HUMANİTAS 4(1)

Siyasal Söylemde Tersinlemebelieve what we say. On the other hand, irony is a device with pluralenunciations.That is why, in this study, the aim is to tackle first bypragmatically, then rhetorically and humoristically the questions of howand why irony is employed in political discourse, and to what extent itplays a role in persuading the others, Hence, another purpose of the studyis to probe the role in argumentation which can be defined as "all sorts ofdiscourse strategies and reasoning styles we employ to persuade thelisteners".The sample sentences of the study will comprise the speechesdelivered by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of themain opposition and Republican People's Party, Kemal Klçdaroğlubetween June 13 and 25, 2013 in the Turkish Grand National Assemblyduring the Gezi protests and demonstrations reverberating all aroundTurkey on May 31, starting with the contest for the urban developmentplan for Taksim's Gezi park. The study will make use of the theoreticalframework of linguists such as Kerbrat-Orrechioni, Charaudeau andBerrendonner grounded in the analyses of the discourse, pragmatic andsemiotic principles.Keywords: Political Discourse, Irony, Rhetorics, Figures of Rhetorics,Polysyllabification, Argumentation, Humour.224