“Then why not Show the Evidence?” Concluding Maneuvering by Appealing to Ignorance at China’s Diplomatic Press Conferences

Abstract

Drawing upon the pragma-dialectical treatment of ‘appeal to ignorance’, the neutral counterpart of the fallacious argumentum ad ignorantiam, this article aims to reveal how this kind of argumentative move is used as a mode of concluding maneuvering by the spokespersons in their replies at China’s diplomatic press conferences. As expounded in Wu (2019a, 2019b, 2023), in responding to the journalists’ questions, the spokespersons conduct as a matter of fact simultaneously two critical discussions: one with the critics quoted by the journalists, the other one is with the international general public that may be deemed their primary audience. The first critical discussion is instrumental to the spokespersons in convincing the international general public of their stances in the second critical discussion. As the research results show, in the critical discussion with the critics, the Chinese spokespersons prototypically use three types of appeal to ignorance in the concluding stage, while in the critical discussion with the international general public they use the appeal to ignorance in the empirical counterpart of the argumentation stage with the aim to undermining or even negating the critics’ credibility/reliability before the international general audience.