Enhancing the Debate Through Quotations: The Political Arena in Israel

This chapter explores quotations used by members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. In a heated debateDebate, seventeen politicians respond to two motions of no-confidence, including MKs and ministers, representatives of the whole gamut of the parties: far left, far right, and centrists; ultra-orthodox and secular men and women. The analysis, informed by socio-pragmaticsSocio-pragmatics and multimodal studies, focuses on dramatic quotationsDramatic quotations and the positioningsPositioning constructed through them. We focus on direct-speech quotations which are strategically used to dramatize the situation and enhance the debate through adversative positioningAdversative positioning. None of the quotations is a verbatim reproduction of its (real or reconstructed) source. Quotations are viewed as interpretativeMetarepresentation metarepresentationsInterpretative meta-representation and depictive demonstrationsDepictive demonstration, recontextualized to enhance the debate. The analysis focuses on two prevalent uses of direct speech: quotations of political figures used to stage the scene and thus supporting the speaker’s stance, and quotations from the Jewish canonic sources that accentuate ideological and political differences, and thus position the speaker as authoritative and morally superior, intending to impose their view and their political standing. We pay special attention to “visualized scenes” that are integrated into the political arguments, either by enhancing its effects or by neutralizing it to a certain degree.