Virtual dialogues in monologic political discourse


 This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing
 different policy options in terms of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual
 projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidential, mood, and
 modality patterns. Privileged future involves the speaker’s preferred, or at least acknowledged vision and is articulated through
 absolute modality and evidential markers which derive from factual evidence, history, and reason. Oppositional future involves an
 antagonistic and plainly threatening vision, expressed by probabilistic modality and (usually) the interrogative mood. Following
 the principle of psychological consistency in belief, oppositional future is normally communicated first, allowing for a swift and
 strong response from the privileged future expressed in the speaker-preferred vision.