. We term these patterned relationships schematic affinities and offer the concept as a hypothesis warranting systematic investigation rather than a confirmed finding. Lexical devices, including terms that categorise actors as criminals, victims, or workers, reinforce the opposition that arguments establish. The framework demonstrates how argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies can inform one another, and it opens pathways for research on national identity formation, racism, and discriminatory discourse. Figures Figure 1 1. Introduction Arguments do more than establish truth claims or justify actions. They can position speakers socially, signalling who they are and whom they represent. In political discourse especially, argumentative moves construct speakers and audiences as members of particular groups: as defenders of “the people,” protectors of national interests, or champions of threatened communities. Yet while argumentation theory has trended to engage with the relationship between identity and argumentation (cf. O'Keefe 1995; Hazen and Williams 1997; Hample and Irions 2015; Mohammed 2016; Hinton 2022), there is still a gap. Namely, how do argumentative structures constitute speakers and audiences as members of valued in-groups (“We”) while positioning others as belonging to devalued out-groups (“Them”)? Recent scholarship has addressed this relationship from several directions. O'Keefe (1995) argued that arguments in social interaction position interlocutors relative to one another, signalling respect, contempt, solidarity, or distance. Hazen and Williams (1997) extended this insight to public discourse, observing that arguers deploy arguments to affiliate with particular communities and distinguish themselves from adversaries. Hample and Irions (2015) provided empirical evidence for a distinct argumentative orientation, “arguing to display identity”, in which the purpose of argument is not to convince an opponent but to perform membership in a valued group. Mohammed (2016) situated identity within a multi-goal framework, arguing that while politicians argue to resolve disagreements, they also do it to represent constituents and enact their role as group spokespersons. Most directly relevant to the present study, Hinton (2022) developed a normative account of “identity-affirming arguments” in climate discourse. Analysing speeches at COP26, Hinton identified arguments whose primary function was to affirm national and political identities rather than advance the deliberative agenda. His framework provides evaluative criteria for assessing whether identity affirmation serves or undermines deliberative goals. These contributions establish that identity matters for argumentation, but important questions remain. First, argumentation theory's core frameworks, including Walton's schemes and pragma-dialectics, have not systematically theorised how specific argument types perform identity-constitutive functions, nor has existing work connected argumentation schemes to the discursive strategies through which CDS analyses identity construction. Second, existing work has not examined how lexical choices complement argumentative structures in realising identity-constitutive effects. This article addresses both gaps. To investigate identity-constitutive argumentation in this corpus, we combine two complementary analytical resources. From argumentation theory, we adopt argumentation schemes (Walton et al. 2008), which enable systematic reconstruction of defeasible inferential patterns. From Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), we adopt the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), which provides tools for analysing how lexical choices and discursive strategies construct in-group and out-group identities (Wodak 2021; Reisigl & Wodak 2016). This combination allows us to trace how identity functions emerge from the interaction of argumentative structure, discursive strategy, and lexical choice. Our analysis addresses three interconnected research questions: 1: How do argumentation schemes construct in-group/out-group identity distinctions in polarised political discourse? 2: How do lexical choices, analysed through DHA's nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities at the textual level? 3: Which argumentation schemes co-occur with which discursive strategies, and what patterns of schematic affinity emerge from these co-occurrences? We argue that argumentation schemes perform identity functions through instantiations that position speakers as defenders of a virtuous “Us” against a threatening “Them”. Our analysis illustrates co-occurrences between scheme types and discursive strategies in our selected examples: ad hominem arguments and poisoning the well tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation; arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. Based on these observations, we propose the concept of schematic affinity and offer it as a hypothesis for future systematic investigation. Lexical choices, e.g. criminonyms, victimonyms, professionyms, render group boundaries visible at the textual level, complementing the argumentative work. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical background, including DHA's approach to discourse, challenges facing argumentation analysis within DHA, and our rationale for adopting argumentation schemes. Section 3 outlines our methodology. Section 4 presents the analysis. Section 5 concludes by discussing implications and directions for future research. 2. Theoretical Background of the Study This section presents the theoretical background of the study. First, we present the background of CDS and DHA. Second, we discuss argumentation in DHA and some challenges it faces. Lastly, we present our approach to the problem. 2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach CDS, originally referred to as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), emerged in the 1970s with a group of researchers led by Roger Fowler, associated with the field of “critical linguistics” (Fowler et al., 1979). Their works focused on how language both reflects and shapes social structures, arguing that “language usage is not merely an effect or reflex of social organisation and processes, it is a part of social process. It constitutes social meanings and thus social practices” (Fowler et al., 1979, p. 1). In this seminal study, the authors examined how “ideologies are linguistically mediated and how linguistic choices are influenced by power and status differences” (p. 186). Building on these foundations, critical linguistics evolved into CDA, later termed CDS (Critical Discourse Studies), which can be broadly defined as an interdisciplinary framework for studying how language and other semiotic resources are used to enact, reproduce, challenge, legitimise, or transform power relations, dominance, and inequality in society. Its interdisciplinarity draws upon, among other fields, classical rhetoric, philosophy, cognitive science, literary studies, anthropology, social psychology, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. The core principles of CDS include, for example, a focus on “naturally occurring” language use by real language users; the analysis of larger units of text within their socio-cultural context, rather than isolated words or sentences; an analysis of a vast number of phenomena of text grammar and language use: topics, macrostructures, speech acts, interactions, argumentation, rhetoric, and many other aspects of text and discourse (Wodak, 2011, 2015; Wodak & Meyer, 2016). The development of the DHA (Discourse-Historical Approach), one of the major approaches within CDS, can be traced back to the Vienna School of Discourse Analysis, founded by Ruth Wodak and her research team. As Reisigl and Wodak (2016, p. 31) note: the DHA was initially developed to analyse antisemitic and racist discourses in the 1986 Austrian presidential campaign surrounding former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. From this starting point—Austria’s post-war antisemitism—the approach was subsequently extended to the study of racism and discrimination against migrants, as well as to groundbreaking research on the construal of national identity in Austrian political discourse (de Cillia et al., 1999; Wodak et al., 2009). The DHA shares with other CDS approaches constitutive concepts, including, among others, “discourse” and “text.” Discourse is defined as: a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within specific fields of social action; socially constituted and socially constitutive; related to a macrotopic; linked to the argumentation about validity claims—for example to truth and normative validity, which involves several social actors with different points of view (Wodak, 2015, p.5). We address categories such as fields of social action and macro-topics in Section 3 . Discourse in CDS is understood as “the language associated with a particular social field or practice” (Fairclough, 2015, p. 8)—for example, political discourse, which is the focus of the present study. From this perspective, the broader context surrounding a political text or talk defines it as political. Central to this context are its participants, that is, the authors of political texts or talk, such as politicians or political institutions, their recipients, and other relevant political actors, whether active or passive. Political discourse is also shaped by communicative events, such as election campaigns, rallies, and parliamentary debates, as well as by the settings in which they occur, including time and place, and by the goals, intentions, and other situational factors involved. (van Dijk, 1997, pp. 12–13). In addition, political discourse is inherently argumentative, a dimension foregrounded in Fairclough and Fairclough’s (2012) Political Discourse Analysis , which systematically integrates categories from CDS with argumentation theory. 2.2 Polarisation in Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective Political polarisation in the United States has become an increasingly pervasive phenomenon, extending far beyond political elites to encompass virtually all politically engaged groups and individuals, regardless of social status. The 2024 U.S. presidential election exemplified this deep division, marked by particularly intense and entrenched partisan opposition. According to the Pew Research Center (2024), party identification was nearly evenly split—49% identifying as Democrat or leaning Democratic and 48% as Republican or leaning Republican—reflecting the depth of this polarisation. Although the American political arena is often described as highly polarised, the term itself is used in diverse ways. In this study, political polarisation is understood as “a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’” (McCoy et al., 2018, p. 16). Thus, “for Polarisation to happen, the idea of two distinct and homogenous groups needs to be created” (Marchal et al., 2023, p. 14), with these groups typically framed as the ingroup We’ and the outgroup ‘They’. Similar to nationalist or racist discourse (e.g. Krzyżanowski, 2010; Reisigl & Wodak, 2016; Reisigl, 2017; Wodak, 2009, 2022), the mechanisms of such categorisation rely on the discursive construction of a dichotomy: a positive ‘Us’ and a negative ‘Them’. This polarisation schema, combining positive self-presentation (in-group favouritism) with negative other-presentation, is realised through a strategic principle pervasive in political discourse: the “Ideological or Political Square”. This principle organises political texts by systematically emphasising Our “good” and Their “bad” properties or actions while de-emphasising Our “bad” and Their “good” (van Dijk, 1997, 2016). Since polarisation centres on constructing a positive ‘Us’ against a negative ‘Them’, the DHA is particularly well suited for this study. It has been widely applied to the discursive construction of national identities, antisemitism, nationalism, and exclusion—all of which hinge on the opposition of these two distinct groups. Crucially, DHA provides a detailed, multi-layered framework that specifies (i) the specific content (discourse topics) of a discourse; (ii) discursive strategies; (iii) linguistic devices and argumentation as means of their realisation (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016, p. 32). 2.3 DHA and Argumentation DHA has much to offer in terms of linguistic analysis; however, its approach to argumentation has attracted criticism and raised additional challenges. We therefore begin by examining how DHA deploys concepts and methods of argumentation. Our point is twofold. First, there are terminological issues in DHA’s categories for analysing argumentation. Second, theoretical tensions arise from the incorporation of the ten rules of pragma-dialectics. 2.3.1 Challenges with argumentation in DHA Reisigl and Wodak (2016) distinguish four dimensions of argumentative analysis—functional, formal, content-related, and meso/macro-structural—yet the overall argumentative layer in DHA remains conceptually diffuse. Several authors have raised concerns. Zagar (2021, p. 18) characterises DHA’s topos-centred methodology as tending toward an “anything goes” eclecticism; Fairclough and Fairclough (2012, pp. 21–25, 246) point to the absence of a transparent protocol for reconstructing arguments; and Forchtner and Tominc (2012) highlight tensions in grafting pragma-dialectics onto critical theory. Taken together, these critiques call into question the coherence of DHA’s argumentative apparatus. Relatedly, DHA’s terminology is difficult to stabilise across its own categories (e.g. functional, formal, fallacy/soundness). For instance, in the “functional” tier, terms such as ‘claim’, ‘argument/premise’, and ‘conclusion rule’ are listed; yet in Reisigl’s (2014, pp. 74–75) more detailed account, the relationship among these terms is not clear, partly because they are taken from a diverse set of authors. For example, the term ‘premise’ disappears; Toulmin’s six elements are (via Kienpointner) collapsed into “argument–conclusion rule–claim” without explanation; and in the “formal” tier, topoi are said to “belong to the premises.” The result is uncertainty about whether topoi function as premises, warrants, or something else, and about where the boundaries between argument categories lie. Furthermore, it is not evident how the ten rules from pragma-dialectics are to be applied when evaluating arguments within DHA. Take, for example, rule 7. Rule 7 is “The validity rule (logical validity): the arguments used in discourse must be valid or capable of being validated by the explicitisation of one or more unexpressed premises” (Reisigl, 2014, p. 80, emphasis added). Taken at face value, this suggests that only arguments that are logically valid, or can be rendered so, count as acceptable uses of a topos. This is mystifying. A validity requirement is remarkably strong for non-formal, discourse-analytic work. If we demand that a topos satisfy the standard notion of validity (i.e. an argument is valid iff it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false), then the enterprise of identifying non-fallacious topoi in DHA risks collapsing into the set of questions answered by formal logic. Thus, argumentation in DHA effectively leaves how the whole machine works as an exercise for the reader. To be clear, we certainly agree with Reisigl (2014, p. 91) that no one has a monopoly on how argumentation analysis works. We are by no means claiming that the issues raised for argumentation in DHA are a priori insurmountable (i.e. we are not offering a knock-down argument). Our claim is more modest: given these terminological and theoretical tensions, re-specifying DHA’s argumentative layer is both timely and promising. 2.3.2 Our approach At this point, we propose two complementary moves. First, we use argumentation schemes for DHA’s argumentative layer, treating them as methodologically viable, given their wide adoption, and operationally explicit. Second, we use argumentation schemes—alongside various linguistic devices—to see co-occurrences of discursive strategies (other than nomination) in the discourse under analysis, a point we develop further in Section 3 . Argumentation schemes, here taken from Argumentation Schemes (Walton et al., 2008), have been extensively developed and applied both within the field of argumentation (see Macagno and Toniolo, 2022) and beyond (see Atkinson et al., 2020). In brief, argumentation schemes model stereotypical, defeasible patterns of inference (e.g. arguments from expert opinion, consequences, analogy, or practical reasoning). Each scheme is paired with a set of critical questions that operationalise evaluation by probing its key assumptions. In this way, we gain a commonly recognised and explicit procedure for reconstructing and evaluating arguments in natural language, in line with DHA’s aims (see Section 2.1 ). This makes argumentation schemes a natural candidate for clarifying DHA’s approach to argumentation while maintaining DHA’s strengths in richly contextualising discourse socio-historically and in dissecting linguistic patterns. It is worth pointing out that DHA, as an interdisciplinary method, is not primarily focused on argumentation as such, nor on providing a fine-grained analysis and annotation of arguments in a corpus (cf. Visser et al., 2019b). Rather, we take it that our approach can complement such work by offering a qualitative perspective that enriches the overall analysis of such corpora. To illustrate, consider the argument from expert opinion (Walton et al. 2008, p. 14): 1. Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A. 2. Minor Premise: E asserts that proposition A (in domain S) is true (false). 3. Conclusion: A may plausibly be taken to be true (false). Walton et al. (2008, p. 15) associate this scheme with the following set of critical questions (each argumentation scheme has its own specific set of critical questions to evaluate arguments): 1. Expertise Question: How credible is E as an expert source? 2. Field Question: Is E an expert in the field that A is in? 3. Opinion Question: What did E assert that implies A? 4. Trustworthiness Question: Is E personally reliable as a source? 5. Consistency Question: Is A consistent with what other experts assert? 6. Backup Evidence Question: Is E’s assertion based on evidence? This scheme roughly maps onto the topos of authority in DHA, which can be rendered as: “CR: If authority X says that A is true/that A has to be done, A is true/A has to be done A: X says that A is true/that A has to be done. C: Thus, A is true/A has to be done.” (Reisigl, 2014, p. 76.) Table 1 , below, summarises how DHA’s categories for analysing argumentation relate to those in Walton’s approach. The functional, formal, and content-related dimensions are all subsumed under an argument scheme or its components, while topoi are straightforwardly re-cast as argumentation schemes. Argument meso- and macro-structures are understood as Dialogue Frameworks. DHA categories of analysis of argumentation (Reisigl, 2014) Walton’s categories Functional Components of an argument scheme (premises + conclusion) Formal Argument schemes (e.g. argument from classification) Content related Argument schemes (e.g. argument from fear appeal) Soundness and fallacy Critical questions Argument meso- and macro-structures Dialogue Frameworks (e.g. critical discussions or deliberation) Table 1 . Comparison of argumentation in DHA and Walton 3. Research Methodology This study focuses on the American political arena and investigates the discursive construction of polarisation through an analysis of a high-stakes political event: the 2024 presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Our primary data is the full transcript of this 100-minute debate, hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis. As previously established, the 2024 presidential election campaign displayed acute political polarisation among the electorate. Consequently, this debate provides particularly valuable data for the present research. The research methodology is grounded in DHA—a multi-layered and complex approach which operates on two interconnected levels of analysis. The first level of analysis involves a thematic examination of the text, which we understand as “a specific and unique realisation of discourse” (Wodak, 2011, p. 39). This entry-level (macrostructure) analysis serves to identify the text’s genre and assign it to particular discourses. Genre is defined as “a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity” (Fairclough, 1995: 14). It is related to specific fields of action—“segments of the respective societal ‘reality’, i.e. politics, which contribute to constituting and shaping the ‘frame’ of a discourse between the function of self-presentation, the manufacturing of public opinion, … advertising and vote-getting…” (Wodak, 2011, p. 40). The second analytical category at this level is that of “discourse topics” (macro-topics). Following Wodak (2021), discourse topics are understood in accordance with van Dijk’s definition (van Dijk, 1980, p. 41) as “a semantic core” which “conceptually summarises the text, and specifies its most important information”. We identify discourse topics embedded in the text through thematic analysis, whose purpose is to categorise the contents of the text under analysis and assign them to particular discourses (e.g. the environment, globalisation, gender politics, etc.). The next step is an in-depth (micro-structural) analysis, which involves examining “the structure of the discourse located ‘deeper’ than its aforementioned content” (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 83). It aims to reveal discursive strategies, their linguistic realisations in the text, and argumentation schemes. Strategies are understood as “more or less intentional plan[s] of practice adopted to achieve a particular social, political, psychological, or linguistic goal” (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016, p. 33). The number and classification of these strategies vary from study to study. Initially, there were several sets of strategies (with different classifications across studies). However, in the most recent works (e.g. Wodak, 2021), the strategies are no longer fixed in number or grouped into predefined categories. In this paper, following the DHA framework, we analyse all strategies other than nomination, from the argumentation schemes through which they operate. We treat argumentation schemes and discursive strategies as parallel but distinct analytical lenses. Schemes capture the inferential structure of arguments, the pattern of reasoning from premises to conclusion. Strategies capture the pragmatic and identity-constitutive functions that discourse performs, how utterances position speakers, construct groups, and achieve social goals. We examine nomination—“a strategy by which social actors are constructed and represented, for example, through the creation of in-groups and out-groups” (Wodak, 2011, p. 40)—only from the linguistic perspective, because it operates primarily through lexical devices (names, pronouns, category terms) rather than through inferential structures. For this reason, argumentation schemes cannot capture nomination directly. Other discursive strategies, however, can co-occur both through linguistic choices and through argumentative moves. Predication, justification, perspectivisation, and intensification, for instance, may all operate through arguments: an ad hominem attack predicates negative qualities of an opponent; an argument from consequences justifies a policy position; an argument from expert opinion perspectivises an issue by privileging certain epistemic authorities. We do not claim that specific schemes map onto specific strategies in a rule-governed fashion. Rather, we observe empirically that particular scheme instantiations, in some contexts, serve to realise particular strategies. Our analysis documents these co-occurrences systematically: we identify which schemes appear in the corpus, reconstruct their inferential structure, and then examine which discursive strategies each instantiation serves. This approach allows us to ask whether certain scheme types exhibit what we might call schematic affinities , akin to a wine and food pairing, with certain strategies: whether, for instance, ad hominem and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, or whether arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification strategies. We emphasise that the present study is exploratory rather than confirmatory on this question on schematic affinities . We document patterns of co-occurrence between schemes and strategies in a single corpus; we do not claim to have established stable or generalisable mappings. Whether principled constraints govern these pairings—and if so, what form such constraints take—remains an open question. The theoretical work of specifying why certain schemes might have natural affinities with certain strategies lies beyond the scope of this paper. Such a typology of affinities would require systematic comparative analysis across multiple corpora and discourse types. What we offer here is an empirical foundation for that future theoretical work. A demonstration that schemes and strategies do co-occur in patterned ways that merits analytical attention. Due to the scope of the study, we present the entry-level analysis and the examination of linguistic realisations of discursive strategies in abridged form. We focus primarily on analysing the arguments underpinning the discourse and their relation with discursive strategies that reinforce political polarisation, thereby demonstrating how this integrated framework operates. For the analysis of arguments, we employ 14 schemes from Walton and Hansen's (2013) political debate typology rather than the 60 or so schemes in Walton et al. (2008). This restriction suits our study's scope and aligns with our corpus type. The 14 schemes are: ( 1 ) argument from position to know; ( 2 ) argument from expert opinion; ( 3 ) argument from popular opinion; ( 4 ) argument from commitment; ( 5 ) argument from ignorance; ( 6 ) circumstantial ad hominem; ( 7 ) direct ad hominem; ( 8 ) argument from correlation to cause; ( 9 ) argument from positive consequences; ( 10 ) argument from negative consequences; ( 11 ) slippery slope; ( 12 ) argument from analogy; ( 13 ) argument from sign; and ( 14 ) argument from (verbal) classification. We add a fifteenth scheme—"poisoning the well by alleging group bias" (Walton et al., 2008, pp. 158–159)—because it directly signals group identities, central to polarisation. As Walton (2006) demonstrates, poisoning the well differs from argumentum ad hominem in its dialectical nature. We omit evaluative analysis (i.e., answering critical questions for each scheme). Many DHA studies (e.g., Reisigl & Wodak, 2016) conduct context analysis as a separate analytical stage; however, these scholars also emphasise its unavoidable role in prior stages of analysis. We therefore do not treat context analysis as a separate stage in this study but instead incorporate it into both the entry-level and in-depth (micro-structural) analysis. 4. Analysis and Findings This section analyzes the political discourse represented by the Harris-Trump presidential debate. The analysis follows the two-stage framework outlined previously: a macro-analysis and a micro-analysis. 4.1 Macrostructure Analysis of the Debate We analyze a full transcript of the 2024 Harris-Trump presidential debate. According to Wodak’s taxonomy (e.g., Wodak, 2015; Reisigl & Wodak, 2001, 2016), this text belongs to the genre of a TV debate, which falls under the field of political advertising and the formation of public attitudes, opinions, and will. Discourse topics can be divided into “primary” and “secondary” (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 82). Primary topics, as in semi-structured interviews or focus group discussions, largely align with themes introduced by moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis (e.g., the domestic economy, immigration, abortion rights). Secondary topics are those “developed by the participants within their utterances during the discussions and interviews in a manner which transcends the primary structuring topics” (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 83). We do not examine secondary topics in this study as our main focus is on primary topics. Figure 1 displays the structure of the analysed political discourse, mapping the relationships between its fields of action, genre, and discourse topics. Figure 1 Fields of political action, political genres and discourse topics in the presidential debate (adapted from: R. Wodak. The politics of Fear. 2nd ed. 2021, p. 71). The overlapping ellipses containing the topic-related discourses illustrate interdiscursivity, showing that all discourses interconnect in various ways. Discourses are open and often hybrid (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016, p. 28). 4.2 Microstructure analysis of the debate: ‘Us’ and ‘They’ As previously mentioned, the discursive construction of polarisation revolves around distinguishing two opposing groups—in-groups and out-groups. This distinction necessarily employs discursive strategies to determine who belongs to the in-group and who is categorised as “others”—what Reisigl and Wodak (2016, p. 33) call “membership categorization.” Nomination fulfils this function through various lexical devices including names, deictic pronouns, collective nouns, and rhetorical tropes such as metaphors and metonymies (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001, pp. 48–52). We must now specify who can be assigned to these two opposing groups—that is, who the “social actors” (Wodak, 2001; Wodak et al., 2009; Reisigl & Wodak, 2016) are. Van Dijk (1997, p. 14) defines political discourse as including all relevant political actors engaged in governing, ruling, protesting, dissenting, or voting. Thus, the two opposing groups include not only political actors directly engaged in political communicative events (such as election debates) but also those whose interests the ‘We’ group represents and advocates for and, conversely, those whose interests the ‘They’ group represents and supports—the “recipients” of these events (van Dijk, 1997, p. 13). In other words, these groups encompass both elite and non-elite actors. Van Dijk (1997, p. 26) observes that “sometimes non-elite individuals may appear as victims, and occasionally as celebrities, but such appearances are quite exceptional, or they may have a special rhetorical effect, e.g., in persuasive discourses 'with a personal touch', typically about one (brave or miserable) family, mother, or child.” Since the debate features two main political actors, each representing one of the opposing groups, we focus on how each candidate defines their represented group (the ‘We-group’) and the opposing ‘others’. Specifically, we examine how linguistic choices construct in-group affiliation while positioning opponents as the ‘other’. Both candidates employ deictic plurals ( we, they ) and their grammatical variants as primary linguistic devices for establishing in-group and out-group membership. Harris reinforces polarisation through sharp oppositions between professionyms ( working people, small business owners ) representing the in-group and business metonymies (big corporations) or possession-based anthroponyms ( billionaires, the richest people ) representing the out-group. This lexical contrast constructs a divide between ordinary, hard-working citizens (non-elite actors) and powerful economic elites. Interestingly, Trump never addresses his opponent by name, instead referring to her as “she” or “the person”. He intensifies polarisation by contrasting collectives ( the people of our country ) and de-toponymic anthroponyms ( Americans ) with criminonyms ( illegal immigrants, drug dealers, criminals that killed people ) representing ‘others’. Both candidates also make references to non-elite actors in the form of victimonyms , portraying people who suffered as a result of the opponent’s policies. Harris, however, refers to such victims more frequently, most often highlighting those who suffered because of problems with medical care, which she attributes to Trump’s administration, or because of US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade: “ Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12 or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term?” Trump mentions “13 people who … were just killed viciously and violently” when speaking about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and accusing ‘them’ of this tragedy. This “personal touch” is extended in “and I got to know the parents and the family” (of these victims), which amplifies the emotional impact by emphasising personal connection and family grief. Trump heightens the sense of tragedy and positions the event as a failure that harmed ordinary people. This section has focused on analysing the linguistic realisation of the nomination strategy, which is the only strategy realised exclusively through linguistic devices rather than argumentation. The following section examines the argumentation analysis, exploring how the other discursive strategies identified in the study are realised in discourse. Linguistic realisation of these strategies will not be considered at this point. 4.3 Argument micro-analysis Building on the preceding analysis of nomination strategies, we now turn to the argumentative level of analysis. As outlined in the methodology section, we operationalise Walton's approach to argumentation in place of DHA's original account to capture the argumentation schemes that realise discursive strategies, along with various linguistic devices present in the debate. The argument micro-analysis proceeds in two stages. First, we provide an overview of the argumentation across the twelve discourse topics by examining two exemplar arguments—one from Trump and one from Harris—per topic. We then undertake an in-depth analysis of three selected discourse topics: (i) Immigration, Immigrants, and Drug Policy; (ii) the Domestic Economy; and (iii) Trade Policy with China. We chose these three topics because immigration was identified as the most polarised issue in the 2024 debate (Nadeem, 2024), while the economy was simultaneously ranked as the top concern among registered voters (81%) and characterised by strong partisan division. Trade policy with China constitutes a subcategory of the economy. We can best describe the general structure of the Harris–Trump debate as a mixed dialogue, understood via Walton and Krabbe's (1995) and Walton's (2010) seven-type classification of dialogues. The dominant frame is persuasion addressed to a third-party audience (the electorate). Within the mixed dialogue, we identified twelve discourse topics. From each topic, we analysed two exemplar arguments—one from Trump and one from Harris. This analysis yielded twenty-four individual arguments. Argument scheme Count Trump Harris Poisoning the well by group bias 4 3 1 Argument from negative consequences 4 3 1 Argument from positive consequences 3 0 3 Circumstantial ad hominem 3 2 1 Argument from popular opinion 2 1 1 Argument from position to know 2 0 2 Argument from correlation to cause 2 2 0 Argument from commitment 1 0 1 Argument from verbal classification 1 0 1 Slippery slope 1 1 0 Argument from sign 1 0 1 Total 24 12 12 Table 2. On identified argument schemes The data table above shows that no particular argument scheme was dominant. However, each argument can be used to magnify the “We-They” dichotomy. The in-depth argument analysis demonstrates which argument scheme is used and how we can reconstruct the text. We then show how the argument contributes to polarisation and how it realises one or more discursive strategies. The first discourse topic concerns Immigration, Immigrants, and Drug Policy. We begin with an argument in which Harris attacks Trump while responding to a question on immigration. Harris states: “ Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. ” The argument is a circumstantial ad hominem argument and has the following form (Walton et al. 2008, p. 354): 1. Premise: a advocates argument ⍺, which has proposition A as its conclusion, which says that everybody should be committed to A. 2. Premise: a is bound by the ‘everybody’ in premise 1 . 3. Premise: a has action, or set of actions, that imply that a is personally committed to ¬A. 4. Premise: Therefore, a is a morally bad person. 5. Conclusion: Therefore, a ’s argument ⍺ should not be accepted. A reconstruction of the passage from Harris is as follows: 1. Trump says that politicians should support fighting illegal immigration using the law (implicit). 2. Trump is included in the group of politicians to use the law to fight illegal immigration (entailed from premise 1). 3. Trump, by “ call[ing] up some folks in Congress, and said [to] kill the bill” is personally committed to not using the law to fight illegal immigration. 4. Trump “ prefer[s] to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem” . 5. Therefore, the likelihood of Trump’s actual willingness to fight illegal immigration should not be accepted (implicit). In terms of polarisation, Harris' charge functions as a circumstantial ad hominem, drawing the 'We-They' divide by attacking Trump's motives and trustworthiness (Walton, 2004). Harris' move invites the audience to sort the issue through ethos-based heuristics rather than reason-giving. This argument realises the perspectivation discursive strategy—defined as the positioning of a speaker's point of view (Reisigl & Wodak, 2017, p. 95)—because it frames Trump as a hypocrite. We next examine a passage from Trump that primarily instantiates an argument from negative consequences, offered in response to Harris’s allegation to “ kill the bill ”: “ What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country... In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. ” The argument schema is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 332): 1. Premise: if A is brought about, then bad consequences will occur. 2. Conclusion: Therefore, A should not be brought about. The argument reconstruction from the text above is as follows: 1. If we allow “ millions and millions of people ” to stay in our country, then bad consequences will follow (e.g. they will continue to eat the pets of the people that live there and in other cities). 2. Therefore, the U.S. should not allow (or should drastically restrict/reverse) the current inflow of migrants (implicit). The argument functions as a mechanism of polarisation. Trump portrays migrants as bearers of alien and degrading practices, marking them as an existential threat to community life (or, more precisely, to the lives of pets) and thus redefining the policy issue as a moral boundary between “Us” and “Them” (“Them” being Harris and those who support her and permit such practices, 'us' being Trump and his supporters who oppose them). This argument realises the justification strategy—a relation to problematic actions or events in the past that are important in the narrative creation of a polarised group (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33)—by framing the issue as a problem “We” must fix. The second discourse topic concerns the domestic economy as a polarising force. We begin with Harris' plan for the economy, presented in response to the debate's first question from moderator David Muir: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” Harris responds: “ So, I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America… imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy…And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000…My plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses. ” The schema here is an argument from positive consequences. The structure is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 332): 1. Premise: If A is brought about, good consequences will probably occur. 2. Conclusion: therefore, A should be brought about. The reconstruction can be understood as such: 1. Premise: If we adapt Harris’ plan (e.g. implementing “ an opportunity economy” , extend a tax cut for “ those families of $6,000” or “to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses”), then the economy will likely improve. 2. Conclusion: Therefore, we should adopt Harris’ plan (implicit). The element of polarisation in this argument is subtle. By focusing on a positive message, Harris' argument contains no explicit polarisation. However, by pivoting from the moderator's backwards-looking question (“better off than four years ago?”) to forward-looking gains, Harris re-centres evaluative criteria from retrospective performance to future policy efficacy. This argument realises the transformation discursive strategy—an aim to transform a well-established term into another meaning (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33). Rather than accepting the moderator's retrospective evaluative frame (“ Are Americans better off than four years ago? ”), Harris transforms the issue of an economy in trouble into a forward-looking, purposive vision of an “opportunity economy.” Here we turn to Trump’s main answer to the moderator’s question: “ People can’t go out and buy cereal bacon or eggs or anything else. These the people of our country are absolutely dying with what they’ve done. They’ve destroyed the economy and all you have to do it look at a poll. The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great that their economy was terrible .” The main argument is from popular opinion schema structure (Walton et al., 2008, p. 311): 1. General acceptance premise : A is generally accepted as true. 2. Presumption premise : If A is generally accepted is true, that gives a reason in favour of A. 3. Conclusion : There is a reason in favour of A . A reconstruction of the argument above can be as follows: 1. The majority in polls judged the “Trump economy” as great (e.g. “ The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great”) . 2. If most people judge an economy as good, that is evidence the economy was good. 3. Therefore, the economy under Trump was great. As a polarisation move, the appeal to popular acceptance shifts the criterion of correctness from shared reasons to group affiliation. Those who count themselves among “the many” who “know” the Trump economy was great are tacitly cast as the reasonable in-group (“We”), while dissenters (“They”) are relegated to a minority whose disagreement appears out of step with “the people.” Regarding discursive strategies, Trump's rephrased elements (e.g., from “ People can't go out and buy cereal …” to “ The people of our country are absolutely dying …”) realise the intensification strategy—understood as increasing the illocutionary force of an utterance (Reisigl & Wodak, 2017, p. 95). The third discourse topic is on the trade policy with China. The first argument is from Harris when she was discussing the overlapping topic of the economy and the issue of trade relations with China. She says: “ What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse… What the Wharton School has said… Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as [raising inflation/recession risk] .” We take it that the argument instantiates the scheme from expert opinion. Its form is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 14): 1. Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A . 2. Minor Premise: E asserts that proposition A (in domain) S is true (false). 3. Conclusion: A may plausibly be taken to be true (false). Here we may offer the following reconstruct of Harris’ words: 1. Experts in Goldman Sachs, Wharton School and sixteen Nobel laureates are experts in economics able to assess the proposition that Trump’s economic plan is good. 2. These economic experts say that Trump’s economic plan is not good. 3. Therefore, the proposition that Trump’s economic plan is good is likely not true. With respect to polarisation, this argument creates an epistemic boundary that sorts the audience along an expertise/anti-elite axis. For those disposed to trust technocratic institutions, the move offers a ready-made heuristic (“credible economists say so”), lowering the demand for further econometric detail. For Trump's audience, who tend to distrust “elite” or “establishment” sources, it sharpens identity-congruent rejection by inviting a counter-narrative in which “the experts” are politically aligned (Gidron & Hall, 2017). The argument realises the discursive strategy of justification : authoritative citations are mobilised to render a negative evaluation of Trump's policy proposal. Now turning to Trump’s seemingly off-topic response to Harris’ point on trade relations with China, see the following: “ She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well .” The argumentation scheme here is poisoning the well by group bias (Walton et al., 2008, p. 356-357): 1. Premise: a advocates, argument ⍺, which has proposition A as its conclusion. 2. Premise: but A belongs to or is affiliated with group G . 3. Premise: it is known that group G is a special interest partisan group that takes a biased (dogmatic, prejudice, fanatical) quarrelling attitude in pushing exclusively for its own point of view. 4. Conclusion: therefore, one cannot engage in open minded critical discussion of an issue with any member of G , and hence the argument of a for A are not worth listening to or paying attention to in a critical discussion. Here is a reconstruction of the argument structure: 1. Harris is making an argument to the voters to vote for her to be the US president (implicit). 2. But Harris is a Marxist. 3. Marxists are anti-American insofar as they undermine capitalist systems at any cost to usher in their utopia (implicit). 4. Therefore, we should not listen to Harris’ arguments to be the president of the USA. We now turn to how this argument relates to polarisation. In-group audiences (the pro-Trump side) treat the label “Marxist” in premise two as a sufficient rebuttal, if not a refutation, of Harris' position. Premise three requires contextual explanation: while implicit, it would not have been lost on Trump's supporters and much of the older generation in the US. In American political discourse, Marxism is still commonly held to have a deep association, if not an essential relation, with communism. Communism was seen as the ideological enemy in the US from at least 1945 until the collapse of the USSR. This association remains strongly held within US society, albeit to a lesser degree (see Romero, 2017), although out-group (pro-Harris) audiences read it as demagogic bad faith. This argument co-occurs with several discursive strategies. First, the predication strategy—understood as a discursive qualification of social actors, objects, etc. (Reisigl & Wodak, 2017, p. 95)—operates by uttering the term “Marxist” in premise two, which supplies an out-group identity with negative entailments. Second, the perpetuation strategy—a means of maintaining, supporting, or reproducing an existing identity or status quo by emphasising continuity (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33)—is utilised by confirming common stereotypes that radical Democrats are Marxists, communists, or socialists (Ozer, 2022). Table 3 is on schematic affinity occurrences. It summarises the co-occurrences between argumentation schemes and discursive strategies observed across our six in-depth analyses. Several patterns emerge from these observations. First, schemes that target the arguer rather than the argument—circumstantial ad hominem and poisoning the well—co-occur with strategies that characterise social actors: predication (attributing qualities to opponents) and perspectivisation (framing opponents from a particular viewpoint). This co-occurrence appears structurally motivated: an ad hominem attack inherently predicates qualities of a person. Second, arguments from consequences, whether positive or negative, co-occur with justification and transformation strategies. Third, the argument from popular opinion co-occurs with intensification. To reiterate, we do not claim that these patterns constitute stable mappings; our sample of six arguments is too small to support such generalisations. Rather, we report these co-occurrences as preliminary observations that suggest certain scheme types may exhibit affinities with certain strategies. Table 3. Schematic affinity of co-occurrences between argument schemes and discursive strategy/strategies Discourse Topic Speaker Scheme Strategy/ Strategies Immigration Harris Circumstantial ad hominem Perspectivisation Immigration Trump Argument from negative consequences Justification Domestic economy Harris Argument from positive consequences Transformation Domestic economy Trump Argument from popular opinion Intensification Trade policy with China Harris Argument from expert opinion Justification Trade policy with China Trump Poisoning the well by group bias Predication, Perpetuation In sum, we mapped exemplary arguments across twelve discourse topics and conducted a close analysis of six representative arguments—three by Trump and three by Harris—drawn from immigration, the economy, and trade relations with China. 5. Conclusion This article investigated how arguments perform identity functions in polarised political discourse. Our analysis of the 2024 Trump–Harris debate illustrated how certain schemes can perform identity work by characterising social actors, invoking group-relevant threats, or discrediting opponents through group affiliation. Lexical choices complemented these argumentative structures by rendering group membership visible at the textual level. The study has several limitations worth mentioning. First, we did not undertake a systematic evaluation of scheme instances by answering their critical questions. Second, whilst the selection of schemes (14 from Walton and Hansen’s (2013) study, with the addition of Poisoning the Well) may be defensible for the present analysis, it could be enhanced by including additional schemes, for example by utilising a decision-tree protocol (Lawrence et al., 2020). Third, we did not have inter-annotator agreement. Although our reconstruction protocol increases transparency, claims about reliability remain provisional. Beyond using Walton’s schemes as an argumentative layer, future work could adopt the CAPNA (Hinton, 2022) assessment procedure to evaluate arguments rather than only relying on critical questions. Also Wagemans' Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA) (2016) as an a priori discovery device for inferring candidate scheme-types before reconstruction, operationalised with Wagemans' Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP) (2025). Furthermore, our approach could complement already annotated corpora such as the US2016 Corpus (Visser et al., 2019b) by enriching the analysis through drawing on select arguments using a qualitative approach. Additionally, addressing the critical questions for each argument would be beneficial for evaluation. Additionally, Hinton (2022) asked whether identity-affirming arguments serve or undermine deliberative goals. Our analysis was descriptive rather than evaluative, but the question of argument quality remains pressing. Are identity-constitutive arguments inherently fallacious, or can they be legitimate contributions to political deliberation? Hinton's distinction between Demonstrative and Justificatory argument modes suggests that the same argument may be fallacious under epistemic norms yet acceptable under representational norms. One possibility is that identity functions and epistemic functions are not mutually exclusive: an argument might simultaneously construct group boundaries and provide good reasons for a conclusion A central observation of this study concerns the relationship between argumentation schemes and discursive strategies. In our illustrative analyses, ad hominem arguments and poisoning the well served predication and perspectivisation functions; arguments from consequences served justification functions; arguments from popular opinion served intensification. These patterns suggest that the inferential structure of an argument constrains, without fully determining, its pragmatic and identity-constitutive functions. We propose the term schematic affinity for this relationship: certain schemes have a natural fit with certain strategies by virtue of their inferential structure. Developing a systematic account of schematic affinities, specifying which schemes have affinities with which strategies, and explaining why, constitutes a promising direction for future research at the intersection of argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies. Moreover, this framework can extend beyond the 2024 Trump–Harris debate into other areas such as national identity formation, discrimination, racism, and economic nationalism. While this study aims to describe polarisation, it also aims to render it analytically tractable—and therefore contestable. By reconstructing the inferential structures through which speakers construct 'Us' against 'Them', the framework makes visible the contingency of such constructions. What appears as natural or inevitable group opposition can be shown to rest on defeasible premises, questionable expert appeals, or circumstantial attacks on character. This visibility is itself a form of critical intervention: it denaturalises polarising discourse and opens space for alternative framings. Whether such analytical visibility translates into changed practice remains an empirical question for future research. Declarations Author Contribution M.W and N.S. contributed equally to the development of this manuscript. Acknowledgement We would like to extend our gratitude to Martin Hinton for his helpful feedback on our paper. Also for our helpful conversations with Jean Wagemans during the PhiLang 2025 conference in Lodz, PL. References Atkinson, K., T. Bench-Capon, F. Bex, T. Gordon, H. Prakken, G. Sartor, and B. 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Platform, Donald J., and Trump. (accessed October 20th 2025). https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform Nadeem, R. 2024, September 9. Issues and the 2024 election. Pew Research Center, (accessed October 25th 2025) https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-the-2024-election/?utm Pew Research Center. 2024, April 9. Changing partisan coalitions in a politically divided nation, (accessed October 15th 2025). https:// Pew Research Center. Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8779817","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":590071448,"identity":"c0ef1229-0c2d-438d-b33f-bf4ccebee7aa","order_by":0,"name":"Mitchell Thomas Welle","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA+0lEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDACZjCykAEyGQ88YLABC0oAsQxuLcwgLRI8IPaBBIY0uBYefNYgazlMWItuO//BzwUVQC0SyQcOJFSczzM4wHzwNg/DHZxazA4zM0vPOAPSkpZwIOHM7WKDA2zJ1jwMz/BpYWPmbQNqkc4xOJDYdjtx2wEeM2kehsMEtPwDacn/cCDx3zmgFv5vRGhpANvCcCCx4QDIFjZCWoyleY5J8LDJPzM4kHAsudj+MJux5RwDPH45f/DhZ54aGzl+nsMPH3yoscuTbG9+eONNxR05XFrggA1KJ4CiiYHB4ABBHXCQAKVJ0DIKRsEoGAXDHQAA4RdPE0+zrk8AAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"","institution":"Warsaw University of Technology","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Mitchell","middleName":"Thomas","lastName":"Welle","suffix":""},{"id":590071449,"identity":"97890267-4c37-490d-a5e3-f480c1896ea9","order_by":1,"name":"Nina Shtok","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Łódź","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Nina","middleName":"","lastName":"Shtok","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-02-03 20:53:45","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8779817/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8779817/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":102793113,"identity":"b146b2aa-9a79-457e-845d-a2909fe32c00","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-16 17:47:57","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":380861,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eFields of political action, political genres and discourse topics in the presidential debate (adapted from: R. Wodak. The politics of Fear. 2nd ed. 2021, p. 71).\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8779817/v1/760f5cf9445dbfbf072443b8.png"},{"id":102793114,"identity":"48c33c0e-4a9d-4440-9110-011ca5da6b46","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-16 17:48:02","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1093466,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8779817/v1/c17aa8f5-ac7a-4fab-acd0-4eb9634c6cd5.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Argumentation and Language in Identity Construction: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Polarisation in the 2024 Trump-Harris Debate ","fulltext":[{"header":"1. Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eArguments do more than establish truth claims or justify actions. They can position speakers socially, signalling who they are and whom they represent. In political discourse especially, argumentative moves construct speakers and audiences as members of particular groups: as defenders of \u0026ldquo;the people,\u0026rdquo; protectors of national interests, or champions of threatened communities. Yet while argumentation theory has trended to engage with the relationship between identity and argumentation (cf. O'Keefe 1995; Hazen and Williams 1997; Hample and Irions 2015; Mohammed 2016; Hinton 2022), there is still a gap. Namely, how do argumentative structures constitute speakers and audiences as members of valued in-groups (\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rdquo;) while positioning others as belonging to devalued out-groups (\u0026ldquo;Them\u0026rdquo;)?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRecent scholarship has addressed this relationship from several directions. O'Keefe (1995) argued that arguments in social interaction position interlocutors relative to one another, signalling respect, contempt, solidarity, or distance. Hazen and Williams (1997) extended this insight to public discourse, observing that arguers deploy arguments to affiliate with particular communities and distinguish themselves from adversaries. Hample and Irions (2015) provided empirical evidence for a distinct argumentative orientation, \u0026ldquo;arguing to display identity\u0026rdquo;, in which the purpose of argument is not to convince an opponent but to perform membership in a valued group. Mohammed (2016) situated identity within a multi-goal framework, arguing that while politicians argue to resolve disagreements, they also do it to represent constituents and enact their role as group spokespersons. Most directly relevant to the present study, Hinton (2022) developed a normative account of \u0026ldquo;identity-affirming arguments\u0026rdquo; in climate discourse. Analysing speeches at COP26, Hinton identified arguments whose primary function was to affirm national and political identities rather than advance the deliberative agenda. His framework provides evaluative criteria for assessing whether identity affirmation serves or undermines deliberative goals.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThese contributions establish that identity matters for argumentation, but important questions remain. First, argumentation theory's core frameworks, including Walton's schemes and pragma-dialectics, have not systematically theorised how specific argument types perform identity-constitutive functions, nor has existing work connected argumentation schemes to the discursive strategies through which CDS analyses identity construction. Second, existing work has not examined how lexical choices complement argumentative structures in realising identity-constitutive effects. This article addresses both gaps.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo investigate identity-constitutive argumentation in this corpus, we combine two complementary analytical resources. From argumentation theory, we adopt argumentation schemes (Walton et al. 2008), which enable systematic reconstruction of defeasible inferential patterns. From Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), we adopt the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), which provides tools for analysing how lexical choices and discursive strategies construct in-group and out-group identities (Wodak 2021; Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak 2016). This combination allows us to trace how identity functions emerge from the interaction of argumentative structure, discursive strategy, and lexical choice.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOur analysis addresses three interconnected research questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e1: How do argumentation schemes construct in-group/out-group identity distinctions in polarised political discourse?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2: How do lexical choices, analysed through DHA's nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities at the textual level?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3: Which argumentation schemes co-occur with which discursive strategies, and what patterns of schematic affinity emerge from these co-occurrences?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe argue that argumentation schemes perform identity functions through instantiations that position speakers as defenders of a virtuous \u0026ldquo;Us\u0026rdquo; against a threatening \u0026ldquo;Them\u0026rdquo;. Our analysis illustrates co-occurrences between scheme types and discursive strategies in our selected examples: ad hominem arguments and poisoning the well tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation; arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. Based on these observations, we propose the concept of schematic affinity and offer it as a hypothesis for future systematic investigation. Lexical choices, e.g. criminonyms, victimonyms, professionyms, render group boundaries visible at the textual level, complementing the argumentative work.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe paper proceeds as follows. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e presents the theoretical background, including DHA's approach to discourse, challenges facing argumentation analysis within DHA, and our rationale for adopting argumentation schemes. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec9\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e outlines our methodology. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec10\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e presents the analysis. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec14\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e concludes by discussing implications and directions for future research.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. Theoretical Background of the Study","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis section presents the theoretical background of the study. First, we present the background of CDS and DHA. Second, we discuss argumentation in DHA and some challenges it faces. Lastly, we present our approach to the problem.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec4\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eCDS, originally referred to as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), emerged in the 1970s with a group of researchers led by Roger Fowler, associated with the field of \u0026ldquo;critical linguistics\u0026rdquo; (Fowler et al., 1979). Their works focused on how language both reflects and shapes social structures, arguing that \u0026ldquo;language usage is not merely an effect or reflex of social organisation and processes, it is a \u003cem\u003epart\u003c/em\u003e of social process. It constitutes social meanings and thus social practices\u0026rdquo; (Fowler et al., 1979, p. 1). In this seminal study, the authors examined how \u0026ldquo;ideologies are linguistically mediated and how linguistic choices are influenced by power and status differences\u0026rdquo; (p. 186).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBuilding on these foundations, critical linguistics evolved into CDA, later termed CDS (Critical Discourse Studies), which can be broadly defined as an interdisciplinary framework for studying how language and other semiotic resources are used to enact, reproduce, challenge, legitimise, or transform power relations, dominance, and inequality in society. Its interdisciplinarity draws upon, among other fields, classical rhetoric, philosophy, cognitive science, literary studies, anthropology, social psychology, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. The core principles of CDS include, for example, a focus on \u0026ldquo;naturally occurring\u0026rdquo; language use by real language users; the analysis of larger units of text within their socio-cultural context, rather than isolated words or sentences; an analysis of a vast number of phenomena of text grammar and language use: topics, macrostructures, speech acts, interactions, argumentation, rhetoric, and many other aspects of text and discourse (Wodak, 2011, 2015; Wodak \u0026amp; Meyer, 2016).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe development of the DHA (Discourse-Historical Approach), one of the major approaches within CDS, can be traced back to the Vienna School of Discourse Analysis, founded by Ruth Wodak and her research team. As Reisigl and Wodak (2016, p. 31) note: the DHA was initially developed to analyse antisemitic and racist discourses in the 1986 Austrian presidential campaign surrounding former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. From this starting point\u0026mdash;Austria\u0026rsquo;s post-war antisemitism\u0026mdash;the approach was subsequently extended to the study of racism and discrimination against migrants, as well as to groundbreaking research on the construal of national identity in Austrian political discourse (de Cillia et al., 1999; Wodak et al., 2009).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe DHA shares with other CDS approaches constitutive concepts, including, among others, \u0026ldquo;discourse\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;text.\u0026rdquo; Discourse is defined as:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003e \u003cp\u003ea cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within specific fields of social action;\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e \u003cp\u003esocially constituted and socially constitutive;\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e \u003cp\u003erelated to a macrotopic;\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e \u003cp\u003elinked to the argumentation about validity claims\u0026mdash;for example to truth and normative validity, which involves several social actors with different points of view (Wodak, 2015, p.5).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/li\u003e \u003c/ul\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe address categories such as fields of social action and macro-topics in Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec9\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDiscourse in CDS is understood as \u0026ldquo;the language associated with a particular social field or practice\u0026rdquo; (Fairclough, 2015, p. 8)\u0026mdash;for example, political discourse, which is the focus of the present study. From this perspective, the broader context surrounding a political text or talk defines it as political. Central to this context are its participants, that is, the authors of political texts or talk, such as politicians or political institutions, their recipients, and other relevant political actors, whether active or passive. Political discourse is also shaped by communicative events, such as election campaigns, rallies, and parliamentary debates, as well as by the settings in which they occur, including time and place, and by the goals, intentions, and other situational factors involved. (van Dijk, 1997, pp. 12\u0026ndash;13). In addition, political discourse is inherently argumentative, a dimension foregrounded in Fairclough and Fairclough\u0026rsquo;s (2012) \u003cem\u003ePolitical Discourse Analysis\u003c/em\u003e, which systematically integrates categories from CDS with argumentation theory.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec5\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.2 Polarisation in Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003ePolitical polarisation in the United States has become an increasingly pervasive phenomenon, extending far beyond political elites to encompass virtually all politically engaged groups and individuals, regardless of social status. The 2024 U.S. presidential election exemplified this deep division, marked by particularly intense and entrenched partisan opposition. According to the Pew Research Center (2024), party identification was nearly evenly split\u0026mdash;49% identifying as Democrat or leaning Democratic and 48% as Republican or leaning Republican\u0026mdash;reflecting the depth of this polarisation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough the American political arena is often described as highly polarised, the term itself is used in diverse ways. In this study, political polarisation is understood as \u0026ldquo;a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of \u0026lsquo;Us\u0026rsquo; versus \u0026lsquo;Them\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (McCoy et al., 2018, p. 16). Thus, \u0026ldquo;for Polarisation to happen, the idea of two distinct and homogenous groups needs to be created\u0026rdquo; (Marchal et al., 2023, p. 14), with these groups typically framed as the ingroup We\u0026rsquo; and the outgroup \u0026lsquo;They\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSimilar to nationalist or racist discourse (e.g. Krzyżanowski, 2010; Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016; Reisigl, 2017; Wodak, 2009, 2022), the mechanisms of such categorisation rely on the discursive construction of a dichotomy: a positive \u0026lsquo;Us\u0026rsquo; and a negative \u0026lsquo;Them\u0026rsquo;. This polarisation schema, combining positive self-presentation (in-group favouritism) with negative other-presentation, is realised through a strategic principle pervasive in political discourse: the \u0026ldquo;Ideological or Political Square\u0026rdquo;. This principle organises political texts by systematically emphasising Our \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; and Their \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo; properties or actions while de-emphasising Our \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo; and Their \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; (van Dijk, 1997, 2016).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSince polarisation centres on constructing a positive \u0026lsquo;Us\u0026rsquo; against a negative \u0026lsquo;Them\u0026rsquo;, the DHA is particularly well suited for this study. It has been widely applied to the discursive construction of national identities, antisemitism, nationalism, and exclusion\u0026mdash;all of which hinge on the opposition of these two distinct groups. Crucially, DHA provides a detailed, multi-layered framework that specifies (i) the specific content (discourse topics) of a discourse; (ii) discursive strategies; (iii) linguistic devices and argumentation as means of their realisation (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016, p. 32).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.3 DHA and Argumentation\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eDHA has much to offer in terms of linguistic analysis; however, its approach to argumentation has attracted criticism and raised additional challenges. We therefore begin by examining how DHA deploys concepts and methods of argumentation. Our point is twofold. First, there are terminological issues in DHA\u0026rsquo;s categories for analysing argumentation. Second, theoretical tensions arise from the incorporation of the ten rules of pragma-dialectics.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec7\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.3.1 Challenges with argumentation in DHA\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eReisigl and Wodak (2016) distinguish four dimensions of argumentative analysis\u0026mdash;functional, formal, content-related, and meso/macro-structural\u0026mdash;yet the overall argumentative layer in DHA remains conceptually diffuse. Several authors have raised concerns. Zagar (2021, p. 18) characterises DHA\u0026rsquo;s topos-centred methodology as tending toward an \u0026ldquo;anything goes\u0026rdquo; eclecticism; Fairclough and Fairclough (2012, pp. 21\u0026ndash;25, 246) point to the absence of a transparent protocol for reconstructing arguments; and Forchtner and Tominc (2012) highlight tensions in grafting pragma-dialectics onto critical theory. Taken together, these critiques call into question the coherence of DHA\u0026rsquo;s argumentative apparatus.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRelatedly, DHA\u0026rsquo;s terminology is difficult to stabilise across its own categories (e.g. functional, formal, fallacy/soundness). For instance, in the \u0026ldquo;functional\u0026rdquo; tier, terms such as \u0026lsquo;claim\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;argument/premise\u0026rsquo;, and \u0026lsquo;conclusion rule\u0026rsquo; are listed; yet in Reisigl\u0026rsquo;s (2014, pp. 74\u0026ndash;75) more detailed account, the relationship among these terms is not clear, partly because they are taken from a diverse set of authors. For example, the term \u0026lsquo;premise\u0026rsquo; disappears; Toulmin\u0026rsquo;s six elements are (via Kienpointner) collapsed into \u0026ldquo;argument\u0026ndash;conclusion rule\u0026ndash;claim\u0026rdquo; without explanation; and in the \u0026ldquo;formal\u0026rdquo; tier, topoi are said to \u0026ldquo;belong to the premises.\u0026rdquo; The result is uncertainty about whether topoi function as premises, warrants, or something else, and about where the boundaries between argument categories lie.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFurthermore, it is not evident how the ten rules from pragma-dialectics are to be applied when evaluating arguments within DHA. Take, for example, rule 7. Rule 7 is \u0026ldquo;The validity rule (logical validity): the arguments used in discourse must be valid or capable of being validated by the explicitisation of one or more unexpressed premises\u0026rdquo; (Reisigl, 2014, p. 80, emphasis added). Taken at face value, this suggests that only arguments that are logically valid, or can be rendered so, count as acceptable uses of a topos. This is mystifying. A validity requirement is remarkably strong for non-formal, discourse-analytic work. If we demand that a topos satisfy the standard notion of validity (i.e. an argument is valid iff it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false), then the enterprise of identifying non-fallacious topoi in DHA risks collapsing into the set of questions answered by formal logic. Thus, argumentation in DHA effectively leaves how the whole machine works as an exercise for the reader.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo be clear, we certainly agree with Reisigl (2014, p. 91) that no one has a monopoly on how argumentation analysis works. We are by no means claiming that the issues raised for argumentation in DHA are a priori insurmountable (i.e. we are not offering a knock-down argument). Our claim is more modest: given these terminological and theoretical tensions, re-specifying DHA\u0026rsquo;s argumentative layer is both timely and promising.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.3.2 Our approach\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eAt this point, we propose two complementary moves. First, we use argumentation schemes for DHA\u0026rsquo;s argumentative layer, treating them as methodologically viable, given their wide adoption, and operationally explicit. Second, we use argumentation schemes\u0026mdash;alongside various linguistic devices\u0026mdash;to see co-occurrences of discursive strategies (other than nomination) in the discourse under analysis, a point we develop further in Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec9\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eArgumentation schemes, here taken from \u003cem\u003eArgumentation Schemes\u003c/em\u003e (Walton et al., 2008), have been extensively developed and applied both within the field of argumentation (see Macagno and Toniolo, 2022) and beyond (see Atkinson et al., 2020). In brief, argumentation schemes model stereotypical, defeasible patterns of inference (e.g. arguments from expert opinion, consequences, analogy, or practical reasoning). Each scheme is paired with a set of critical questions that operationalise evaluation by probing its key assumptions. In this way, we gain a commonly recognised and explicit procedure for reconstructing and evaluating arguments in natural language, in line with DHA\u0026rsquo;s aims (see Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2.1\u003c/span\u003e). This makes argumentation schemes a natural candidate for clarifying DHA\u0026rsquo;s approach to argumentation while maintaining DHA\u0026rsquo;s strengths in richly contextualising discourse socio-historically and in dissecting linguistic patterns.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIt is worth pointing out that DHA, as an interdisciplinary method, is not primarily focused on argumentation as such, nor on providing a fine-grained analysis and annotation of arguments in a corpus (cf. Visser et al., 2019b). Rather, we take it that our approach can complement such work by offering a qualitative perspective that enriches the overall analysis of such corpora.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo illustrate, consider the argument from expert opinion (Walton et al. 2008, p. 14):\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e1. Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e2. Minor Premise: E asserts that proposition A (in domain S) is true (false).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3. Conclusion: A may plausibly be taken to be true (false).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWalton et al. (2008, p. 15) associate this scheme with the following set of critical questions (each argumentation scheme has its own specific set of critical questions to evaluate arguments):\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e1. Expertise Question: How credible is E as an expert source?\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2. Field Question: Is E an expert in the field that A is in?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3. Opinion Question: What did E assert that implies A?\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e4. Trustworthiness Question: Is E personally reliable as a source?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e5. Consistency Question: Is A consistent with what other experts assert?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e6. Backup Evidence Question: Is E\u0026rsquo;s assertion based on evidence?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis scheme roughly maps onto the topos of authority in DHA, which can be rendered as:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;CR: If authority X says that A is true/that A has to be done, A is true/A has to be done\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA: X says that A is true/that A has to be done.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eC: Thus, A is true/A has to be done.\u0026rdquo; (Reisigl, 2014, p. 76.)\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e, below, summarises how DHA\u0026rsquo;s categories for analysing argumentation relate to those in Walton\u0026rsquo;s approach. The functional, formal, and content-related dimensions are all subsumed under an argument scheme or its components, while topoi are straightforwardly re-cast as argumentation schemes. Argument meso- and macro-structures are understood as Dialogue Frameworks.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"2\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDHA categories of analysis of argumentation (Reisigl, 2014)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eWalton\u0026rsquo;s categories\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eFunctional\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eComponents of an argument scheme (premises\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;conclusion)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eFormal\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArgument schemes (e.g. argument from classification)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eContent related\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArgument schemes (e.g. argument from fear appeal)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSoundness and fallacy\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCritical questions\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArgument meso- and macro-structures\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDialogue Frameworks (e.g. critical discussions or deliberation)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e. Comparison of argumentation in DHA and Walton\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"3. Research Methodology","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study focuses on the American political arena and investigates the discursive construction of polarisation through an analysis of a high-stakes political event: the 2024 presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Our primary data is the full transcript of this 100-minute debate, hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis. As previously established, the 2024 presidential election campaign displayed acute political polarisation among the electorate. Consequently, this debate provides particularly valuable data for the present research.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe research methodology is grounded in DHA\u0026mdash;a multi-layered and complex approach which operates on two interconnected levels of analysis. The first level of analysis involves a thematic examination of the text, which we understand as \u0026ldquo;a specific and unique realisation of discourse\u0026rdquo; (Wodak, 2011, p. 39). This entry-level (macrostructure) analysis serves to identify the text\u0026rsquo;s genre and assign it to particular discourses. Genre is defined as \u0026ldquo;a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity\u0026rdquo; (Fairclough, 1995: 14). It is related to specific fields of action\u0026mdash;\u0026ldquo;segments of the respective societal \u0026lsquo;reality\u0026rsquo;, i.e. politics, which contribute to constituting and shaping the \u0026lsquo;frame\u0026rsquo; of a discourse between the function of self-presentation, the manufacturing of public opinion, \u0026hellip; advertising and vote-getting\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; (Wodak, 2011, p. 40).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe second analytical category at this level is that of \u0026ldquo;discourse topics\u0026rdquo; (macro-topics). Following Wodak (2021), discourse topics are understood in accordance with van Dijk\u0026rsquo;s definition (van Dijk, 1980, p. 41) as \u0026ldquo;a semantic core\u0026rdquo; which \u0026ldquo;conceptually summarises the text, and specifies its most important information\u0026rdquo;. We identify discourse topics embedded in the text through thematic analysis, whose purpose is to categorise the contents of the text under analysis and assign them to particular discourses (e.g. the environment, globalisation, gender politics, etc.).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe next step is an in-depth (micro-structural) analysis, which involves examining \u0026ldquo;the structure of the discourse located \u0026lsquo;deeper\u0026rsquo; than its aforementioned content\u0026rdquo; (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 83). It aims to reveal discursive strategies, their linguistic realisations in the text, and argumentation schemes. Strategies are understood as \u0026ldquo;more or less intentional plan[s] of practice adopted to achieve a particular social, political, psychological, or linguistic goal\u0026rdquo; (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016, p. 33). The number and classification of these strategies vary from study to study. Initially, there were several sets of strategies (with different classifications across studies). However, in the most recent works (e.g. Wodak, 2021), the strategies are no longer fixed in number or grouped into predefined categories.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn this paper, following the DHA framework, we analyse all strategies other than nomination, from the argumentation schemes through which they operate. We treat argumentation schemes and discursive strategies as parallel but distinct analytical lenses. Schemes capture the inferential structure of arguments, the pattern of reasoning from premises to conclusion. Strategies capture the pragmatic and identity-constitutive functions that discourse performs, how utterances position speakers, construct groups, and achieve social goals.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe examine nomination\u0026mdash;\u0026ldquo;a strategy by which social actors are constructed and represented, for example, through the creation of in-groups and out-groups\u0026rdquo; (Wodak, 2011, p. 40)\u0026mdash;only from the linguistic perspective, because it operates primarily through lexical devices (names, pronouns, category terms) rather than through inferential structures. For this reason, argumentation schemes cannot capture nomination directly. Other discursive strategies, however, can co-occur both through linguistic choices and through argumentative moves. Predication, justification, perspectivisation, and intensification, for instance, may all operate through arguments: an ad hominem attack predicates negative qualities of an opponent; an argument from consequences justifies a policy position; an argument from expert opinion perspectivises an issue by privileging certain epistemic authorities.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe do not claim that specific schemes map onto specific strategies in a rule-governed fashion. Rather, we observe empirically that particular scheme instantiations, in some contexts, serve to realise particular strategies. Our analysis documents these co-occurrences systematically: we identify which schemes appear in the corpus, reconstruct their inferential structure, and then examine which discursive strategies each instantiation serves. This approach allows us to ask whether certain scheme types exhibit what we might call \u003cem\u003eschematic affinities\u003c/em\u003e, akin to a wine and food pairing, with certain strategies: whether, for instance, ad hominem and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, or whether arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification strategies.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe emphasise that the present study is exploratory rather than confirmatory on this question on \u003cem\u003eschematic affinities\u003c/em\u003e. We document patterns of co-occurrence between schemes and strategies in a single corpus; we do not claim to have established stable or generalisable mappings. Whether principled constraints govern these pairings\u0026mdash;and if so, what form such constraints take\u0026mdash;remains an open question. The theoretical work of specifying \u003cem\u003ewhy\u003c/em\u003e certain schemes might have natural affinities with certain strategies lies beyond the scope of this paper. Such a typology of affinities would require systematic comparative analysis across multiple corpora and discourse types. What we offer here is an empirical foundation for that future theoretical work. A demonstration that schemes and strategies do co-occur in patterned ways that merits analytical attention.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDue to the scope of the study, we present the entry-level analysis and the examination of linguistic realisations of discursive strategies in abridged form. We focus primarily on analysing the arguments underpinning the discourse and their relation with discursive strategies that reinforce political polarisation, thereby demonstrating how this integrated framework operates.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFor the analysis of arguments, we employ 14 schemes from Walton and Hansen's (2013) political debate typology rather than the 60 or so schemes in Walton et al. (2008). This restriction suits our study's scope and aligns with our corpus type. The 14 schemes are: (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e) argument from position to know; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR60\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e) argument from expert opinion; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e) argument from popular opinion; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e) argument from commitment; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e) argument from ignorance; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e) circumstantial ad hominem; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e7\u003c/span\u003e) direct ad hominem; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e8\u003c/span\u003e) argument from correlation to cause; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e9\u003c/span\u003e) argument from positive consequences; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e10\u003c/span\u003e) argument from negative consequences; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e11\u003c/span\u003e) slippery slope; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e12\u003c/span\u003e) argument from analogy; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e13\u003c/span\u003e) argument from sign; and (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e14\u003c/span\u003e) argument from (verbal) classification. We add a fifteenth scheme\u0026mdash;\"poisoning the well by alleging group bias\" (Walton et al., 2008, pp. 158\u0026ndash;159)\u0026mdash;because it directly signals group identities, central to polarisation. As Walton (2006) demonstrates, poisoning the well differs from \u003cem\u003eargumentum ad hominem\u003c/em\u003e in its dialectical nature. We omit evaluative analysis (i.e., answering critical questions for each scheme).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMany DHA studies (e.g., Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016) conduct context analysis as a separate analytical stage; however, these scholars also emphasise its unavoidable role in prior stages of analysis. We therefore do not treat context analysis as a separate stage in this study but instead incorporate it into both the entry-level and in-depth (micro-structural) analysis.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"4. Analysis and Findings","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis section analyzes the political discourse represented by the Harris-Trump presidential debate. The analysis follows the two-stage framework outlined previously: a macro-analysis and a micro-analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"_Toc214829239\"\u003e4.1 Macrostructure Analysis of the Debate\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe analyze a full transcript of the 2024 Harris-Trump presidential debate. According to Wodak\u0026rsquo;s taxonomy (e.g., Wodak, 2015; Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2001, 2016), this text belongs to the genre of a TV debate, which falls under the field of political advertising and the formation of public attitudes, opinions, and will.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDiscourse topics can be divided into \u0026ldquo;primary\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;secondary\u0026rdquo; (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 82). Primary topics, as in semi-structured interviews or focus group discussions, largely align with themes introduced by moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis (e.g., the domestic economy, immigration, abortion rights). Secondary topics are those \u0026ldquo;developed by the participants within their utterances during the discussions and interviews in a manner which transcends the primary structuring topics\u0026rdquo; (Krzyżanowski, 2010, p. 83). We do not examine secondary topics in this study as our main focus is on primary topics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFigure 1 displays the structure of the analysed political discourse, mapping the relationships between its fields of action, genre, and discourse topics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFigure 1 Fields of political action, political genres and discourse topics in the presidential debate (adapted from: R. Wodak. The politics of Fear. 2nd ed. 2021, p. 71).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe overlapping ellipses containing the topic-related discourses illustrate interdiscursivity, showing that all discourses interconnect in various ways. Discourses are open and often hybrid (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016, p. 28).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"_Toc214829240\"\u003e4.2 Microstructure analysis of the debate: \u0026lsquo;Us\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;They\u0026rsquo;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs previously mentioned, the discursive construction of polarisation revolves around distinguishing two opposing groups\u0026mdash;in-groups and out-groups. This distinction necessarily employs discursive strategies to determine who belongs to the in-group and who is categorised as \u0026ldquo;others\u0026rdquo;\u0026mdash;what Reisigl and Wodak (2016, p. 33) call \u0026ldquo;membership categorization.\u0026rdquo; Nomination fulfils this function through various lexical devices including names, deictic pronouns, collective nouns, and rhetorical tropes such as metaphors and metonymies (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2001, pp. 48\u0026ndash;52).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe must now specify who can be assigned to these two opposing groups\u0026mdash;that is, who the \u0026ldquo;social actors\u0026rdquo; (Wodak, 2001; Wodak et al., 2009; Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2016) are. Van Dijk (1997, p. 14) defines political discourse as including all relevant political actors engaged in governing, ruling, protesting, dissenting, or voting. Thus, the two opposing groups include not only political actors directly engaged in political communicative events (such as election debates) but also those whose interests the \u0026lsquo;We\u0026rsquo; group represents and advocates for and, conversely, those whose interests the \u0026lsquo;They\u0026rsquo; group represents and supports\u0026mdash;the \u0026ldquo;recipients\u0026rdquo; of these events (van Dijk, 1997, p. 13). In other words, these groups encompass both elite and non-elite actors. Van Dijk (1997, p. 26) observes that \u0026ldquo;sometimes non-elite individuals may appear as victims, and occasionally as celebrities, but such appearances are quite exceptional, or they may have a special rhetorical effect, e.g., in persuasive discourses \u0026apos;with a personal touch\u0026apos;, typically about one (brave or miserable) family, mother, or child.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince the debate features two main political actors, each representing one of the opposing groups, we focus on how each candidate defines their represented group (the \u0026lsquo;We-group\u0026rsquo;) and the opposing \u0026lsquo;others\u0026rsquo;. Specifically, we examine how linguistic choices construct in-group affiliation while positioning opponents as the \u0026lsquo;other\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth candidates employ deictic plurals (\u003cem\u003ewe, they\u003c/em\u003e) and their grammatical variants as primary linguistic devices for establishing in-group and out-group membership. Harris reinforces polarisation through sharp oppositions between professionyms (\u003cem\u003eworking people, small business owners\u003c/em\u003e) representing the in-group and business metonymies (big corporations) or possession-based anthroponyms (\u003cem\u003ebillionaires, the richest people\u003c/em\u003e) representing the out-group. This lexical contrast constructs a divide between ordinary, hard-working citizens (non-elite actors) and powerful economic elites.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInterestingly, Trump never addresses his opponent by name, instead referring to her as \u0026ldquo;she\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;the person\u0026rdquo;. He intensifies polarisation by contrasting collectives (\u003cem\u003ethe people of our country\u003c/em\u003e) and de-toponymic anthroponyms (\u003cem\u003eAmericans\u003c/em\u003e) with criminonyms (\u003cem\u003eillegal immigrants, drug dealers, criminals that killed people\u003c/em\u003e) representing \u0026lsquo;others\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth candidates also make references to non-elite actors in the form of \u003cem\u003evictimonyms\u003c/em\u003e, portraying people who suffered as a result of the opponent\u0026rsquo;s policies. Harris, however, refers to such victims more frequently, most often highlighting those who suffered because of problems with medical care, which she attributes to Trump\u0026rsquo;s administration, or because of US Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cstrong\u003ePregnant women\u003c/strong\u003e who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and \u003cstrong\u003eshe\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/strong\u003e bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? \u003cstrong\u003eShe\u003c/strong\u003e didn\u0026rsquo;t want that. \u003cstrong\u003eHer\u003c/strong\u003e husband didn\u0026rsquo;t want that. \u003cstrong\u003eA 12 or 13-year-old survivor\u003c/strong\u003e of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrump mentions \u0026ldquo;13 people who \u0026hellip; were just killed viciously and violently\u0026rdquo; when speaking about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and accusing \u0026lsquo;them\u0026rsquo; of this tragedy. This \u0026ldquo;personal touch\u0026rdquo; is extended in \u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;and I got to know the parents and the family\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (of these victims), which amplifies the emotional impact by emphasising personal connection and family grief. Trump heightens the sense of tragedy and positions the event as a failure that harmed ordinary people. This section has focused on analysing the linguistic realisation of the nomination strategy, which is the only strategy realised exclusively through linguistic devices rather than argumentation. The following section examines the argumentation analysis, exploring how the other discursive strategies identified in the study are realised in discourse. Linguistic realisation of these strategies will not be considered at this point.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"_Toc214829241\"\u003e4.3 Argument micro-analysis\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBuilding on the preceding analysis of nomination strategies, we now turn to the argumentative level of analysis. As outlined in the methodology section, we operationalise Walton\u0026apos;s approach to argumentation in place of DHA\u0026apos;s original account to capture the argumentation schemes that realise discursive strategies, along with various linguistic devices present in the debate. The argument micro-analysis proceeds in two stages. First, we provide an overview of the argumentation across the twelve discourse topics by examining two exemplar arguments\u0026mdash;one from Trump and one from Harris\u0026mdash;per topic. We then undertake an in-depth analysis of three selected discourse topics: (i) Immigration, Immigrants, and Drug Policy; (ii) the Domestic Economy; and (iii) Trade Policy with China. We chose these three topics because immigration was identified as the most polarised issue in the 2024 debate (Nadeem, 2024), while the economy was simultaneously ranked as the top concern among registered voters (81%) and characterised by strong partisan division. Trade policy with China constitutes a subcategory of the economy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe can best describe the general structure of the Harris\u0026ndash;Trump debate as a mixed dialogue, understood via Walton and Krabbe\u0026apos;s (1995) and Walton\u0026apos;s (2010) seven-type classification of dialogues. The dominant frame is persuasion addressed to a third-party audience (the electorate). Within the mixed dialogue, we identified twelve discourse topics. From each topic, we analysed two exemplar arguments\u0026mdash;one from Trump and one from Harris. This analysis yielded twenty-four individual arguments.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument scheme\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCount\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrump\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHarris\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePoisoning the well by group bias\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from negative consequences\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from positive consequences\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCircumstantial ad hominem\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from popular opinion\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from position to know\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from correlation to cause\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from commitment\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from verbal classification\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSlippery slope\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from sign\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 224px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTotal\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e24\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e12\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 116px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e12\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 2. On identified argument schemes\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data table above shows that no particular argument scheme was dominant. However, each argument can be used to magnify the \u0026ldquo;We-They\u0026rdquo; dichotomy. The in-depth argument analysis demonstrates which argument scheme is used and how we can reconstruct the text. We then show how the argument contributes to polarisation and how it realises one or more discursive strategies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first discourse topic concerns\u0026nbsp;Immigration, Immigrants, and Drug Policy. We begin with an argument in which Harris attacks Trump while responding to a question on immigration. Harris states: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eDonald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe argument is a circumstantial \u003cem\u003ead hominem\u003c/em\u003e argument and has the following form (Walton et al. 2008, p. 354):\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. Premise: \u003cem\u003ea\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eadvocates argument ⍺, which has proposition A as its conclusion, which says that everybody should be committed to A.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Premise:\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;a\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eis bound by the \u0026lsquo;everybody\u0026rsquo; in premise 1\u003cem\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Premise: \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e has action, or set of actions, that imply that \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e is personally committed to \u0026not;A.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. \u0026nbsp; Premise: Therefore, \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e is a morally bad person.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5. Conclusion: Therefore, \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rsquo;s argument ⍺ should not be accepted.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA reconstruction of the passage from Harris is as follows:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Trump says that politicians should support fighting illegal immigration using the law (implicit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Trump is included in the group of politicians to use the law to fight illegal immigration (entailed from premise 1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Trump, by \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ecall[ing] up some folks in Congress, and said [to] kill the bill\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eis personally committed to not using the law to fight illegal immigration.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. \u0026nbsp; Trump \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eprefer[s] to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5. \u0026nbsp; Therefore, the likelihood of Trump\u0026rsquo;s actual willingness to fight illegal immigration should not be accepted (implicit).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn terms of polarisation, Harris\u0026apos; charge functions as a circumstantial ad hominem, drawing the \u0026apos;We-They\u0026apos; divide by attacking Trump\u0026apos;s motives and trustworthiness (Walton, 2004). Harris\u0026apos; move invites the audience to sort the issue through ethos-based heuristics rather than reason-giving. This argument realises the \u003cem\u003eperspectivation\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ediscursive strategy\u0026mdash;defined as the positioning of a speaker\u0026apos;s point of view (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2017, p. 95)\u0026mdash;because it frames Trump as a hypocrite.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe next examine a passage from Trump that\u0026nbsp;primarily\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003einstantiates an argument\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003efrom negative consequences, offered in response to Harris\u0026rsquo;s allegation to \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ekill the bill\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eWhat they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country... In Springfield, they\u0026rsquo;re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They\u0026rsquo;re eating the cats. They\u0026rsquo;re eating \u0026mdash; they\u0026rsquo;re eating the pets of the people that live there.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe argument schema is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 332):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Premise: if A is brought about, then bad consequences will occur.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Conclusion: Therefore, A should not be brought about.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe argument reconstruction from the text above is as follows:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; If we allow \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003emillions and millions\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eof people\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; to stay in our country, then bad consequences will follow (e.g. they will continue to eat the pets of the people that live there and in other cities).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Therefore, the U.S. should not allow (or should drastically restrict/reverse) the current inflow of migrants (implicit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe argument functions as a mechanism of polarisation. Trump portrays migrants as bearers of alien and degrading practices, marking them as an existential threat to community life (or, more precisely, to the lives of pets) and thus redefining the policy issue as a moral boundary between \u0026ldquo;Us\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Them\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Them\u0026rdquo; being Harris and those who support her and permit such practices, \u0026apos;us\u0026apos; being Trump and his supporters who oppose them). This argument realises the \u003cem\u003ejustification\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003estrategy\u0026mdash;a relation to problematic actions or events in the past that are important in the narrative creation of a polarised group (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33)\u0026mdash;by framing the issue as a problem \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rdquo; must fix.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second discourse topic concerns the domestic economy as a polarising force. We begin with Harris\u0026apos; plan for the economy, presented in response to the debate\u0026apos;s first question from moderator David Muir: \u0026ldquo;When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?\u0026rdquo; Harris responds: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eSo, I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America\u0026hellip; \u0026nbsp;imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy\u0026hellip;And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000\u0026hellip;My plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe schema here is an argument from positive consequences. The structure is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 332):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Premise: If A is brought about, good consequences will probably occur.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Conclusion: therefore, A should be brought about.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reconstruction can be understood as such:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Premise: If we adapt Harris\u0026rsquo; plan (e.g. implementing \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ean opportunity economy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e, extend a tax cut for \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ethose families of $6,000\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eor\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u0026ldquo;to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses\u0026rdquo;),\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ethen the economy will likely improve.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Conclusion: Therefore, we should adopt Harris\u0026rsquo; plan (implicit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe element of polarisation in this argument is subtle. By focusing on a positive message, Harris\u0026apos; argument contains no explicit polarisation. However, by pivoting from the moderator\u0026apos;s backwards-looking question (\u0026ldquo;better off than four years ago?\u0026rdquo;) to forward-looking gains, Harris re-centres evaluative criteria from retrospective performance to future policy efficacy. This argument realises the transformation discursive strategy\u0026mdash;an aim to transform a well-established term into another meaning (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33). Rather than accepting the moderator\u0026apos;s retrospective evaluative frame (\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eAre Americans better off than four years ago?\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;), Harris transforms the issue of an economy in trouble into a forward-looking, purposive vision of an \u0026ldquo;opportunity economy.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Here we turn to Trump\u0026rsquo;s main answer to the moderator\u0026rsquo;s question: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ePeople can\u0026rsquo;t go out and buy cereal bacon or\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003eeggs or anything else. These the people of our country are absolutely\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003edying with what they\u0026rsquo;ve done. They\u0026rsquo;ve destroyed the economy and all\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003eyou have to do it look at a poll. The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90%\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003ethat the Trump economy was great that their economy was terrible\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe main argument is from popular opinion schema structure (Walton et al., 2008, p. 311):\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u003cem\u003eGeneral acceptance premise\u003c/em\u003e: \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e is generally accepted as true.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u003cem\u003ePresumption premise\u003c/em\u003e: If \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e is generally accepted is true, that gives a reason in favour of A.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u003cem\u003eConclusion\u003c/em\u003e: There is a reason in favour of \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA reconstruction of the argument above can be as follows:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;The majority in polls judged the \u0026ldquo;Trump economy\u0026rdquo; as great (e.g. \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;If most people judge an economy as good, that is evidence the economy was good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Therefore, the economy under Trump was great.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a polarisation move, the appeal to popular acceptance shifts the criterion of correctness from shared reasons to group affiliation. Those who count themselves among \u0026ldquo;the many\u0026rdquo; who \u0026ldquo;know\u0026rdquo; the Trump economy was great are tacitly cast as the reasonable in-group (\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rdquo;), while dissenters (\u0026ldquo;They\u0026rdquo;) are relegated to a minority whose disagreement appears out of step with \u0026ldquo;the people.\u0026rdquo; Regarding discursive strategies, Trump\u0026apos;s rephrased elements (e.g., from \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ePeople can\u0026apos;t go out and buy cereal\u003c/em\u003e\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe people of our country are absolutely dying\u003c/em\u003e\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;) realise the intensification strategy\u0026mdash;understood as increasing the illocutionary force of an utterance (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2017, p. 95).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe third discourse topic is on the trade policy with China. The first argument is from Harris when she was discussing the overlapping topic of the economy and the issue of trade relations with China. She says: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eWhat Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump\u0026rsquo;s plan would make the economy worse\u0026hellip; What the Wharton School has said\u0026hellip; Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as [raising inflation/recession risk]\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe take it that the argument instantiates the scheme from expert opinion. Its form is as follows (Walton et al., 2008, p. 14):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Major Premise: Source \u003cem\u003eE\u003c/em\u003e is an expert in subject domain \u003cem\u003eS\u003c/em\u003e containing proposition \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Minor Premise: \u003cem\u003eE\u003c/em\u003e asserts that proposition \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e (in domain) \u003cem\u003eS\u003c/em\u003e is true (false).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Conclusion: \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e may plausibly be taken to be true (false).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere we may offer the following reconstruct of Harris\u0026rsquo; words:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Experts in Goldman Sachs, Wharton School and sixteen Nobel laureates are experts in economics able to assess the proposition that Trump\u0026rsquo;s economic plan is good.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; These economic experts say that Trump\u0026rsquo;s economic plan is not good.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Therefore, the proposition that Trump\u0026rsquo;s economic plan is good is likely not true.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith respect to polarisation, this argument creates an epistemic boundary that sorts the audience along an expertise/anti-elite axis. For those disposed to trust technocratic institutions, the move offers a ready-made heuristic (\u0026ldquo;credible economists say so\u0026rdquo;), lowering the demand for further econometric detail. For Trump\u0026apos;s audience, who tend to distrust \u0026ldquo;elite\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;establishment\u0026rdquo; sources, it sharpens identity-congruent rejection by inviting a counter-narrative in which \u0026ldquo;the experts\u0026rdquo; are politically aligned (Gidron \u0026amp; Hall, 2017). The argument realises the discursive strategy of \u003cem\u003ejustification\u003c/em\u003e: authoritative citations are mobilised to render a negative evaluation of Trump\u0026apos;s policy proposal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow turning to Trump\u0026rsquo;s seemingly off-topic response to Harris\u0026rsquo; point on trade relations with China, see the following: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eShe\u0026apos;s a Marxist. Everybody knows she\u0026apos;s a Marxist. Her father\u0026apos;s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe argumentation scheme here is poisoning the well by group bias (Walton et al., 2008, p. 356-357):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. Premise: \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e advocates, argument ⍺, which has proposition \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e as its conclusion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; Premise: but\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;A\u003c/em\u003e belongs to or is affiliated with group \u003cem\u003eG\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Premise: it is known that group \u003cem\u003eG\u003c/em\u003e is a special interest partisan group that takes a biased (dogmatic, prejudice, fanatical) quarrelling attitude in pushing exclusively for its own point of view.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. \u0026nbsp; Conclusion: therefore, one cannot engage in open minded critical discussion of an issue with any member of \u003cem\u003eG\u003c/em\u003e, and hence the argument of \u003cem\u003ea\u003c/em\u003e for \u003cem\u003eA\u003c/em\u003e are not worth listening to or paying attention to in a critical discussion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; Here is a reconstruction of the argument structure:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. \u0026nbsp; Harris is making an argument to the voters to vote for her to be the US president (implicit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. \u0026nbsp; But Harris is a Marxist.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. \u0026nbsp; Marxists are anti-American insofar as they undermine capitalist systems at any cost to usher in their utopia (implicit).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. \u0026nbsp; Therefore, we should not listen to Harris\u0026rsquo; arguments to be the president of the USA. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now turn to how this argument relates to polarisation. In-group audiences (the pro-Trump side) treat the label \u0026ldquo;Marxist\u0026rdquo; in premise two as a sufficient rebuttal, if not a refutation, of Harris\u0026apos; position. Premise three requires contextual explanation: while implicit, it would not have been lost on Trump\u0026apos;s supporters and much of the older generation in the US. In American political discourse, Marxism is still commonly held to have a deep association, if not an essential relation, with communism. Communism was seen as the ideological enemy in the US from at least 1945 until the collapse of the USSR. This association remains strongly held within US society, albeit to a lesser degree (see Romero, 2017), although out-group (pro-Harris) audiences read it as demagogic bad faith.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis argument co-occurs with several discursive strategies. First, the \u003cem\u003epredication\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003estrategy\u0026mdash;understood as a discursive qualification of social actors, objects, etc. (Reisigl \u0026amp; Wodak, 2017, p. 95)\u0026mdash;operates by uttering the term \u0026ldquo;Marxist\u0026rdquo; in premise two, which supplies an out-group identity with negative entailments. Second, the \u003cem\u003eperpetuation\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003estrategy\u0026mdash;a means of maintaining, supporting, or reproducing an existing identity or status quo by emphasising continuity (Wodak et al., 2009, p. 33)\u0026mdash;is utilised by confirming common stereotypes that radical Democrats are Marxists, communists, or socialists (Ozer, 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 3 is on schematic affinity occurrences. It summarises the co-occurrences between argumentation schemes and discursive strategies observed across our six in-depth analyses. Several patterns emerge from these observations. First, schemes that target the arguer rather than the argument\u0026mdash;circumstantial ad hominem and poisoning the well\u0026mdash;co-occur with strategies that characterise social actors: predication (attributing qualities to opponents) and perspectivisation (framing opponents from a particular viewpoint). This co-occurrence appears structurally motivated: an ad hominem attack inherently predicates qualities of a person. Second, arguments from consequences, whether positive or negative, co-occur with justification and transformation strategies. Third, the argument from popular opinion co-occurs with intensification. To reiterate, we do not claim that these patterns constitute stable mappings; our sample of six arguments is too small to support such generalisations. Rather, we report these co-occurrences as preliminary observations that suggest certain scheme types may exhibit affinities with certain strategies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 3. Schematic affinity of co-occurrences between argument schemes and discursive strategy/strategies\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDiscourse Topic\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSpeaker\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eScheme\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eStrategy/ Strategies\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eImmigration\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHarris\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Circumstantial \u003cem\u003ead hominem\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePerspectivisation\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eImmigration\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrump\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from negative consequences\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eJustification\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDomestic economy\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHarris\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from positive consequences\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTransformation\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDomestic economy\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrump\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from popular opinion\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eIntensification\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrade policy with China\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHarris\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eArgument from expert opinion\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eJustification\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 182px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrade policy with China\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTrump\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 118px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePoisoning the well by group bias\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePredication, Perpetuation\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn sum, we mapped exemplary arguments across twelve discourse topics and conducted a close analysis of six representative arguments\u0026mdash;three by Trump and three by Harris\u0026mdash;drawn from immigration, the economy, and trade relations with China.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"5. Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis article investigated how arguments perform identity functions in polarised political discourse. Our analysis of the 2024 Trump\u0026ndash;Harris debate illustrated how certain schemes can perform identity work by characterising social actors, invoking group-relevant threats, or discrediting opponents through group affiliation. Lexical choices complemented these argumentative structures by rendering group membership visible at the textual level.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe study has several limitations worth mentioning. First, we did not undertake a systematic evaluation of scheme instances by answering their critical questions. Second, whilst the selection of schemes (14 from Walton and Hansen\u0026rsquo;s (2013) study, with the addition of Poisoning the Well) may be defensible for the present analysis, it could be enhanced by including additional schemes, for example by utilising a decision-tree protocol (Lawrence et al., 2020). Third, we did not have inter-annotator agreement. Although our reconstruction protocol increases transparency, claims about reliability remain provisional.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBeyond using Walton\u0026rsquo;s schemes as an argumentative layer, future work could adopt the CAPNA (Hinton, 2022) assessment procedure to evaluate arguments rather than only relying on critical questions. Also Wagemans' Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA) (2016) as an a priori discovery device for inferring candidate scheme-types before reconstruction, operationalised with Wagemans' Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP) (2025). Furthermore, our approach could complement already annotated corpora such as the US2016 Corpus (Visser et al., 2019b) by enriching the analysis through drawing on select arguments using a qualitative approach. Additionally, addressing the critical questions for each argument would be beneficial for evaluation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAdditionally, Hinton (2022) asked whether identity-affirming arguments serve or undermine deliberative goals. Our analysis was descriptive rather than evaluative, but the question of argument quality remains pressing. Are identity-constitutive arguments inherently fallacious, or can they be legitimate contributions to political deliberation? Hinton's distinction between Demonstrative and Justificatory argument modes suggests that the same argument may be fallacious under epistemic norms yet acceptable under representational norms. One possibility is that identity functions and epistemic functions are not mutually exclusive: an argument might simultaneously construct group boundaries and provide good reasons for a conclusion\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA central observation of this study concerns the relationship between argumentation schemes and discursive strategies. In our illustrative analyses, ad hominem arguments and poisoning the well served predication and perspectivisation functions; arguments from consequences served justification functions; arguments from popular opinion served intensification. These patterns suggest that the inferential structure of an argument constrains, without fully determining, its pragmatic and identity-constitutive functions. We propose the term schematic affinity for this relationship: certain schemes have a natural fit with certain strategies by virtue of their inferential structure. Developing a systematic account of schematic affinities, specifying which schemes have affinities with which strategies, and explaining why, constitutes a promising direction for future research at the intersection of argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies. Moreover, this framework can extend beyond the 2024 Trump\u0026ndash;Harris debate into other areas such as national identity formation, discrimination, racism, and economic nationalism.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhile this study aims to describe polarisation, it also aims to render it analytically tractable\u0026mdash;and therefore contestable. By reconstructing the inferential structures through which speakers construct 'Us' against 'Them', the framework makes visible the contingency of such constructions. What appears as natural or inevitable group opposition can be shown to rest on defeasible premises, questionable expert appeals, or circumstantial attacks on character. This visibility is itself a form of critical intervention: it denaturalises polarising discourse and opens space for alternative framings. Whether such analytical visibility translates into changed practice remains an empirical question for future research.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eM.W and N.S. contributed equally to the development of this manuscript.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgement\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe would like to extend our gratitude to Martin Hinton for his helpful feedback on our paper. Also for our helpful conversations with Jean Wagemans during the PhiLang 2025 conference in Lodz, PL.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAtkinson, K., T. Bench-Capon, F. Bex, T. Gordon, H. Prakken, G. Sartor, and B. Verheij. 2020. In memoriam Douglas N. 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This article asks how argumentative structures and linguistic choices work together to produce the \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rdquo; identity and \u0026ldquo;Them\u0026rdquo; identity that is characteristic of polarised political discourse. We analyse the 2024 Trump\u0026ndash;Harris debate by integrating only argumentation schemes into the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) for its approach to argumentation. Three questions guide our analysis: how argumentation schemes construct in-group and out-group identities; how do lexical choices, analysed through DHA's nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities; and whether patterned relationships exist between scheme types and discursive strategies. Drawing on 24 reconstructed arguments and six in-depth analyses, we observe that ad hominem attacks and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, while arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. We term these patterned relationships schematic affinities and offer the concept as a hypothesis warranting systematic investigation rather than a confirmed finding. Lexical devices, including terms that categorise actors as criminals, victims, or workers, reinforce the opposition that arguments establish. The framework demonstrates how argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies can inform one another, and it opens pathways for research on national identity formation, racism, and discriminatory discourse.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Argumentation and Language in Identity Construction: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Polarisation in the 2024 Trump-Harris Debate ","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-02-16 17:47:34","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8779817/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"cb25d1ca-37ed-47d6-be2d-b945e65424ce","owner":[],"postedDate":"February 16th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-05-05T12:54:49+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-02-16 17:47:34","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8779817","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8779817","identity":"rs-8779817","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}