Facts as Social Action in Political Debates about the European Union

This paper focuses on the argumentative role of making factual claims and counterclaims in broadcast political debates. Despite the rise of “post-truth politics”, this paper argues that orientations to issues of ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ are a live and controversial matter when debating the European Union. Using Discursive Psychology (DP) the analysis is on how politicians use fact-based (counter)claims in multi-party interactions, in the form of debates about the UK and the European Union. Three types of factual challenges are presented to illustrate the rhetorical function of claims: challenging the essence of an argument, providing another fact to re-contextualise the preceding fact and using hypothetical scenarios to undermine facts. The analysis demonstrates that the use of facts is a highly strategic, argumentative, matter. This study, understood against a backdrop of the rise of “post-truth politics”, highlights that concepts of ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ are not done away with; rather they are an argumentative resource and need to be understood in their fragmentary and rhetorical context.