Abstract
The article compares the formats of the final presidential debates in the latest elections in Poland between Andrzej Duda and Bronisław Komorowski (2015) and in the Czech Republic between Jiří Drahoš and Miloš Zeman (2018). The purpose of this comparison based on rhetorical genre criticism was to check whether and how the analyzed media events fit into the genre pattern of the debate. The Polish and the Czech formats were compared with respect to the interaction rules, elements of time and space, as well as the way of moderating and asking questions during the debate. The result of this comparison was the indication of the direction of genre hybridization of pre-election television debates in the last elections in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Highlights
The final debates broadcast on television are one of the most anticipated events in the presidential election campaign
The confrontation element took the form of personal attacks, especially in the Polish debates
In the Czech debates, it was the moderator who oversaw the order of the disputes, while in the Polish debates the end of the time limit for the answer signalled the end of discussion
Summary
The final debates broadcast on television are one of the most anticipated events in the presidential election campaign. All the participants of the pre-electoral discourse (politicians, media, voters) are involved in the rhetorical situation of the debate. Due to its spectacular history that dates back to the 1960s and its impact on electoral reality (the meeting of Kennedy Nixon made politicians, media and voters aware of the strength of this element in the campaign), the televised pre-election debate is a topic often explored in the western tradition of political rhetoric research (Kraus 1962, Bitzer, Reuter 1983, Jamieson, Birdsell 1988, Hellweg, Pfau, Brydon 1992, Friedenberg 1997, Kraus 2000, Coleman 2000, Benoit, Pier, Brazeal 2002, Minow, LaMay, Gregorian 2008, Benoit 2014, Schroeder 2016). Identifying the elements differentiating pre-election discourse in Poland and the Czech Republic using the example of the final presidential television debates will be the main focus of the article. The debates from the elections in 2015 in Poland and in 2018 in the Czech Republic have been selected
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