Unit 2 — Political Discourse, Advanced

Track E · Klasse 13 · Niveau E (Basisfach / Leistungsfach) · Abitur year

Template: Activate → Input → Practise → Produce → Reflect.
Niveau: E. Abitur (school-leaving examination) Klausur prep across the year.
Course tagging: basic course (Basisfach, E-BF) and advanced course (Leistungsfach, E-LF).

Learning objectives Link to heading

  • I can read / listen to longer political discourse and identify rhetorical structure, register-shifts, and dog-whistle vocabulary.
  • I can use advanced rhetorical-analysis vocabulary (dog whistle, framing battle, scripted spontaneity, agenda-control, loaded antithesis).
  • I can write a 450-word rhetorical-analysis essay sustaining argument.

curriculum framework (“Bildungsplan”) alignment Link to heading

  • 3.4.1 / 3.5.1 Soziokulturelles Orientierungswissen / Themen
  • 3.4.3.1 / 3.5.3.1 Hör-/Hörsehverstehen
  • 3.4.3.2 / 3.5.3.2 Leseverstehen
  • 3.4.4 / 3.5.4 Text- und Medienkompetenz

(Sources: https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-LF / https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-BF)

Lead-in story Link to heading

The class read the full text of three Westminster Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) sessions from different administrations. The shared question: how does each speaker control the agenda of the exchange when given six minutes? The class noticed that agenda-control is rarely about the topic; it is about which question gets answered with which answer.

1. Activate Link to heading

Agenda-control scan. With your partner, list 3 tactics a politician uses to redirect a question without obviously refusing to answer.

2. Input Link to heading

Reading — three PMQs paraphrased Link to heading

Speaker A answers a question on housing by shifting to the broader cost-of-living frame. Speaker B answers a question on immigration by deploying a loaded antithesis (not whether but how). Speaker C answers a question on climate policy by attacking the questioner’s constituency record. All three speakers are, technically, answering. None is doing what the question asked.

Vocabulary — advanced rhetorical analysis Link to heading

dog whistle, framing battle, scripted spontaneity, agenda-control, loaded antithesis, ad hominem, whataboutism, ideological scaffolding, prebuttal, talking-point discipline, register-shifting.

3. Practise Link to heading

Niveau E — controlled Link to heading

  1. Match: dog whistle → coded signal to a base; whataboutism → deflect via counter-accusation; scripted spontaneity → rehearsed casualness.
  2. T or F: agenda-control means refusing to answer; register-shifting means changing accent; loaded antithesis hides agreement inside contrast.

Niveau E — productive Link to heading

  1. Identify in each PMQs paraphrase: agenda-control tactic + register-shift + one rhetorical move.
Answer key

Controlled. 1. all true. 2. F (agenda-control means redirecting), F (register-shifting = formal-to-informal etc.), T.

Productive. 3. Open.

4. Produce Link to heading

Rhetorical-analysis essay, 450 words. Pick one of the three PMQs. Identify rhetorical structure, register-shifts, and any dog-whistle vocabulary. Use 6 advanced rhetorical terms + 4 integrated quotes + 7 academic discourse markers + 2 cleft structures.

Sample Link to heading

Speaker B’s answer to the housing question is, technically, an answer; politically, it is a framing battle conducted at speed. The questioner asked: what will the government do about the 47,000 social-housing waiting list in this constituency? The Speaker’s response opens with a loaded antithesis — the question is not whether but how — that refuses the binary the questioner implicitly offered. Accordingly, by the third sentence the topic has migrated from social housing to the broader cost-of-living frame, where the Speaker has prepared talking-point discipline. The agenda-control move is recognisable but not, in this case, dishonest; it is, more specifically, a register-shift from constituency-particular to national-general, and the data the Speaker cites is real. By contrast, the dog-whistle vocabulary is where the analyst has to be most careful. The phrase those who play the system sits inside what looks like a neutral defence of housing allocation rules; the phrase, however, has a documented coded history in this party’s communications since 2018. It is precisely the phrase, more than any single argument, that signals to the activist base. More specifically, the scripted-spontaneity at the close — a self-correction that lets the Speaker repeat the dog-whistle phrase while appearing to reject it — is the most structurally manipulative move in the answer. In this regard, what looks like agenda-control is also a small, repeatable trick: include the loaded phrase, frame it inside a self-correction, and trust the activist base to hear the phrase, not the correction. It is precisely the layered structure that makes the answer rhetorically effective and analytically interesting. The questioner’s reply, in the next exchange, successfully forces the Speaker back to the 47,000 figure. The Speaker concedes the figure. The concession is, predictably, framed inside a second loaded antithesis — not whether the figure is real but what we are doing about it. The PMQs format rewards this kind of layered control. Caution is warranted; not every redirected answer is a dog whistle. Some are simply policy disagreement.

5. Reflect Link to heading

  • I can identify rhetorical structure, register-shifts, and dog-whistle vocabulary.
  • I can use 6+ advanced rhetorical-analysis terms.
  • I can write a 450-word rhetorical-analysis essay.

One thing in your notebook: Write one sentence using something you learned in this Unit.

Exam example Link to heading

Klausur (assessment) — Niveau E (Abitur-grade)
This Unit’s exam example follows the Abitur task pattern named in the Unit. Some Units focus on a single Abitur-task type (Comprehension / Analysis / Composition / Mediation / Kommunikationsprüfung); the full 90-BE Klausur is rehearsed in Klasse 12 Units 11-12 and continues in Klasse 13 Units 7-9.
Inhalt / Sprache split. Basisfach (basic course): 50/50. Leistungsfach (advanced course): 40/60.

Comprehension Link to heading

Listen / read twice.

“Speaker B’s answer opens with a loaded antithesis — the question is not whether but how — that refuses the binary the questioner offered. The topic migrates to the cost-of-living frame. The phrase those who play the system is a documented dog whistle in this party’s communications since 2018.”

  1. Loaded antithesis: ___ . 2. Topic migration: ___ . 3. Dog whistle: ___ . 4. Documented since: ___ .

Analysis Link to heading

Read the three PMQs paraphrases above.

  1. Speaker A’s tactic: ___ . 2. Speaker B’s tactic: ___ . 3. Speaker C’s tactic: ___ . 4. The shared feature: ___ .

Composition / Mediation / Reflection Link to heading

Composition prompt: Analyse the rhetorical structure of Speaker A in 350 words. Use 4 advanced rhetorical terms + 3 markers + 1 cleft.

Additional task Link to heading

Mediation prompt: A 250-word German Bundestag-Rede excerpt with documented dog-whistle vocabulary. Mediate the rhetorical stance for an English-speaking political-rhetoric researcher. (Source provided in class.)

Expected-answer profile (Erwartungshorizont) — sample
Comprehension. 1. not whether but how; 2. social housing → cost-of-living; 3. those who play the system; 4. 2018. Analysis. 1. shifts to broader cost-of-living frame; 2. loaded antithesis (not whether but how); 3. ad-hominem on questioner’s constituency record; 4. all three answer technically without doing what the question asked. Composition. Open. Mediation. Open.
grading scale (Notenschlüssel) — Abitur-grade Klausuren

| 86–90 | 1+ | 81–85 | 1 | 76–80 | 1- | | 71–75 | 2+ | 66–70 | 2 | 61–65 | 2- | | 56–60 | 3+ | 51–55 | 3 | 46–50 | 3- | | 41–45 | 4+ | 36–40 | 4 | 30–35 | 4- | | 22–29 | 5 | 0–21 | 6 | | |

(Single-section Klausuren in this year scale to the proportional BE-weight of the section in the full Klausur.)

Downloads Link to heading

**Slide deck timing.** 90 minutes total (Doppelstunde — typical in the Oberstufe). Lead-in 6 min · Activate 8 min · Input 25 min · Practise 15 min · Produce 30 min · Reflect 6 min.

Differentiation. Basisfach (basic course): tighter argument, clearer moves. Leistungsfach (advanced course): sustained analysis, integrated quotation, complex thesis. Some Klasse 13 Units (e.g. Unit 9 Analysis) explicitly differentiate by candidate path.

Common pitfalls Link to heading

  • Don’t accuse without evidence — dog whistle claims need a documented coded history.
  • Agenda-control is not synonymous with bad faith.
  • Quote integration is part of the analysis, not a decoration.

Further reading / listening Link to heading

  • Sam Leith, You Talkin’ to Me? (later chapters).
  • George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant! (framing).

Downloads

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