The emotional Dutch parliamentarian : a research into the use of emotions as objects of argumentation in Dutch parliamentary debates

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THE EMOTIONAL DUTCH

PARLIAMENTARIAN

A RESEARCH INTO THE USE OF EMOTIONS AS OBJECTS OF

ARGUMENTATION IN DUTCH PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

Alice Eleanor Vogel

Student number 10632255

University of Amsterdam

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Political Science Bachelor thesis project ‘Emotions and beliefs in Policy-making’ January 2018 Supervisor: Rosa Sanchez Salgado Second reader: Rob van Es Word count: 9515 (in exclusion of tables, figures, footnotes and the reference list)

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1 Introduction

‘’The attacks in Paris have obviously been terrible and this debate has all ingredients to become heavy and emotional. Therefore, I ask you and my colleagues to be extra

attentive to not accept statements that undermine our parliamentary democracy.’’ - Tunahan Kuzu, November 19th 2015 With this quote Dutch parliamentarian Kuzu started the debate following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. His view on emotionality that is displayed in this quote is not exceptional; many politicians and scholars have stated comparable judgments. The general view in political science has been that politicians have to act like rational players, where cognition and reason are split from emotion and passion (Thompson and Hoggett 2012: 1). It is only for a few decades that some political scientists have rediscovered the role of emotions in both public and political debate (Ibid.).

The same applies to argumentation theory, in which the most established theories consider argumentation as rational whereas emotion is described as the inferior counterpart (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 2-16; Johnson 2000: 1). However, a few scientists in the last decades have argued that appeals based on emotions can still be reasonable when used appropriately (Micheli 2008: 11; Miceli et al. 2006: 873). Micheli builds further on this assumption and states that not only can emotions be part of argumentation; they can also be the very objects of argumentation (2008: 1-15). When this is the case, speakers ‘’argue in favor of or against an emotion’’, for which Micheli drawed up an extensive theory (idem: 13).

While I think Micheli’s theory could be of great value in the extension of research on emotions in political science, it has not been applied yet. Exploring how this theory applies to a real case could provide a next academic step in researching and accepting the role of emotions in politics. This is the reason why this thesis applies Micheli’s theory of ‘emotions as objects of argumentation’ to the case of the Dutch parliament.

Researching this could give a broader insight in the role of emotions in Dutch politics, which is not only useful on an academic level, but also on a social level. Awareness of the use of emotions as objects of argumentative constructions in parliamentary debates will allow both politicians and citizens to recognize this

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4 phenomenon. Moreover, it will give parliamentarians the opportunity to enrich their argumentation with emotions as objects. At the same time, it will permit citizens to make a better judgment on argumentative attempts of politicians.

To examine this phenomenon of emotions as objects of argumentation in the Netherlands, this thesis investigates the following question: ‘’How are emotions used as objects of argumentation in Dutch parliamentary debates?’’.

By answering this question, this thesis aims on the one hand to demonstrate how argumentation of emotions occurs in the Dutch parliament. On the other hand, it attempts to bring a not yet applied theory into practice and examine whether this theory needs clarification or enrichment. To do so, I perform a content analysis of Dutch parliamentary debates accompanied by an in-depth analysis of the findings in these debates. Prior to the analysis, I provide a literature overview on emotions in argumentation and parliamentary debates, followed by a disquisition of Micheli’s theory and an explanation of the used methods.

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2 Literature review

To give an overview of existing literature on the subject of this thesis, I address three relevant aspects, being emotion in argumentation, argumentation in parliamentary debates and emotion in parliamentary debates. Figure 1 concisely displays how these three topics relate to each other.

2.1 Emotion in argumentation

In this paragraph I provide an overview of the way emotions have been reviewed throughout time. To do so, I first introduce how the terms argumentation and emotion are understood in this thesis, whereafter I distinguish four ways to conceive the role of emotion in argumentation.

What scholars understand by argumentation differs per research. For example, many scholars describe the basic goal of argumentation as to justify a claim (Toulmin 1958: 12; Bermejo-Luque 2011: 53; Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 1). Others focus on convincing the opponent of the acceptability of the argument, also described as rhetoric or persuasion (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 48; Bickford 2011: 1028). Mohammed on the other hand combines these two components and states that argumentation consists of justifying an expressed opinion and convincing the opponent of its acceptability (2015: 223-224), which is how argumentation is conceived in this thesis. Finally, there are scholars who state that argumentation is based on a manifest of rationality and therefore consists of rational persuasion

Argumentation Argumentation in parliamentary debates Emotion in argumentation Emotion in parliamentary debates

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6 (Johnson 2000: 1). This view rejects the use of emotions in argumentation in advance since they describe emotions as non-rational. This matter will be explored more closely further in this paragraph.

Since ‘emotion’ is an ambiguous term with many different understandings, it is important to use the word in an undisputable meaning. Considering that this thesis researches emotions in the language of parliamentarians, it needs an understanding of emotions that manages a linguistic definition of emotion. Getting into emotions in language, Kleres argues emotionality is most fundamentally configured by the very words used to represent them and thus also constituted on the level of words and sentences (2011: 193).

Building on Kleres and considering what I want to research in this thesis, I define emotions as ‘explicit verbal references to emotions in parliamentary language'. There are some scholars who make distinctions between different emotions, for instance formulating ‘basic emotions’ and other classifications of emotions (Bisio et al. 2013; Parrott 2001). Since the focus of this thesis is not to find out which emotions are present in parliamentary debates, but how the named emotions are used as objects of argumentation, a further explication of existing emotions is not needed. The emotions gathered under ‘references to emotions’ in the formulated definition of emotion are further clarified in the methodology.

As both argumentation and emotion are defined, it is possible to investigate the role of emotions in argumentation throughout different eras. First, in the classical age smart use of emotions was seen as part of convincing rhetoric (Thompson and Hoggett 2012: 5), whereas rhetoric was mostly defined as the ability to see and apply the available means of persuasion in a given case (Bickford 2011: 1028; Micheli 2008: 5). Aristotle described three components of rhetoric, being logos, pathos and ethos. As logos and ethos are focused on the presentation of an argument and of the character of the speaker, pathos tries to influence the emotions of the listener in such way that his judgments will undergo some modification as well (Ibid.). In this case Aristotle stated that knowing someone’s emotions means knowing something about how to communicate with them (Ibid.), which comes back to seeing the available means of persuasion. According to this classical conception, emotion was thus seen as an important element of argumentation.

Second, since the Age of Enlightenment up to recent times scholars came to the opinion that argumentation should be free of emotion. They stated that

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7 argumentation should be rational, whereas emotion is described as the inferior counterpart (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 2-16; Johnson 2000: 1). The most accepted theory within this movement is the pragma-dialectical approach from Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, which is still a widely distributed view in contemporary argumentative discourse research. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst describe argumentation as an “activity aimed at convincing a reasonable critic of the acceptability of a standpoint by (…) justifying or refuting (…) the standpoint” wherein emotion precludes the critic from being reasonable (2004: 1).

The pragma-dialectical approach leaves no room for appeals in which emotion is used in such way that it can still be rational, as it appoints two factors that delineate emotions in argumentation as wrong. First, an appeal to emotion in argumentation is considered irrelevant because it does not contribute to the goals of argumentative dialogue, being to convince a reasonable critic (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 65; Walton 1992: 1). Second, arguments based on emotions tend to be weak arguments, because they are based on presumptions instead of hard arguments (Walton 1992: 1-2). Barnes stated that passionate attempts to persuade others are ‘’usually regarded as aiming to manipulate rather than to reflect a genuine expression of the meaning and content of the position being represented’’ (2008: 470). Position claiming within this quote is comparable to justifying an opinion, which was one of the earlier mentioned components of argumentation in this thesis. As an addition to these two addressed factors, Kleres described that ‘’the modern, western subject is culturally supposed to be rational/unemotional and any display of emotions will thus threaten one’s image’’ (2011: 189). All three of these scholars aim at rejecting the acceptability of using emotions within argumentation, neglecting the possibility that emotions could also be used in a proper way.

Third, some scholars in contemporary research claim that emotional persuasion, also referred to as emotional argumentation, does not by essence fall outside of the jurisdiction of argumentation (Micheli 2008: 5). Miceli et al. defined emotional persuasion as ‘’a persuasive intention which appeals to R’s emotions either (…) through arousal of emotions or (…) through appeal to expected emotions’’ (2006: 855). Working with this definition, they claim that argumentation can both be emotional and rational at the same time. In addition to Miceli et al., Walton suggests that emotional persuasion can be appropriate when the emotional argumentation takes place entirely in the critical discussion part (1992: 23). Besides, Walton stated that an

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8 argument based on emotion could be reasonable insofar as it contributes to the goals of a certain conversation (idem: 25-27). Thus, when emotions in argumentation cause the argumentation to be contrary to the goals of for example parliamentary debates, one can dispatch them as fallacious.

Last but not least, in his theory Micheli builds further on the third view by stating that not only can emotions be part of the content of argumentation, they can also be the very object of argumentation (Micheli 2012: 12-16). In this conviction, Micheli expresses that emotional appeals should not only be seen as adjuncts to argumentation, but also as forms of argumentation (idem: 12), positioning itself as opposing to theories like the pragma-dialectical approach, where emotion is seen as a phenomenon that has nothing to do with argumentation. Where practitioners of the pragma-dialectical approach make a distinction between useful content and emotion, Micheli states that emotion can also be the very object of this useful content. I will explicate this theory more precisely in the theoretical framework.

2.2 Argumentation in parliamentary debates

When analysing parliamentary debates and the argumentative structures with emotions as objects within, it is important to provide an overview of how scholars describe argumentation in light of parliamentary debates. To do so, I define the concepts of parliamentary debate, as well as set out literature about the goals and argumentative structures of argumentation in parliamentary debates.

The Dutch political system is comparable to almost all Western Europe contemporary democracies. These systems are based on the idea of representative democracy, in which elected politicians represent citizens (Dahl 1998). Within modern representative democracies parliamentary debates play an important role in both representation and decision-making. Based on Ilie, parliamentary debates are in this thesis understood as follows: ''Parliamentary debates presuppose, on the one hand, a spirit of adversariality, which is manifested in position-claiming and opponent-challenging acts, and, on the other, a spirit of cooperativeness, which is manifested in joint decisionmaking and cross-party problem solving processes in order to reach commonly acceptable goals regarding future policies and suitable lines of action at a national level'' (Ilie 2003: 73).

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9 Because parliamentary debates consist of both position-claiming and decision-making, parliamentarians use language that gives voice to their point of view, often described as argumentation. This coordinates with the conception of argumentation in this thesis, being that argumentation consists of justifying an expressed opinion and convincing the opponent of its acceptability. Considering the definition of parliamentary debates, this means that parliamentarians use argumentation to justify a certain opinion about policy (position-claiming) or to get parliamentary approval of a certain proposal (decision-making). However, Mohammed also explicates some other concrete goals of argumentation in parliamentary debates. She states that as parliamentary debates are rather visible for media and therefore citizens, parliamentarians do not only use argumentation to serve these classic goals, but also to serve extrinsic goals, such as winning voters and defending one’s conduct as adequate (Mohammed 2015: 228-229).

What most addressed scholars do not mention in their researches on argumentation, is how argumentation appears in real life situations like parliamentary debates. Though, Garssen wrote a descriptive article about argumentative patterns in European Parliament debates. In this contribution he states that argumentation in these debates aims at bringing forward the opinion that the proposed legislation should be adapted because it is the best solution for the problem Parliament wants to solve (see figure 2) (Garssen 2016: 29-30). Therefore, Garssen suggests that argumentation in European parliamentary debates has to do with problem-solving while convincing others that the proposed legislation solves the addressed problem, which suits with both the definition of parliamentary debates and the one of argumentation I formulated earlier.

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10 After expressing this basic argumentation model, Garssen explains that politicians bring longer argumentation into play to support the premise that the proposal does – or does not – solve the problem (idem: 34). Illustrations of possible supporting argumentation are argumentation from authority or argumentation by example (Ibid.). However, there are not yet concrete models of how to reconstruct these kinds of argumentation. In addition to this, what has not been mentioned before is that in this part emotions could be the objects of the argumentation as well. For instance, using argumentation to argue that certain legislation should be adopted because it solves the problem that people feel angry or that people should feel ashamed, which could for instance be the case in debates about the reception of refugees.

While Garssens’ study is of great value in the research on argumentation in parliamentary debates, it does not include the role of emotions. Furthermore it also shows two other shortcomings in light of this thesis. First, it addresses the European Parliament, which differs from the Dutch Parliament. This is also the case for most other studies about parliamentary (argumentative) discourse (Mohammed 2013; Sanchez Salgado 2017; Plug 2017). Sanchez Salgado explains that politics on European level are more consensus-seeking, more technocratic and less passionate than most national levels (2017: 5). This gives room to suspect that Dutch parliamentary debates are more open to emotional appeals than European parliamentary debates.

Second, both Garssens’ and other features about argumentation in parliamentary debates give little to no attention to the fact that most of the time a lot of argumentation remains implicit, demanding the listener to deduce the used argumentation himself (Van Eemeren and Snoeck Henkemans 2011: 50-56). In this thesis it could be challenging to handle implicit argumentation. Therefore, the

Problem-solving argumentation

1 The proposed legislation X should be adopted 1.1a There is a problem Y

1.1b Adoption of the proposed legislation X will solve the problem

(1.1a-1.1b’ Proposed legislation [of type X] that solves the problem [of type Y] should be adopted) () = Implicit premise

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11 methodology and data analysis of this thesis will pay attention to the possible presence of implicit argumentation.

2.3 Emotions in parliamentary debates

After laying out how argumentation has been described in the context of both emotions and parliamentary debates, I will bring these subjects together and examine the role of emotions in parliamentary debates. To do so, I set forth literature of scholars that described parliamentary debates as rational and display how the role of emotions is often neglected in research about parliamentary language and deliberation.

As addressed earlier, a lot of scholars describe emotion as counterpart to rational. This is also the case regarding political language that appears in parliamentary debates. Van der Valk stated that ‘’public discourse is predominantly the language of political and professional processes and institutions, as opposed to private language with its subjective, individual and emotional expressions‘’ (2003: 313; Van Zoonen and Holtz-Bacha 2000: 48). By saying this, Van der Valk classifies emotion as not belonging in political language. Inspired by Carbó, she later on specifies her claims, mentioning that parliamentary debates are highly structured political speech-events in which faith in rational argumentation, order, clarity, justice and equality are assumed to prevail (2003: 316; Carbó 1992).

Thus, literature regarding parliamentary debates tends to have the same direction as theories like the pragma-dialectical approach, neglecting emotions in argumentation and parliamentary debates. In his contribution Fischer explored this neglect, stating that there is little space for emotions in social-scientific analysis. He also repeats the fact that emotion has been viewed as the very opposite of reason (2010: 412). However, Fischer adds to the on-going discussion that the successes of deliberative processes depend on more than democratic-deliberative principles and the structures derived from them (idem: 408). With this assertion Fischer leaves room for emotions in parliamentary argumentative discourse, although he does as well state that most scientists have trouble with sufficiently conceptualizing the research into

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12 emotions1. Micheli’s theory tries to establish capturing emotions, viewing emotions in such way that they can also be the objects of argumentation. Because argumentation is known as a common phenomenon for politicians in parliamentary debates to both practice position claiming and decision-making, this theory can be applied to parliamentary debates. Based on Fischers’statements, it is important to pay attention to the way in which Micheli tries to establish capturing emotions, which will be the case in the theoretical framework and analysis.

A comparable statement as the one Fischer brought forward was made by Kleres, stating that ‘’how emotions can be studied empirically in systematic ways has been the focus of relatively little attention and debate’’ (2011: 182). The little literature that does mention emotion-related topics in parliamentary debates2_{, does not}

point at how emotions are used in argumentation or in the Dutch parliament, therefore leaving a gap in literature. The fact that this thesis addresses a rather new subject creates a challenging situation, in which the findings could count as an exploratory research in this field.

1_{Fischers’ own research only states that emotions should not be neglected, but does not provide an} insight in how emotions can be present in political deliberation.

2_{This literature finds for example narratives of threat, risk, compassion and sympathy in debates about} migration in Canada (Kronick and Rousseau 2015: 564) or addresses fear in the sense of Islamophobia and Muslimophobia in Switzerland (Cheng 2015: 581-584).

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3 Theoretical framework

3.1 The argumentative construction of emotions

Following the reviewed literature, examining emotions in an empirical way is still a new research field with lots to be discovered. Research into parliamentary debates almost never includes emotions, especially not in relation to argumentation. Therefore I use a broader theory founded by Micheli, which explores how emotions can be used as objects of argumentation. As mentioned earlier while reviewing literature, Micheli sets his theory against theories that describe emotion as detached from argumentative content, like the pragma-dialectical approach. He calls this concept the argumentative construction of emotions (2008: 12), thereby stating that emotions cannot only be adjuvants to argumentation, but also objects of argumentation. This is the case when speakers argue in favor or against an emotion (idem: 13).

Micheli is not the first to write about the arguing of emotions. Plantins’ descriptive approach to argumentation stated that when people have disagreements over which emotions should or should not be felt, they start to argue emotions to establish the legitimacy of certain emotions (1999). However, what Micheli added to this research is a theoretical examination of how speakers argue emotions, trying to ‘’objectify this process in specimens of naturally-occurring argumentative discourse’’ (2008: 13). To accomplish this objectification, he constructed a three-step approach to his concept of argumentative construction of emotions, which is displayed in figure 3. The first step has to do with attribution. Micheli describes that when a speaker argues emotions, his utterance ‘’refers to an emotional state and attributes it to an individual’’ (idem: 14). This individual can both be the speaker himself, which is called self-attribution, or an addressee or third party, which is called other-attribution (Ibid.).

The second step is called evaluation of emotion, which includes the reason why an emotion should or should not be felt. By endowing an emotion with value or seeking to downgrade the legitimacy of an emotion, a speaker spreads out his argument (Ibid.). Micheli distinguishes four criteria upon which speakers depend when they evaluate emotions. First, someone can evaluate whether a certain emotion fits the individual who is assumed to experience it (idem: 15). For example, this comprises arguments that state that a parliamentarian should not feel a certain

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14 emotion, because it is unfit for his role as a serious politician. Second, one can evaluate if the attributed emotion fits the object of its intention (Ibid.). Emotions have intentional objects, which shows about who/what someone experiences an emotion (Micheli 2008: 6). This kind of evaluation could for instance occur when a parliamentarian argues that refugees deserve pity. Third, speakers may evaluate if an attributed emotion is according to the action tendencies one can expect from that emotion (idem: 15). This covers among other things parliamentarians arguing that the anger or fear others feel after a terroristic attack causes them to want to take action against terrorist. Fourth, the evaluated emotions may be evaluated according to the ‘’normative constraints associated with the discourse genre in which the speakers are interacting’’ (Ibid.). This means that speakers are interacting within a set of rules by a model of dialogue, which creates specific goals for speakers they can cooperatively pursue (Walton 1992: 18). As defined in the literature review, the main goals in parliamentary debates are position-claiming and decision-making. Thus, emotions could also be addressed to argue that a certain politician does not serve these goals.

The third step is about the process of legitimation or illegitimation of the argued emotion. Micheli reports that ‘’… when an emotion is self- or other-attributed, it may be accompanied by a constellation of propositions which seek to confer it with legitimacy (or illegitimacy). Such propositions have speakers verbalize the type of situation which ensures the legitimate character of the emotion’’ (2008: 15). It is inevitable for the three steps of Micheli’s approach to show to some extent overlapping content.

Last, since argumentation in this thesis is understood as a process that consists of justifying an expressed opinion and convincing the opponent of its acceptability, I link Micheli’s theory to this definition, which considers legitimation of an emotion as comparable to the step of justification, and evaluation of an emotion as comparable to convincing the opponent of its acceptability.

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15 3.2 Sub-questions and expectations

As set out in the introduction, this thesis examines how Dutch politicians use emotions as object of argumentation in parliamentary debates. This general question is addressed by means of answering several sub-questions that together give a complete overview of how this phenomenon takes place in the contemporary Dutch parliament.

1. How often is a mentioned emotion in Dutch parliamentary debates part of an argumentative construction of emotions?

2. How do the different options within the three-step approach appear in Dutch parliamentary debates?

To answer these questions, I examine a selection of emotional words and determine if the found words are part of an argumentative construction of emotions according to Micheli’s theory. This gives a first glance to which extent Dutch parliamentarians use emotions as object of argumentation or as adjuvants to other argumentative structures. Also, sub-question 2 shows which type of argumentation is often used and how the different criteria appear in the analysed debates. In both questions, I use both numerical indicators and more substantive content with examples.

1

Attribution of emotion

2

Evaluation of emotion

3

Legitimation or illegitimation of emotion 1. Self-attribution 2. Other-attribution

Figure 3 - Argumentative construction of emotions: three-step approach

1. Fit the individual 2. Fit the intentional object 3. According to action tendencies 4. Normative constraints discourse genre

1. Legitimation 2. Illegitimation

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16 As for the expectations, following previous literature I expect that emotions are not very forthcoming in parliamentary debates. However, since this question does not examine how often emotions are mentioned in parliamentary debates, but whether the mentioned emotions are part of argumentative structures, I expect that parliamentarians use argumentative structures to substantiate their mentioned emotions quite often, because the literature review showed that expressions in debates based on emotions are often labelled as weak, which encourages parliamentarians to substantiate emotional utterances with argumentation.

3. Is there a difference in the use of argumentative constructions of emotions between the three analyzed debate subjects or different political parties?

To answer this question, I will look again at both numerical implications and deeper understanding of the content with regard to debate subjects and political parties. It is expected that all selected debate subjects will show similar amounts and patterns of argumentation with emotions as objects3. As for political parties, I expect both right-wing populist parties like the Partij voor de Vrijheid and left-right-wing parties like GroenLinks to use more emotions based argumentation than classic or conservative parties, since Wouters (2012) stated that right-wing populist parties appeal more often to emotions and Thompson and Hoggett (2012) described that emotions in politics are used as humanitarian impulse.

4. To which extent is it possible to reconstruct argumentative constructions of emotions in Dutch parliamentary debates?

Answering this question shows to which extent Micheli’s theory is applicable in real situations and what enrichments it needs, which is useful because Micheli’s goal was to objectify the emotions based argumentative process and this theory has not been applied before. Besides, it gives a deeper insight in how the argumentative structures with emotions as objects appear in parliamentary debates and if implicit argumentation complicates the analysis of it.

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17 Therefore, I will reconstruct several examples with both Garssens’ and Micheli’s model. Based on Micheli’s aim to objectify the process of speakers arguing emotions, one could expect that this theory makes it possible to reconstruct this particular kind of argumentation. However, it should not be forgotten that Kleres described the difficulties of studying emotions empirically, which gives ground to suspect that it is challenging for scholars to formulate a functioning theory regarding this subject.

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4 Methodology

4.1 Case study: Dutch parliamentary debates

In this thesis I both quantitatively as qualitatively research how Dutch parliamentarians use emotions as objects of argumentation by performing a case study of plenary debates in the Dutch House of Representatives, known as the ‘Second Chamber’ of the Dutch Parliament4. A case study is defined as ‘’the detailed examination of a small sample – at its extreme a single example – of an item of interest, and typically also from a particular perspective’’ (Tight 2010: 337). Working with this definition, a small sample of Dutch parliamentary debates is analysed from the perspective of Micheli’s theory. This sample is chosen in such way that it creates a critical case for two reasons (Bryman 2010: 70).

First, the subjects of the selected debates are subjects where emotions are expected to be present. Based on Yin5_{I work with three embedded units of analysis,}

being three different emotional subjects of debates (2003: 46). These subjects are the reception of refugees and asylum seekers, climate change and terrorist attacks in Western Europe cities. Migration has repeatedly been appointed an emotional subject, not in the last place because it is a highly conflicting topic (Van der Valk 2003: 338; Sanchez Salgado 2017: 7). As for climate change, this is an emotional subject because an increasing amount of politicians worry about the sustainability of our planet. At last, Sanchez Salgado demonstrated that debates tend to be more emotional in the wake of dramatic events, such as terrorist attacks (2017: 14). Second, I only selected the longest debates of each subject, since Sanchez Salgado also showed that emotions are more likely to appear in longer debates (Ibid.).

Furthermore, all selected debates are from the recent Dutch administration Rutte II6. Because of the short time frame, I chose three debates from each subject.

4_{For reasons of readability I have chosen to use the terms Parliament and parliamentary, where the} House of Representatives is meant.

5_{Yin formulated several types of designs for case studies. One of these designs is a single case with} embedded units of analysis, which is used in this thesis (2003: 46).

6_{This administration was in action from the 12th of November 2012 until the 26th of October 2017 and} the following parties were present in parliament during this period: Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD), Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), Socialistische Partij (SP), Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA), D66, GroenLinks (GL), ChristenUnie (CU), Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP), Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD) and 50PLUS.

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19 Each debate is entirely devoted to one of the three subjects. Table 1 shows the selected debates7.

As for the prospects of generalisation of my findings, the results should to some extent predict something about all Dutch parliamentary debates and other Western European democracies with similar political systems8. Since this is a most-likely case, I reason that if the argumentation of emotions is not present in the examined debates, it will presumably not show in other debates as well.

Table 1 - Selected Dutch parliamentary debates

4.2 Content analysis followed by illustration

This thesis will research the argumentative construction of emotions both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative methods display the degree of occurrence of emotions as objects of argumentation. This is followed by a qualitative analysis, which illustrates the concept, gives explanations and shows unexpected results and context to the quantitative indicators by providing examples (Bryman 2010: 633-634).

To do this analysis, I will first perform a content analysis with Atlas.ti, therefore applying an approach to the analysis of documents and texts that seeks to quantify the content, in this case the debate transcripts (Bryman 2010: 289). Atlas.ti can detect references to emotions. Because this thesis is not about examining which

7 _The _transcripts _of _the _debates _are _official _transcripts _from

https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/. Also, a list of all found debates (so also the ones that I did not select) and the corresponding searching terms are displayed in appendix 1.

8_{A side note that has to be made here is that the use of emotions might be more or less accepted in} other countries, which could result in a different use of emotions. But, as Kleres described the western subject as culturally supposed to be rational/unemotional, all western parliamentary democracies are in a measure comparable (2011: 189).

Subject of debate Title Date

(dd-mm-yy) Length (hh:mm)

1 Refugees Gemeenschappelijk asielbeleid in Europa 10-09-2015 06:18

2 Refugees Gemeenschappelijk asielbeleid 23-09-2015 04:14

3 Refugees Instroom van asielzoekers 11-02-2016 06:23

4 Climate change Energieakkoord 13-01-2015 07:41

5 Climate change Energie 23-03-2016 06:43

6 Climate change Toekomstig energiebeleid 07-02-2017 06:15

7 Terrorist attack De aanslag in Parijs 14-01-2015 06:00

8 Terrorist attack Aanslagen in Parijs 19-11-2015 05:37

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20 emotions appear in parliamentary debates, but whether politicians use argumentative structures to evaluate and legitimate emotions, a relative small set of linguistic markers for certain specific emotions is selected (Kleres 2010: 182). These are called ‘emotional markers’ in the rest of this thesis. The selected emotional markers are based on research by Sanchez Salgado into emotion talk in the European parliament, in which she found certain emotions to be clearly present (2017: 28-30). Words with direct reference to emotion or feeling are included as well. Table 3 shows all included words.

After detecting the selected emotional markers with Atlas.ti, encoding the findings creates the ability to answer all formulated sub-questions. To answer the first and second sub-question, it is to be determined whether the surrounding paragraph of an emotional marker contains argumentative constructions of emotions according to Micheli’s three-step approach. In order to create circumstances in which there is little room for individual interpretation and thus objectify the coding process as much as possible, guidelines are formulated to the encoding of Micheli’s three steps11 (see figure 4). Besides, in the rest of this thesis I define a full argumentative construction of emotion as a case in which all three steps are encoded as present, since this is how Micheli composed his theory. Lastly, debate subject and political party are also coded to answer sub-question 3. In the analysis, all outcomes of frequencies are accompanied with an in-depth analysis that provides examples from the debates.

9_{Some emotions have direct verbs, like ‘embarrass’ or ‘fear’. In other cases, it is common to tell others ‘to be}

(emotional marker)’, which explains why some emotions display more markers than others. Also, words with possible double meaning are not taken into account; such as ‘kwaad’ that means both ‘angry’ and ‘the bad’.

10_{I worked with a broad conception of compassion, also including to feel for someone in both a positive way (like}

sympathy) and a more negative way (like pity).

11_{If a certain emotional marker is used multiple times in the same paragraph, I will still include all the markers in}

the encoding process and encode all markers individually. I chose to do this for two reasons. On the one hand, if a parliamentarian uses a certain emotional marker multiple times, every time he utters the emotional marker it is more present in the language of the debate, so this should also reflect in the results. On the other hand, it could be the case that in the beginning of a paragraph a parliamentarian speaks about an emotion in a more general way, for example ‘the fear’ or ‘the shame’, and that it is only attributed to an individual or group who might feel this as well in the end of the paragraph. In this case, the emotion that is argued in this case is not attributed to begin with, but is eventually, which I will take as two different cases in this thesis.

Table 3 - Selected emotional markers9

Basic emotion 1st_{marker 2}nd_marker ₃rd_{marker 4}th_{marker 5}th_{marker 6}th_marker

General feeling Emotie Gevoel Voel

Fear Angst Bang Vrees Vrezen

Shame Schaam Schaamte Schamen Gênant Geneer Generen

Trust Trouw Vertrouwen

Pride Trots

Compassion10 _{Compassie Medelijden} _Medeleven

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21 0. None

Figure 4 - Coding scheme three-step approach12

12_{Category ‘other’ is added, because it is a possibility that the results show that Micheli’s criteria are} not sufficient to encode all found cases. Doing this creates ground to compose new criteria if this appears needed. Also, there is a difference between ‘other’ or ‘none’. ‘Other’ means that a parliamentarian does attribute/evaluate/legitimate a certain emotion, but that it does not fit one of the existing criteria. ‘None’ means that a parliamentarian does not attribute/evaluate/legitimate this emotion.

Step 1

Attribution of emotion

1. Self-attribution Surrounding paragraph contains reference to speakers’ individual who (does not) feel(s) named emotion. Also: specific group with speaker in it, like ‘my

political party’

2. Other-attribution

Surrounding paragraph contains reference to direct addressee or any other person/group that feel (or do not feel)

named emotion

N.B.: this contains general expressions like ‘they’ or ‘the people’ as well

Step 2

Evaluation of emotion 1. Fit the individual

Surrounding paragraph contains: - Reference to particular individual

who should (not) have a certain emotion

- Content that argues that/why this emotion does (not) fit this individual

2. Fit the intentional object Surrounding paragraph contain:

- Reference to object someone should (not) experience a certain emotion about

- Content that argues that/why this emotion does (not) fit this object

3. According to action tendencies Surrounding paragraph contains reference to:

- Action that is taken or has to be taken as a result of certain emotion - Emotion evaluated as

consequence of action

- Content that argues that/why this action does (not) fit this emotion

4. Normative constraints discourse genre Surrounding paragraph contains: - Reference to rules of parliamentary

debate

- Reference to goals of parliamentary debates

- Content that argues that/why this emotion does (not) fit this genre 5. Vague/other

Surrounding paragraph does not fit one of the four

criteria set out

Step 3

Legitimation of emotion 1. Legitimation

Surrounding paragraph contains content that proves the speaker argues in favor

of certain emotion

2. Illegitimation

Surrounding paragraph contains content that proves the speaker argues against

certain emotion 0. None

0. None

3. Vague/other

Surrounding paragraph does not fit one of the two criteria set out

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22

5 Analysis

5.1 How often is a mentioned emotion in Dutch parliamentary debates part of an argumentative construction of emotions?

As described in the theoretical framework and methodology, I will answer this question by encoding the found emotional markers. Table 3 and 4 show the results in Atlas.ti on the selected emotions. Interestingly, some emotional markers do not appear very often, while previous research showed that these markers appeared in a comparable quantity as others that are in this case far more present13. Also, these numbers suggest that the terrorist attack subject is by far the most emotional. However, answering the third sub-question I will examine if these markers are not only utterances of emotional words, but parts of argumentative constructions of emotions as well.

Emotion group→ Debate ↓

Anger Compassion Fear General

feeling Pride Shame Trust Totals

Refugees 1 0 0 6 8 1 2 3 20 Refugees 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 2 9 Refugees 3 5 0 9 3 3 2 25 47 Climate 1 0 0 5 4 0 0 4 13 Climate 2 1 0 6 8 1 0 5 21 Climate 3 2 0 0 4 1 0 6 13 Terrorist attacks 1 10 1 59 17 4 0 6 97 Terrorist attacks 2 2 1 35 12 6 0 9 65 Terrorist attacks 3 6 6 27 15 4 1 4 63 Totals 26 8 152 73 20 5 64 348

Table 3 - Findings emotional markers per debate

Table 4 - Findings emotional markers per debate subject

13_{For example, Sanchez Salgado (2017) found in her case of refugee debates in the European} Parliament that the presence of shame related markers was comparable to those of fear, while in this thesis fear is found much more often as an emotional marker in both refugee debates as other debates. In addition to this, Sanchez Salgado showed that compassion was a present emotional marker in these refugee debates, while my findings display zero findings of compassion in refugee debates.

Emotion group →

Debate ↓ Anger Compassion Fear General _feeling Pride Shame Trust Totals

Refugees 5 0 20 13 4 4 30 76

Climate 3 0 11 16 2 0 15 47

Terrorist attacks 18 8 121 44 14 1 19 225

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23 Encoding the found emotional markers provides data about the frequency of argumentative constructions of emotions in Dutch parliamentary debates. An overview of these frequencies is displayed in figure 5. To investigate these frequencies, I will first address cases in which none of the steps were present, followed by the cases with only evaluation or legitimation. Last, I will analyse the cases with more present steps.

First, figure 5 shows that there were 32 emotional markers (9%) where none of the three steps of argumentative construction of emotions is present. In these cases, the naming of an emotional marker could be described as an adjuvant to the argument of the parliamentarian, in which no further attention is paid to this certain emotion (see examples 1 to 314). Though, while some of these cases might be clear (like example 2), in others one could still argue that a parliamentarian implicitly argues an emotion. For example, when a listener would manage a broad conception of argumentation and takes implicit argumentation into account, he could interpret example 1 as an argumentative construction of why someone should not have trust in the prime minister, therefore arguing against an emotion.

As addressed in the literature review, implicit argumentation should not be forgotten when analysing argumentation. Since there are not always direct references present to a person or group, a type of evaluation or legitimation, it is not possible to make hard assumptions on the presence or absence of argumentative constructions of emotions in parliamentary debates. Therefore, the theory of Micheli should be expanded to accommodate implicit argumentation. However, the complexity of reconstructing implicit argumentation should not be underestimated, as this is one of the common barriers in argumentation science as well (Van Eemeren and Snoeck Henkemans 2011). As for now, it cannot be ruled out that with another conception or more clear description of how to deal with implicit argumentation the markers without steps could also be objects of argumentation.

Second, of the cases with steps the most common step to appear is attribution. This seems logical since an emotion is felt by a certain individual or group to which a parliamentarian can assign it. Furthermore, it is somewhat remarkable that there are also twenty cases in which attribution does not appear, but evaluation and/or

14_{All quotes in this thesis are displayed in Dutch to preserve the authenticity of the language. Also, the} numbers of the debates are displayed in the methodology section.

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24 legitimation does15. In most of these described cases, the pronounced emotion is approached as a universal emotion, using constructions like ‘the fear’ or ‘the trust’ without saying whose emotions these are or who should feel these emotions (examples 4 and 5). Considering that emotions are often not accepted in political discourse, as set out in the literature review (Fischer 2010: 412; Van der Valk 2003: 316; Carbó 1992), parliamentarians might use these constructions to prevent others from criticizing their statements. This also suits with Kleres’ statement about how the western subject is supposed to be rational/unemotional.

15_{In six cases an emotional marker was only evaluated or only legitimated (both three times), but not} attributed. Next to this, there are fourteen cases with both evaluation and legitimation of the named emotion, but no present attribution.

Example 1: none of the three steps by Van Haersma Buma (CDA) in debate 3

‘’Alles is erop gericht de stroom naar nul terug te brengen. We zijn inmiddels een maand verder en het loopt alleen maar meer vast. Het was de zoveelste loze belofte van de premier. Gisteren nog beweerde hij dat er nog maar een paar honderd vluchtelingen per dag naar Griekenland komen. Het zijn er echter duizenden, gisteren nog. De enige belofte die de minister wel nakomt, is die aan Turkije: zicht op visumvrijheid en lidmaatschap van de EU. Dat wekt geen vertrouwen. Deze premier toont geen leiderschap. Hij loopt aan de leiband van Turkije.’’

Example 2: none of the three steps by Samsom (PvdA) in debate 8

‘’Voorzitter. De afgelopen dagen zijn talloze woorden gesproken. Woorden van medeleven. Bemoedigende woorden. Zoekende woorden. Dat is goed. Het is nodig, maar het is niet genoeg.’’

Example 3: none of the three steps by Samsom (PvdA) in debate 9

‘’De samenwerking in Europa moet dwingender worden opgelegd, anders komt er niets van terecht. Dat blijkt het meest pijnlijk uit de gang van zaken rond de terrorist El Bakraoui, een ex-crimineel, die is aangehouden bij de Syrische grens. Hij is ongezien via Nederland naar België teruggekeerd. Dat kan dus niet. Het is goed dat het kabinet nu afspraken wil maken met de Turkse autoriteiten, maar het geheel laat een ongemakkelijk gevoel en ook vragen na. Hoe zit het bijvoorbeeld met de informatie die de FBI een week voor de aanslagen gaf over deze man en zijn broer? Waarom werd Nederland daarover geïnformeerd? Wat is er met die informatie gedaan?’’

Example 4: evaluation and illegitimation without attribution by Pechtold (D66) in debate 9

‘’De voorstellen van de heer Wilders spelen in op angst (...) die niet gegrond en niet doordacht is.’’

Example 5: evaluation and (il)legitimation without attribution by Wassenberg (PvdD) in debate 8

‘’Angst is een slechte raadgever. Ik zou het kabinet willen aansporen om de angst die voelbaar is in de samenleving en ook in dit huis vandaag niet weg te wuiven – dat gebeurt ook niet – maar deze vooral niet aan te wakkeren.’’

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25 Third, to answer how often Dutch parliamentarians use emotional markers as part of argumentative constructions of emotions, the results indicate that in one third of all found markers all three steps are present, therefore creating full argumentative constructions of emotion according to Micheli’s theory. Although these results should not be enlarged since this is only one case study in which using one encoder could create some uncertainties, they do clearly indicate that Dutch parliamentarians argue emotions.

After laying out the numbers of full argumentative construction of emotion, I will look at the substantive consequences of the presence of only one or more steps. As described in the theoretical framework, this thesis compares the steps of evaluation and legitimation to the justification and convincing components of the definition of argumentation. Because of this, it follows logically that to successfully argue in

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26 favour or against an emotion it is more important to include evaluation and legitimation than to include attribution. Example 6 shows that without evaluation a parliamentarian can clarify that he has the opinion that someone should not have a certain emotion, but he does not make clear why. Example 7 shows that without legitimation, a parliamentarian can evaluate why someone feels or should feel an emotion, but it is not explicit if this parliamentarian thinks it is good or bad to have this emotion. Thus, not including evaluation or legitimation creates a case in which the components of argumentation are not present, whereas this is not necessarily the case when attribution is absent. This also shows in examples 1 and 2.

As Micheli’s theory provides no guidance or consequences for cases where one of the three steps is absent, it might be useful to augment the theory on this subject. Nevertheless, as this thesis is built on Micheli’s current theory, for now I will consider a case with full argumentative construction of emotions as a case with all three steps.

Example 6: attribution and legitimation without evaluation by Kuzu (fraction Kuzu/Ozturk) in debate 8

‘’De gebeurtenissen stellen onze samenleving voor een enorme beproeving. Kiezen wij als samenleving voor polarisatie, angst en haat of kiezen wij voor eenheid, lef, vrede en vrijheid? Ik kies voor het laatste.’’

Example 7: attribution and evaluation without legitimation by Klaver (GL) in debate 8

Voor de rest waren het alleen maar nieuwsberichten waarin u werd geciteerd en die u retweette. U was boos op journalisten die misschien niet positief genoeg over u hadden geoordeeld. U was boos op deze premier omdat hij medeplichtig was. U wilde premier worden. Ikke, ikke, ikke, ikke. Nogmaals, mijnheer Wilders: wat zegt het over u dat u op deze manier met dit verschrikkelijke drama omgaat?

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27 5.2 How do the different options within the three-step approach appear in Dutch parliamentary debates?

To answer this question, I will take a closer look at the different options within the steps that Micheli distinguished. First the degree of occurrence of the different options is examined. After this, I investigate the qualitatively aspects of the options.

Figure 6 displays how often a certain option occurs within a step. As for the step attribution, other-attribution is most often used, followed by consecutively self-attribution, vague attribution and no attribution. As for step 2, it seems that when parliamentarians use evaluation, they most often use evaluation regarding action tendencies. This is not very surprising, since one of the purposes of parliamentary debates that was addressed in the literature review is ''to reach commonly acceptable goals regarding future policies and suitable lines of action at a national level'' (Ilie 2003: 73). Besides, the results indicate that the four existing criteria are sufficient to encode all cases. Last, legitimation and illegitimation occur in equal frequencies.

However, concerning the qualitatively aspects, each step shows its own notable findings. First, in cases with ‘vague/other attribution’ parliamentarians often referred to ‘we’ or ‘us’, which could for example be 'we, the Dutch people'. This 'we' can be considered as both self- and other-attribution16. Parliamentarians might use the 'we/us-construction' (examples 9 and 10) to give listeners - both the other parliamentarians as Dutch citizens who watch a certain debate - a feeling of belonging to the addressed group, without putting the speakers' self above this group.

Second, parliamentarians almost never evaluated emotions with reference to the constraints of the discourse genre (example 11). Thus, it seems like arguing against a certain emotion because it does not fit the genre is not something parliamentarians do often in contemporary debates. This is unexpected, since the common prevailing opinion is that public language must be professional and unemotional (Van der Valk 2003: 313), which creates ground to suspect that when parliamentarians utter emotional language other parliamentarians will argue against it. A possible explanation regarding previous literature could be that other parliamentarians do not want to be associated with this unwanted emotional behaviour since they desire to keep their conduct as adequate (Mohammed 2015: 228-229).

16_{This cannot be confused with more direct referrals to a group of which the speaker is a part that are} encoded as self-attribution, such as 'my fraction' or 'my party' (example 8).

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28 Lastly, there were a few cases where a parliamentarian spoke both against and in favour of emotion (examples 5 and 10). To my analysis, parliamentarians might use this construction when they want to argue against an emotion, while at the same time acknowledging the emotions of the people. Not acknowledging these emotions might result in losing votes. Presumably there are other explanations as well, but since this thesis only shows how certain argumentation appears and not why, this requires further research.

Example 8: use of ‘my fraction’ by Thieme (PvdD) in debate 7

‘’Mijn fractie heeft veel hoop en vertrouwen geput uit alle vreedzame stille tochten en demonstraties waarin mensen gezamenlijk een indrukwekkend signaal hebben afgegeven tegen terrorisme. Laten we werken aan een samenleving waarin geen mens zich buitengesloten hoeft te voelen of zich minder hoeft te voelen dan de ander.’’

Example 9: use of ‘we/us-construction’ by Krol (50PLUS) in debate 9

"Juist daarom is het zo belangrijk dat democratische samenlevingen pal blijven staan voor de waarden van vrijheid, beschaving en openheid. We moeten waakzaam en scherp zijn, en we nemen extra maatregelen als dat nodig is. Maar de angst mág en zál ons niet gaan regeren."

Example 10: use of ‘we/us-construction’ and use of both legitimation and illegitimation by Pechtold (D66) in debate 8

‘’Gun de terroristen niet dat hún doel, angst zaaien, onze levens beheerst. Ik begrijp de machteloosheid bij mensen. Die voel ik zelf ook, maar leef die machteloosheid van je af. Ga door met leven en ga door met werken, niet gewoon, niet alsof er niks gebeurd is, maar ga wel door met leven.’’

Example 11: evaluation regarding normative constraints discourse genre by Pechtold (D66) in debate 7

‘’De VVD komt met mitrailleurs voor agenten. De minister heeft daar dankzij de VVD al jaren het geld niet voor, en die mitrailleurs zullen er morgen ook niet zijn. De heer Zijlstra is geen wapenexpert. Hij dient het debat wat mij betreft niet te gebruiken voor korte retoriek, maar om mensen angst te ontnemen. Dat doe je niet met machinegeweren voor — wat waren het? — een supermarkt, of een redactiekantoor.’’

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29

Figure 6 - Overview of options within steps

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30 5.3 Is there a difference in the use of argumentative constructions of emotions between the three analysed debate subjects or different political parties?

5.3.1 Debate subject

When it comes to a different use of argumentative constructions of emotions between the three analysed debate subjects, I expected that all subjects would show similar results. However, the numbers of found emotional markers suggest that the terrorist attacks subject is more emotional than the other two subjects. In this paragraph I will address if this also shows in the argumentation around these emotional markers by displaying both the numbers of the present steps and examples to attribute content to these numbers.

Terrorist attack debates demonstrate as expected the highest use of all possibilities (see appendix 2). Though, to be able to compare the three subjects, figure 7 shows the percentage of each category in relation to the total amount of markers in that subject17. This exhibits relative differences between the subjects, with each subject their own outlier. First, refugee debates display more often no steps than the other subjects. As addressed earlier, in these cases emotional markers can to some extent be seen as adjuvants to argumentation. Since the goals of parliamentary debates are both position-claiming and decision-making, argumentation is required to meet these goals (Ilie 2003: 73). Therefore, the quality of refugee debates might be negatively influenced by often using emotional markers without argumentative construction.

Second, climate debates show a relatively large amount of cases with attribution and evaluation, but no legitimation. In these cases, parliamentarians do provide their fellow workers with the convincing component of argumentation, but do not justify the named emotions (example 7). However, this is prabably less affecting than no steps, because parliamentarians are more likely to complete the argumentative construction due to automatically assimilating implicit argumentation with help of the present evaluation. As a result, these cases contribute more to the goals of parliamentary debates than cases with no steps.

Lastly, in terrorist attack debates using all three steps seems more common than in the other two subjects. When also taking into account that I found the most

17_{For example, if there were 76 found emotional markers in refugee debates and 19 of these cases are} only attributed, the graph shows a percentage of 19/76=25% for this category and subject.

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31 emotional markers in this subject, there are a lot of cases (81) in terrorist attack debates where the selected emotions are fully argued. This has two implications. First, by using many argumentative constructions of emotions, the results give the impression that emotions are really part of the critical discussion part in terrorist attack debates. Although this may be in an unconventional manner since emotions are often not seen as part of public discourse (Van der Valk 2003: 316; Carbó 1992), according to theory emotions are in these debates more contributing to reach the goals of parliamentary debates than in other subjects, as parliamentarians do in fact practice position-claiming and decision-making by arguing emotions. Second, since this thesis only uses twenty emotional markers within seven emotions, I reason that if more markers are taken into account, debates regarding terrorist attacks will show a high frequency of emotions as objects of argumentation. With this I conclude that the terrorist attack subject seems highly susceptible for argumentative constructions of emotions, more than refugee and climate debates.

In addition to these implications, the emotions in terrorist attack debates contain some predominant messages. What clearly emerges from these debates is that parliamentarians are on the one hand reasoning how they feel about the attacks and on the other hand arguing how others should feel regarding the attacks and the blaming of the Islam (examples 12 and 13). The latter is mainly done by right-wing populist party PVV, which is further discussed in the political party analysis.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Emotional marker without any step

Only attribution Attribution & evaluation, no

legitimation

Attribution & legitimation, no

evaluation

All three steps

Overview of steps within debate subjects

(% of all emotional markers within subject)

Refugees Climate

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32

Figure 7 - Overview of steps within different debate subjects, relative numbers

Example 12: arguing against fear by Van Vliet (one-man fraction) in debate 7

‘’Angst mag in onze samenleving geen drijfveer zijn om iets niet te durven zeggen omdat een ander je dan iets aan zou doen. Onze rechtsstaat moet de burger dan in bescherming nemen.’’

Example 13: arguing both own fear as someone else’s fear by Zijlstra (VVD) in debate 8

‘’We hebben allemaal de beelden gezien, denk ik. Ik keek er geschokt naar. Was dit werkelijk Parijs? Gebeurde dit werkelijk in onze vrije, westerse samenleving, op een paar honderd kilometer afstand? Ik realiseerde mij dat dit angst oproept: angst bij mensen die hiernaar kijken, angst dat een terroristische actie als deze ook hier kan plaatsvinden, angst om zelf nog een drukke plek te bezoeken, angst dat in de grote vluchtelingenstroom die ons land bereikt, ook terroristen kunnen zitten of, nog erger, dat die terroristen hier gewoon zijn geboren en een westers paspoort hebben. Iedereen voelt die angst. Ik ook.’’

Example 14: arguing anger against islam by Wilders (PVV) in debate 7

‘’Voorzitter. Ik ben ontzettend boos. Ik ben ontzettend kwaad. Mijn fractie is eerlijk gezegd woest. Woest dat er door de islam weer onschuldige slachtoffers zijn gevallen: joden, islamcritici en onschuldige mensen. Mijn fractie is ook ontzettend boos omdat er weer dezelfde politiek correcte reacties komen: de ontkenning van de islam als de oorzaak, en het niet veiliger maken van Nederland. Ik vraag me af hoeveel debatten er nog nodig zijn. Hoeveel aanslagen moeten er nog plaatsvinden? Hoeveel onschuldige doden moeten er nog vallen voordat het kwartje valt en voordat het kabinet en de meerderheid van deze Kamer wakker worden? Het is om gek van te worden. Ik snap er helemaal niks van. Daarom maak ik me daar oprecht ontzettend boos over. Dat is niet alleen omdat ik ook zelf op de hitlist van Al Qaida sta, maar omdat het gaat om de veiligheid van Nederland en de veiligheid van Nederlanders.’’

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33

5.3.2 Political parties

After addressing debate subjects, this thesis investigates the quantities and qualitative consequences regarding political parties. Figure 918 shows that VVD and PVV are responsible for most full argumentative constructions of emotions, followed by PvdA and D6619. Because one could argue that the members of a cabinet20 could use other strategies than parliamentarians due to their more formal role, figure 10 includes a separate category for cabinet members. The results indicate that cabinet members use less full argumentative constructions, since nine out of 49 markers showed all steps, opposing to one third with all findings. Also, the VVD is in this situation no longer at the same level as the PVV.

It might seem logical that VVD, PvdA and PVV use full argumentative construction of emotions most, as they were the biggest parties during Rutte II (see figure 8). However, in each debate there was a clear representative of each party that was speaking on behalf of his/her whole party in that debate. Also, the institutional rules of Dutch parliamentary debates do not dictate that the talk time per party is adjusted by number of seats, which gives each party the same starting point (TK 2017).

18_{‘Other’ contains one-man/two-man fractions originated by separation of a parliamentarian from his} original party (in this case fractions Klein, Van Vliet and Kuzu/Ozturk), as well as submitted motions by the members of the Second Chamber.

19_{The absolute numbers of emotional markers per political party are displayed in appendix 3. VVD} scored highest, followed by PvdA and D66.

20_{Cabinet members are both ministers as state secretaries. The two governing parties in Rutte II were} VVD and PvdA.

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34 Figure 11 displays the relative use of the different steps by each party. As formulated in the theoretical framework, I expected both the right-wing populist party (PVV) and left-wing parties, in this case PvdA, GL, SP and PvdD21_{, to use more}

argumentation of emotions than other parties. The indications of the results to this expectation are varied. On the one hand, it seems evident that the PVV owns the biggest contribution to all cases with all three steps, both in absolute as relative numbers (figure 10 and 11). PvdA is also responsible for many cases with all three steps, but in relation to all markers the number of cases with full argumentative construction is not striking.

On the other hand, it seems like SP and GL do not use argumentative constructions differently than other political parties. The PvdD uses this phenomenon slightly more often, but also not manifold. In addition to this, when looking at other parties than the ones of which this phenomenon was expected, the VVD is a notable more frequent contributor than most left parties. The same applies to a certain extent to D66. Both these parties uttered a lot of emotional markers and used argumentative constructions of emotions for these markers in an average way. Lastly, Christian parties (CDA, SGP and CU) use little emotions as objects in their parliamentary language. This could be the case as Christian parties are rather conservative and the

21_{NRC (2016) published an article in which they mapped political positions of all parties from Rutte II.} Based on this article I determined which parties are reviewed as ‘left parties’.

19% 16% 19% 3% 4% 12% 3% 6% 1% _9% 2% 6%

Distribution political parties in

cases with all three steps

(n=114) VVD PvdA PVV SP CDA D66 CU GL SGP PvdD 50PLUS Other 16% 11% 19% 3% 4% 12% 3% 6% 1% 9% 2% 6% 8%

Distribution political parties in

cases with all three steps,

cabinet members apart (n=114)

VVD PvdA PVV SP CDA D66 CU GL SGP PvdD 50PLUS Other Cabinet

The emotional Dutch parliamentarian : a research into the use of emotions as objects of argumentation in Dutch parliamentary debates