Research in persuasive communication has provided a taxonomy of source characteristics which are thought to add to the efficacy of a communicator's persuasive attempt. However, it is argued that much research has neglected an adequate description of the way in which communicators do not purely position themselves as the sole author of their utterances but often cite other sources as corroborators or endorsers of their message. The current research explores these issues through an analysis of extracts drawn from a range of televised political discourse broadcast in the UK and USA. From the present analysis it is argued that politicians deploy cited others whom they construct as offering apolitical, expert and counter‐interest warrants for their claims. However, far from being fixed ‘psychological objects’, it is argued that such source characteristics are ‘to‐be‐constructed’ resources, accomplished to suit the immediate argumentative context.
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Paul Dickerson (1997) studied this question.