The Pragmatics of the Dialectical Aspect of British and Iraqi Parliamentary Debates from a critical perspective

Abstract

This study investigates the dialectical nature of parliamentary debates by analyzing strategies employed by British and Iraqi Members of Parliament (MPs) to approve or oppose laws. The research hypothesizes that parliamentary debates are intrinsically conflicting and that British MPs employ a wider range of methods than their Iraqi counterparts, based on critical pragmatics theory. The study examines qualitative information from transcripts of 2023 and 2024 parliamentary sessions. Using Korta and Perry's (2011) referential theory as a framework, the investigation looks at the attitudes, indexicals, and methods used by MPs to break conversational maxims. The results show that British and Iraqi MPs use different rhetorical strategies, and this underscores the need for more empirical study to fully comprehend the dynamics of parliamentary speech.