`Now is the Time to Put an End to all this': Argumentative Discourse Theory and `Letters to the Editor'

Abstract

This article applies argumentative discourse theory to `letters to the editor', specifically letters written into and subsequently printed in the British broadsheet press. The sampled letters were all written in response to prior newspaper articles and reporting, in which Islam and/or Muslims were cited as actors. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied as a model for explaining and understanding argument, emphasizing the functional, contextual and interactive features of argumentative discourse. The theory rejects the traditionally strict bifurcation of dialectic and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation, uniting them in the model. The article is informed by the presupposition that the power relationships represented in the broadsheet press are both generative and transposable, modifying power relations in other fields (Bourdieu, 1991), and concludes by suggesting that the letters represent an example of a discourse of `spatial management' - the `national space' being the space in question, and the `managers' being the dominant élites, as represented by the broadsheet newspaper readership.