A Pragma-Rhetorical Study of Argument in Islamic-Christian Debates

Abstract

A debate is a special form of an argumentative dialogue in which two or more parties take part in attacking and defending certain claims through reasoned discourse. This study has set itself to pragmatically analyze and evaluate selected arguments of religious debates. Islamic-Christian debates are specifically chosen as data for the current study because they have not received due attention in language studies. This study is essentially concerned with investigating the pragma-rhetorical strategies utilized in the context of Deedat-Swaggart’s debate. To fulfill the aims, it is hypothesized that debaters utilize certain rhetorical pragmatics strategies: figures of speech (metaphor, allusion, irony, rhetorical question, and hyperbole), argumentation appeals (logos, pathos, ethos), and politeness strategies; and highlighting the rules that have to be fulfilled to produce a successful speech act of persuasion. The study employs a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) to analyze the data and to verify or reject the hypotheses. The results of the study reveal that the most frequent pragmatic strategies utilized by debate are: rhetorical questions, logos, and off record politeness strategies, whereas Swaggart highly employs: metaphor, ethos, and off record politeness strategies. The results have also shown that Deedat’s arguments are stronger and more persuasive than Swaggart’s in terms of satisfying the rules of the successful speech act of persuasion.