Two pragmatic analyses of one argumentative discourse

This research aims to distinguish the pragma-dialectical approach from the cognitive pragmatic one to argumentative practices, by means of comparing how each is applied to a randomly selected text, which is a political column written by the novelist Alaa Al-Aswany, and published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Shorouq, in 2009.
The pragma-dialectical approach is primarily concerned with reconstructing the argumentative discourse, with the help of Searlean conditions of speech acts and Gricean maxims. This reconstruction boils down to specifying the relevant elements that are instrumental in resolving difference of opinion between parties involved in a critical discussion. Specifying such elements helps a “theorist” evaluate the argumentative discourse at issue by viewing to what extent it is committed to norms of reasonableness.
By contrast, the cognitive pragmatic approach is concerned with identifying how the cognitive system of an “ordinary” arguer functions when receiving a discourse, and how this system works at the levels of inference and assessment. This approach shows a specific interest in illustrating how arguers would constraint the context aiming at producing an interpretation of the discourse at issue, that is in accordance with their persuasive goals.  

 Arguers usually make use of some “cognitive shortcuts” to achieve such an aim. Hence, this research suggests a new shortcut that can be called the “victim-perpetrator” shortcut which directs an interlocuter to process information in view of a limited number of assumptions, ignoring other relevant ones.