Political argumentation on Twitter

Abstract

In recent years, most Spanish politicians have tried to use Twitter in order to establish a more direct and immediate interaction with citizens. This article offers an analysis of the argumentative strategies employe by politicians, in the above-mentioned virtual platform, to attract the voters. For this, we have studied a set of posts published in this social network by Rosa Díez (UPyD), Alberto Garzón (IU), Pablo Iglesias (PODEMOS), Mariano Rajoy (PP), Albert Rivera (CIUDADANOS) and Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) during the election campaign that took place before the elections on May, 24th 2015. We have taken into consideration these politiciansˈ posts for our research, due to the fact that they represent, currently, the most relevant political options in Spain. The methodology used is the pragmatic linguistics. As a result, we propose a taxonomy of the different strategies used in Twitter by politicians to achieve their persuasive purposes.