“I Think Any Reasonable Person Will Agree…”: A Corpus and Text Study of Keywords in Irish Political Argumentation

This paper brings a corpus and discourse perspective to bear on the investigation of the broader argumentative implications of keywords in the context of 20th-century Irish politics. On the basis of two corpora including Michael Collins’ papers and Eamon de Valera’s speeches and statements, a keyword-in-context analysis was performed. Results provide evidence of the persuasive power of keywords as signposts leading to a better understanding of culturally shared rules of inference in political discourse.