Manipulation in Spanish and American pre-election political debates: The Rajoy–Rubalcaba vs. Obama–McCain debates

In this paper, we make a comparative analysis of two pre-electoral debates belonging to two different traditions – the 2011 Rajoy–Rubalcaba debate and the first 2008 Obama–McCain debate – in terms of the manipulative processes used. For that purpose, we compare the similarities and differences in the use of the genre contributing to manipulation in the two debate traditions. Also, we identify the manipulative devices employed following