The Idea of a Debate and the Rules of Interaction in Polish Pre-election TV Debates

Agnieszka Budzyńska-Daca

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This article presents formats of Polish pre-election TV debates and also compares rules of interaction, which are one of the elements of these formats. The order of statements by politicians, principles concerning argumentation and asking questions have been rated from the standpoint of normative understanding in the area of this speech genre as well as from the viewpoint of usefulness of the debate as a tool of political communication in a democratic state. Cycles of presidential debates of 1995, 2005, 2010 and debates carried out before the elections to the parliament in 2007 have been the object of the study. Only meetings between the two presidential candidates with the highest social support as well as discussions between representatives of the three largest parties in parliamentary elections are taken into consideration.

KEYWORDS

pre-election television debates, debate formats, debate as a rhetorical genre, Polish debates, interaction rules in debates