A Pragmatic Study of Concealment in Tony Blair ’ s Speeches on Iraq War

Concealment, among other crucial notions appeared during the process of political discourse analysis, means hiding the truth by one of the parties participating in the communication event who intends to deceive the other party. It is either the manipulation of information or changing the truth whether intentionally or unintentionally or a deceptive strategy. It is considered as one of the means used by politicians to achieve certain goals and aims, of them is influencing the behaviors, desires, beliefs and emotions of their audience to their self-interests. The main concern of the current study is to discuss the concept of concealment in Tony Blair’s speeches on Iraq during the time of UN sanctions on Iraq and during the time of the preparation for the war on Iraq. The study is carried out with the aim of specifying the concealment criteria, pinpointing the strategies of concealment used to fulfill each stage of concealment, and finally highlighting the pragmatic strategies of concealment resorted to by Blair in his speeches and finding out which pragmatic strategies score higher frequency in these speeches. The findings show that the main aim of Blair in concealing facts in his speeches is to achieve persuasion. To achieve this aim, pragma-rhetoric devices, as a pragmatic strategy, are highly used and they score the highest frequency.


Introduction
Interpersonal communication is not as simple as saying what one means; what one means and how one says what he/she means is crucial and differs from one person to another.It is a matter of the language employed and it is influenced by each person's aims and goals whether he/she aims to deceit, conceal, lie, mislead, or tell the truth.The intentional distortion of the information during the interpersonal communication aims at manipulating the actual information by means of falsification, concealment, telling half truth and deception.This eventually leads to the alteration of informing and thus, leads to arouse a new discipline of studying deception and consequently the emergence of the deception theories.
Concealment as well as Fabrication, distortion, equivocation, composes Information Manipulation Theory (henceforth IMT) (McCornack, 1992, p. 11) from which Interpersonal Deception Theory (henceforth IDT) is derived.The discussion in the following sections will start form IMT to IDT reaching concealment.

Concealment and Information Manipulation Theory (IMT)
The main job of manipulation, as Goodin (1980, p. 59) says, is "intentionally and directly influencing someone's beliefs, desires and/or emotions such that he falls short of the manipulator's ideals for belief, desire and/or emotion in ways typically not in his self-interest or ways that are likely not to be in his self-interest in the present context."Van Eemeren & Groodentorst (1984) make remarkable contributions to the study of manipulation when they characterize argumentation as a complex speech act.Although they don't provide a clear-cut definition of manipulation but suggested that manipulation must be intentional on the part of the speaker or writer and for successful manipulation this intention must remain hidden.
Eminent intentionality is one of the main characteristics of manipulation.There is no manipulation without the intention to manipulate.This intentionality should be hidden; if the manipulative discourse manifests itself as such is not manipulative (Parret, 1987, pp. 254-258).The manipulative intent should be dissimulated.
The original IMT is concerned with the content of the message as well as in a given context of situation in which it is delivered.It suggests that "when deceiving others, people manipulate information in myriad ways that align with the maxims proposed by philosopher Grice (1989)" (McCornack et al., 2014, p. 350).The speaker may choose to omit, alter or falsifies certain facts intentionally to let the receiver believes in what is set in advance to be untrue information.The process of perception from the part of the receiver of this information is called information manipulation.McCornack et al. (ibid.)refer to Grice (1989, p. 26) in discussing the Cooperative Principle (henceforth CP): "Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."They say that: Specifically, during interaction, people orient to four maxims: Quantity (the amount of relevant information that is shared), Quality (the veracity of shared information), Manner (the way in which disclosed information is expressed), and Relation (the relevance of disclosed information).People expect that these maxims will be adhered to as part of a broader norm governing rational human discourse… (McCornack et al., 2014, p. 350) IMT adopts Grice's maxims and the (CP) as bases for describing deceptive message.The relation between IMT and IDT is that the former views deception as a result of obvious violations of one or more of Grice's four maxims (quality, quantity, relevance, and manner).The violations of quality result in the falsification of information, the violations of quantity result in "lies of omission"; the violations of relevance result in deception by evasion; and deception by equivocation results from the violation of manner.Besides, the violation of these maxims triggers conversational implicature; a deductions about intending meanings that exceed the literal meaning of the spoken words.McCornack (1992) is the first who launch IMT in which he studies interpersonal communication and later, in the second article, McCornack et al. (1992) provide an empirical test of that theory.
Manipulative utterance, using McCornack's (1992, p. 11) scale, involves undetected concealment, fabrication, distortion and equivocation of the truth.The communicator, who intends to manipulate his addressee, works on hiding relevant information which could affect addressees' decisions IMT, according to McCornack (1992) also refers to the difference between deception and collaboration and cooperation between speakers and hearers that occur during the process of flouting these maxims."When one deceives, one violates a conversational maxim; but does so covertly."McCornack (ibid.,p. 13) clarifies the natural implication of IMT.He says that "people have at their disposal indefinite numbers of ways they can play with or "manipulate" information in deceiving others," and concludes that IMT "given that conversational interactants possess expectations regarding information quantity, quality, manner, and relevance, it is possible for speakers to violate any or all of these expectations in attempting to deceive listeners" (ibid.).
In a further development of the theory, McCornack et al. (1992) propose an empirical test of the original IMT.They give an example about two partners who are engaged in a love story.Suddenly, they want to break down their relationship.McCornack et al. (ibid.)propose two ways in doing so: either they use "Bald-faced lie (BFL) or bald-faced truth (BFT)" (McCornack et al., 2014, p. 349) and say that: The tacitly presumed production model dominating deception research suggests that in contexts such as this (The love story), people will produce one of two message types: a bald-faced lie ("BFL") or a bald-faced truth ("BFT") (ibid.).
Example about BFL: No, Chris, there isn't anything wrong.I'm just stressing about exams (ibid.).
Example about BFT: Chris, I haven't been honest with you.I don't feel the same about you or our relationship (ibid.).
These two versions of IMT agree on the fact that IMT is an integrated part of IDT.It is believed that the deceptive messages are results of blatant violations of one or more of Grice's maxims exactly as (IMT) does.Baron (2003, pp. 40-45), further identifies multiple type of manipulation.They are: 1) Deceptive Manipulation: this type includes outright lying to the target by making false promises, misleading the target by encouraging false assumptions or fostering self-deception that is gone to the advantages of the manipulator or getting the target to view things differently or interpreting the situation in the light favourable to the manipulator's purpose (ibid., p. 40).They published their first paper on deception in which they maintained that "people will "leak" emotional (nonverbal) behaviour when being deceitful."They specify certain behaviours such as "knitted brow", "shifty eyes", "twitching fingers" that are leaked when deception occurs.They propose the term "leakage" to refer to non verbal behaviours which are shown by the one who tries to deceive others which express his/her true emotion.They further argued that deception occurs on the strategic level which is the intentional manipulation of deceptive cues and the non strategic level which is the deceiver's nonverbal behaviors.
IDT, as a linguistic theory, is introduced for the first time in 1988 by David Buller and Judee Burgoon.They are considered as the founders of this theory.Later in (1994), they differentiate between intentional and unintentional deception.They say that "messages that are unintentionally misleading are usually described as mistakes, gaffs and the like." They continue developing IDT. They, in (1996, p. 205), define deception as "a message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the receiver… deception occurs when communicators control the information contained in their messages to convey a meaning that departs from the truth as they know it."For Buller & Burgoon, deceivers achieved their goals by manipulating information through falsification, concealment, or equivocation: Falsification is the creating of a false story i.e., "lying"; equivocation is defined as a dodging the relevant information; concealment is simply defined as the hiding of a "secret" (Buller & Burgoon, 1996, p. 98).
They explain the deceptive messages as a messages which are typically consist of three components; they are namely: a) the central deceptive message (usually verbal in nature), b) ancillary messages (verbal or nonverbal) bolstering the verisimilitude of the deceptive message or protecting the source in the event deception is detected, and c) inadvertent behaviours (mostly nonverbal) divulging deceptive intent and/or the "true" state of affairs ("leakage" and "deception" cues" (ibid., p. 209).The most important types are the central and the ancillary messages.These two types function intentionally to foster credibility.Deception, as a communicative action, arouse from an interaction between the sender and receiver.From this point, Buller & Burgoon (2004, p. 239) depart and launch a new development of their theory of interpersonal deception.They say that deception is found in newspapers and Television where we find people use all manner of deceptions; politicians lying about their private lives, businessmen covering their deals, etc.It is all around us.And further, they (ibid., pp. 4-5) say that deception in IDT is an intentional act by which senders consciously transmit messages with the intention to send a false information or interpretation by the receiver and to accomplish this act, they specify three classes of strategic activity; these strategies are: information, behaviour, and image management.The term management implies that "deception is a motivated behaviour undertaken for a purpose" (ibid., p. 5).The purpose here indicates the benefits the sender gains, although it appears that these benefits are to be for the receiver or for a third party in the conversation.These three strategies work hand in hand to establish a believable message.They illustrate these strategies in the following example: "a student suspected of cheating might tell her professor, "I did not look at my neighbor's exam" (information management) while crossing her arms to avoid nervous gestures or body movements (behavior management) and smiling to appear honest (image management)" (ibid.).They (ibid., p. 6) specify several factors to determine the process of deception since such a process is considered as a challenge because of its subtlety.These factors are: "contextual factors, senders' and receivers' pre-interaction, pre-existing knowledge, the positive or negative valence of the relationship between conversational partners, and initial expectations for honesty within the exchange" (ibid.).These factors show who hold a relative advantage during deceptive episodes, the senders or receivers?They elaborate on these factors and divide them into: "Input factors" and "Relational Factors".Input factors (ibid., p. 7) includes: Context Factors: They see "whether the sender of deceptive messages interacts in real-time with the intended recipients of those messages or not."They call it the concept of "interactivity."People usually during interpersonal interaction expect their counterpart part in the conversation to be honest and truthful.These expectations are increased as long as the interaction process increases.During the interactivity, the senders "should increase the strategic activity (e.g., briefer utterances) and decrease non-strategic behaviour (e.g., fewer pauses) in highly interactive circumstances," (ibid., p. 8) while Relational Factors refers to the nature of the relationship between the sender and the receiver that influences the "process and outcomes of deception.The most important relationship features are relational familiarity and relational valence" (ibid., p. 10).
Relational familiarity includes both "informational and behavioural."People in relation with others usually have more knowledge about one another and more familiar with the behaviour of each other.Such familiarity enables the receiver to detect the deceptive messages.Besides, the shared history also makes the partners recognize how each one behaves in the conversation.Thus, it helps them to recognize the deviations from normal patterns better and consequently, to detect the abnormal responses.
In IDT, the sender's nonverbal behaviors can signal dishonesty.Buller & Burgoon (2006, p. 103) provide four reasons for the appearance of such leakage: First, the deceiver's motivations to manage the information can create efficient performance; Second, deception increases physiological activation; Third, the main feelings of the deceiver are guilt and anxiety; and Four, the complex cognitive factors involved in deception can tax the brain beyond its capacity (ibid.).This theory has been continuously developed by successive scholars.McCornack (1992, pp. 5-6), for instance, suggests that deceptive messages covertly violate one or more of conversational maxims.He, through IMT, provides a pragmatic explanation for why deceptive messages deceive: Because the violation is not made apparent to the listener, the listener is mislead by her/ his assumption that the speaker is adhering to the CP and its maxims… (ibid.).This means that the principal claim of IMT is that the deceptive messages are derived from covertly violations of Grice maxims.These kinds of violations are not clearly apparent to the listener, therefore, the listener is eventually misled by his/her assumptions that the speaker is abiding by the CP of conversation and by Grice maxims.
As far as political speeches are concerned, deception in political discourse can be analyzed depending on the acts by which the content of a message is communicated (Van Eemeren et al., 2013, p. 355).So the strategies of deception will differ depending on the situation in which the politicians told their speeches.

The Concept of Concealment
Now a day, concealment, as shown above, has been dealt with from manipulative and deceptive perspectives.Scholars who are interested in manipulation, on one hand, consider concealment as one of manipulation strategy.
One of them is McCornack (1992, p. 11) who considers concealment as one of four manipulation strategies; these are namely, Fabrication, distortion, equivocation and concealment.On the other hand, scholars who are interested in deception theories consider concealment as one type among other three types of deception; they are: "fabrication (outright lying), equivocation (being vague and ambiguous), or concealment (with holding relevant information)" (Burgoon & Buller, 2004, p. 16).Hancock et al. (2004, p. 130) consider concealment, exaggeration, falsification and equivocation are deception strategies beside lying.As far as concealment is concerned, they define it as hiding a secret and it occurs when one presents information and does not say that it is incomplete which consequently, let others to create wrong assumption.Furthermore, concealment is used for hiding truthful information and prevents others from knowing the truth.It is called negative concealment.But it is not always negative; sometimes it is used in order to prevent problems (Ekman, 2009, p. 288).Blass (2005, p. 173) considers omitting information with a hiding intention is concealment, thus concealment becomes a strategy of manipulation here.He (ibid., p. 170), identifies manipulation as "definitely a form of deception."Blass's notion of concealment goes hand in hand with Fanaian's (2016, p. 68) point of view who considers concealment as an inherent characteristic of manipulation.Manipulation, from the psychological perspective at a social level, "is a form of social influence with the goal of changing perception or behavior […] the manipulator should conceal his or her aggressive intentions."Concealment, using Carson's (2010, pp. 56-57) words, contains in itself the deception or the intention to deceive.He differentiates between concealing information and withholding it from the deception point of view.He asserts that withholding information may not convey the attempt to deceive especially in business cases where the business person has no professional commitments to provide such information (ibid.),while in fact the essential characteristic of concealing information is the intention and the attempting to deceive.In other words, it is the way by which the sender of the message chooses certain facts from the message to omit or change or hide them.Van Prooijen & Lange (2016, p. 3) agree with Carson and consider concealment as a means of misrepresenting or withholding information to mislead others as well as one of dishonest strategies which people may use to get an illegal benefit for themselves.
The above discussion shows that while studying concealment, one should refer to IMT and IDT equally.Both theories consider concealment as one of its components and speakers in general, and politicians in particular, should use concealment if they intentionally want to manipulate or deceive their audience and consequently they persuade them.

Concealment: A pragmatic Perspective
The main pragmatic perspective of manipulation, deception and subsequently concealment is flouting Grice maxims.McCornack (1992, p. 11) adopts Grice's (1989) conversational maxims and fundamentally relies on conversational implicature in his classification of manipulation into: Fabrication, distortion, equivocation and concealment.These four strategies correspond to the four Grice's conversational maxims.The conversation should be informative as needed (quantity), truthful and complete (quality), illustrates relevant information (relevance), and how it is said clearly and precisely (manner).Grice's four maxims need to be followed by during communication, otherwise, manipulation, deception and subsequently, concealment necessarily occurs as a result of the violation of these maxims in the following ways: "The violation of quality involving falsification of information, the violation of quantity involving omission, the violation of relevance involving evasion and the violation of manner involving equivocation.In other words, certain facts are omitted, altered, falsified, withheld or presented before others in a vague manner" (Mittal, 2013, p. 5).
The pragmatic dimension of concealment also covers several pragmatic theories as well as contextual factors as concealment is manipulated just to achieve certain aims and goals linguistically.It is the process that can be identified through the presence of breaching conversational maxims, rhetorical devices, certain personal deixis, Politeness theory, and fallacious arguments because these pragmatic strategies are necessarily needed to achieve the speaker's goals and aims and make the speeches pragmatically achieved.

Breaching Grice's Maxims of Conversational Implicature
Concealment is the product of the breaching of Grice maxims as the main pragmatic tool in producing concealment.Grice (1975) argues that a person can interpret what someone else says by adhering to cooperative principles and its maxims (what Grice calls "implicatures").The CP says that you should "make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged" (Grice, 1975, p. 45).The CP is based on the maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner.He assumes that people in conversation are cooperative and follow four maxims: Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner.
Breaching these maxims mean that the norms of conversation are deliberately and intentionally broken and the speaker knows that the hearer shall recognize that he breaks these maxims.Grice (1975, pp. 41-58) identifies four flouting possibilities: 1-The flouting of the maxim of quantity takes place when the speaker blatantly provides inadequate information and gives more information than the situation requires.
2-The flouting of the maxim of quality takes place when the speaker blatantly says something untrue or for which she\he lacks adequate evidence.
3-The flouting of the maxim of relation comes about by making a response or an observation which is very obviously irrelevant to the ongoing talk exchange.
4-The flouting of the maxim of manner occurs when the speaker does not avoid obscurity and ambiguity.Since ambiguity is a common linguistic phenomenon, so it is hard to be fully observed.Nevertheless, when ambiguity is used in certain contexts, the hearer may deliberately distort what the speaker has said to convey extra message.

Rhetorical Devices
The important question to be raised here is what makes rhetoric fall within the scope of pragmatics?The answer is that the relationship between pragmatics and rhetoric is deeply rooted.Pragma-rhetoric's crucial goal is to link rhetoric with pragmatics and combine, at the same time, communicative intention and persuasive intention.It is, as Sadock (2006, p. 318) asserts, the suitability of language within a particular situation regarding various contextual factors as the main area of pragmatics.
The concept of rhetorical pragmatics is early referred to by Walton (2004, p. 21) as "the use of a proposition to carry out a goal in an argument or to make language very effective within a particular context as through the use of figures of speech."The logical property of pragmatic effect, as Walton claims, is to successfully convince or persuade a respondent.

Pragma-Rhetorical Devices
Rhetorical pragmatic devices include argumentation appeals and rhetorical figures of speech.These are considered as powerful tools of deviation that characterize rhetorical means combined with pragmatic devices.

Argumentation Appeals
The relationship between rhetoric and argument can be seen through their aim of persuasion.Many rhetoricians (Van Emeren & Grootendorst, 2004, p. 43;Walton, 2007, p. 127) for instance, explain arguments as rhetorical means of persuasion by pragmatically appealing to the emotional state of the listener (pathos), the character of the writer (ethos), or to the reason itself (logos):

1-Ethos
It is the rhetorical pragmatic strategy that refers to the ability to persuade which is directly affected by the credibility of the person.Credibility is the degree to which a statement, a person, and / or a company is perceived to be ethical, trustworthy, and sincere.It is strongly related to the audience's perception of how believable a speaker is.It is an attitude that exists in the mind of the audience (Walton, 2004, p. 171).

2-Pathos
Pathos is a term that is sometimes referred to as "emotional appeals".Emotions, as Walton (ibid.)indicates, move us to act and motivate us to do things.Emotional appeals are intended to make listeners feel afraid, compassionate, proud, angry, shameful, and the like.As such, the appeal to pathos is directed towards the emotions of the audience.In many situations, emotion remains the most powerful persuasive factor.Where logical arguments sometimes fail, emotions often have the power to motivate people to respond and act.

3-Logos
The third rhetorical pragmatic strategy of the argument is the appeal to reason or what is referred to by Walton (ibid.,p. 332) as the logical appeal (logos).It is the best standard one can reasonably hope to achieve in any natural argument when s/he provides an evidence of a particular proposition.Kennedy (2007, p. 4) points out that logos refers to the internal consistency of the message, the clarity of the claim, the logic of its reasons, and the effectiveness of its supporting evidence.The impact of logos on an audience is sometimes called the argument's logical appeal.& Mick (1996, p. 3) argue that any proposition can be expressed in a variety of ways.One of these ways is the use of rhetorical figures of speech.There are many figures of speech that can be viewed from different linguistic fields, such as phonology, syntax and pragmatics.Levinson (1983, p. 109) asserts that a figure of speech is an artful deviation from the norms.It occurs when an expression shows a deviation from conventional communication either in form or in content.McQuarrie & Mick (1996, p. 3) classify figures of speech into two types: Schemes and Tropes.A figure of speech in the schematic mode involves a deviation from the ordinary pattern or arrangement of words.It is a change in the standard word order or pattern, e.g., repetition, ellipsis.By contrast, a figure of speech in the tropic mode involves a deviation from the ordinary and principal signification of words, e.g., pun, hyperbole (ibid.).

McQuarrie
For the purpose of this study, only tropes are appropriate since their pragmatic consideration helps to advance the ideas of the present work as they are rhetorical pragmatic strategies from the specifications of flouting Grice's maxim in given situations.

1-Tropes
McQuarrie & Mick (1996, p. 6) consider tropes as figures of speech that provide hearers with incomplete or vague information.They imply messages that do not mean exactly what they are.To effectively comprehend these messages, hearers are required to infer and resolve the inconsistencies within the messages and assign the appropriate subjective meaning.
McQuarrie & Phillips (2008, p. 6) distinguish two types of tropes: destabilization and Substitution.Destabilization tropes include pun and metaphor and substitution tropes include overstatement, understatement, and rhetorical question.

A. Destabilization tropes
The pragma-rhetorical operation of destabilization tropes, as Van Mulken (2003: 119) sees, involves the use of an expression whose meaning is indeterminate in its context.These destabilizers are pun and metaphor: 1-Pun Bussmann (1996, p. 968) regards the destabilizer as a pragmatic strategy of 'word play' in which a word or phrase unexpectedly and simultaneously combines two unrelated meanings.Pun evokes disparate meanings in context where each applies differently.

2-Metaphor
Davis (1998, p. 12) thinks that the rhetorical pragmatic strategy of metaphor is to depend on flouting the maxim of quality.It suggests a comparison between two different entities to arouse imaginative interpretation of one in the light of the other.McQuarrie & Phillips (2008, p. 8) identify metaphor as a substantial or fundamental resemblance between two terms.One does not expect to see these two terms associated but does so in a pragmatic way that opens up new implications.

B. Substitution tropes
The pragma-rhetorical operation of substitution is referred to by McQuarrie & Mick (1996, p. 6) to be a selection of an expression that requires an adjustment by the message recipient in order to grasp the intended meaning.Van Mulken (2003, p. 116) states that in this type of tropes, one says something other than what is meant and relies on the recipient to make the necessary correction while Leech (1983, p. 145) considers substitution, as a rhetorical pragmatic strategy, a case where a speaker's description is stronger than the actual situation.It is detected from the flouting of the maxim of quantity.
Within destabilization, the meaning may go different, while in substitution, it sways in a scale.For the pragma-rhetorical end of this study, three types of substitution tropes are considered.They are rhetorical question, understatement and overstatement: 1-Rhetorical Question Sathoff (2002, p. 3) states that rhetorical questions are probably as old as public speaking itself.This technique, as Abrams (1993, p. 183) asserts, is often used in persuasive discourse, i.e., for pragma-rhetorically persuading someone of a truth without argument.Harris (2005, p. 3) defines rhetorical question as a questions that "is not answered by the writer, because its answer is obvious or obviously desired, and usually just a yes or no.It is used for effect, emphasis, or provocation" (ibid.).Anderson (2007, p. 12) considers this rhetoric strategy working on pragmatics as it flouts the maxim of quality and does not expect an answer.It is seen as a question that is meant to have an obvious answer and can be interpreted and reformulated as a declarative sentence expressing a proposition.

2-Understatement
This pragma-rhetorical figure of speech is recognized by Cruse (2006, p. 186) as generating implicatures through saying something different from what the writer/ speaker intends to convey.He (ibid.)considers understatement as a statement of the quantity or intensity of something that is less than what its natural state is.It is the opposite of overstatement but similar in the flouting of the maxim of quantity.Harris (2005, p. 5) defines understatement as a means which "deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact."When the writer's audience can be expected to know the true nature of a fact which might be rather difficult to describe adequately in a brief space, the writer may choose to understate the fact as a means of employing the reader's own powers of description.For example, instead of endeavoring to describe in a few words the horrors and destruction of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, a writer might state.

3-Overstatement
Cruse (2006, p. 80) points out that this figure of speech involves deliberate exaggeration for pragmatic effect to increase impact or to attract attention.
The researcher will choose tropes figures of speech of the above mentioned pragma-rhetorical devices to be part of the model of the analysis.These figures are appropriate for the current study as they help the speaker to deviate from the norm by flouting the maxims of conventional interaction and, in turn, give rise to many pragmatic figures of speech.
As far as the rhetorical devices are concerned, the following devices that are set by Tindale (1999, p. 5) are found to be ultimately appropriate for this study.Therefore, the decision was made to add them to the model of the analysis to enrich the model with these rhetorical devices that are specifically prepared for the politicians.Tindale (ibid.)observes three devices employed by politicians; they are: profound words, padding and weasel words.

a. Profound Words
These are words that have a great impact on the hearer when receiving them, like: (great, terrible, superb, magnificent…etc.)(ibid., p. 23).

b. Padding
It is the process of adding significant-sounding sentences here and there that in fact say nothing or little (Cavender & Kahane, 2006, p. 163).

c. Weasel Words
These are locutions that seem to make little or no change in the content of a certain construction or statement, while, in fact, sucking out all or most of its content (ibid.).These devices are seen in chapter three: section 3.3.2.Levinson (1983, p. 55) considers diectic expressions as pragmatics because they directly relate between the structure of language and the contexts in which they are used (ibid.).

Diectic Expressions
He, further, categorizes plural pronouns by encoding them as "we" and "they," (ibid., p. 41) and makes a distinction between the inclusive "we", which includes the speaker and the hearer when the speaker is one person asking another about something they share or would both like to do and the exclusive "we", which excludes the speaker from the hearer (ibid.).
The main aim behind employing the continuum "I, you, we" is that the speaker tries to persuade the hearer to crossover to his ideological position, and accordingly, to achieve his main aims and purposes.Chilton & Schaffner (1997, p. 216) assert that they are an effective means that enhance the legitimization of the speaker's action.For instance, all inclusive "we" can be used by the speaker to bring on to his side the hearer in his ideological and power positioning.Chilton (2004, p. 140) defines the "We", and its variants, "our", "ours" and "us", as the representative of "the coalescence of the voice of the person with the voice of the people" (ibid.).
The politicians' selection of these variants in political discourse is never arbitrary, according to Wilson (1990, p. 21) and Fairclough (2001, p. 33).Wilson (ibid.,p. 87) and Fairclough (ibid.,p. 22) confirm that politicians use those personal deixes mainly to persuade people, make alliances, attack, or express an ideological basis.As well as, they show the in group and out group, identity and membership (ibid., p. 33).

Politeness Theory
The politeness theory by Brown & Levinson (1987) provides politeness strategies in spoken interaction.They say that "all competent adult members of a society have (and know each other to have) face" (Brown & Levinson 1987, p. 61).
They (ibid., p. 58) state several strategies for positive and negative politeness.Certain strategies that are surely proper for this study will selected from positive and negative.From positive politeness, the following strategies are employed: 1) Claim common ground This group consists of eight strategies; it involves the speaker (S) and hearer (H) both belong to some set of persons who share specific wants, including goals and values.There are three ways for making this: S may convey that some want (goal, or desired object) of H's is admirable or interesting to S too; or he may stress common membership in a group or category, thus emphasizing that both S and H belong to some set of persons who share some wants; or S can claim common perspective with H without necessarily referring to in-group membership (ibid., p. 103).
The outputs of these three methods of stressing common ground give us positive-politeness strategies.Out of eight positive politeness strategies which fall within this mechanism, the researcher selects the following ones which are suitable for the current study: 1-Notice, attend, to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods) "S should take notice of aspects of H's condition (noticeable changes, remarkable possessions, anything which looks as though H would want S to notice and approve of it.)"(ibid., p. 103) This requires the speaker to notice the hearer's wants and needs and behave accordingly (ibid.).

2-Seek agreement
It allows S either to stress his agreement with H and therefore to satisfy H's desire to be "right", or to be corroborated in his opinions by raising safe topic.One of the best strategies of seeking agreement is through raising safe topics Another aspect of seeking agreement is repetition: it is the process of repeating part or all of what the preceding speaker has said, in a conversation.It is used to stress emotional agreement with the utterance (or to stress interest or surprise) (ibid., p. 112).
2).Convey that S and H are cooperative Brown & Levinson (1987, p. 125) say that this is the second major class of positive-politeness strategies.This mechanism can be achieved through out the following strategies: a. Be Optimistic This involves showing optimism towards what the speaker wants the hearer to do (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 126).
b. Include both S and H in the activity "By using an inclusive "we" form, when S really means "you" or "me", he can call upon the cooperative assumptions and thereby redress FTAs." (ibid., p. 127) Let's in English is considered as an inclusive "we" form.
From the negative politeness, the second type of politeness, (ibid., p. 129).The following strategies are employed in the model of the analysis: 1-Being Indirect Directness causes threat to the hearer's face.Hence, the speaker should be indirect in order to avoid such threats (ibid., p. 132)

2-Being Pessimistic
This involves showing pessimism towards what the speaker wants the hearer to do (ibid., p. 173).

Fallacy
Many scholars make different approaches to fallacy.Among the most important scholars are Walton (1995, p. 23) who defines fallacy as "an argument […] as used in a context of a dialogue […] and poses a serious obstacle to the realization of the goal of a dialogue."Walton's main motivation for the study of fallacy is his observation that there are factors that make certain argument fallacious.He meets Aristotle's definition of fallacy in one point that is the concept of fallacy has an element of deception on the dialectical level (ibid.: 14).Other scholars are Van Emeren & Grootendorst (1999), who study fallacy from a pragma-dialectical perspective.Johnson (2000, p. 4) discusses that fallacious argument as the form of argument which violates one of a good argument rules.He (ibid., pp.208-209) concentrates on two forms of fallacious arguments: the "dialectical tier" which is the argument where the arguer can discharge obligations on his opponent and the "illative core" as a structure composed of the elements of premise, warrant, and conclusion.
Johnson (ibid.)provides four criteria for evaluating fallacious arguments; they are: acceptability, truth, relevance and sufficiency.If an argument constitutes a violation of one or more of these criteria or rules, it will then be considered as fallacious.
1-Acceptability Johnson (2000, pp. 194-195) states through his definition of acceptability criterion that each element in an argument should be put in a way that the hearer finds it acceptable; otherwise, it can't achieve a rational persuasion.
This criterion has been considered as a pragmatic one because the requirement of acceptability must be understood in terms of a dialectical situation of interacting between a proponent and a respondent in a certain context (ibid.).
When this criterion is applied to a certain premise the arguer should know whether such a premise would be acceptable by his addressee or not (ibid., p. 201).This applicable in studying concealment process where the result of acceptability criterion is that if the speech hasn't been accepted for the speaker means that he intentionally conceals certain facts and information.

2-Truth
This criterion is first used by Grice (1975) as a sub maxim of the maxim of quality of the CP.According to Grice (ibid.,p. 67), the speaker should say things that he believes to be true and avoid saying what is false.
Then, Johnson (2000, pp. 197-198) makes use of this criterion to judge arguments whether they are fallacious or not.It judges the truth vs. falsity of certain utterance and violating it may result in fallaciousness.This criterion has been violated in concealment when the speaker makes use of the omission of certain facts.However, this criterion is used heavily by the speaker in order to affect the hearer's choices.

3-Relevance
This criterion is first tackled by Grice (1975) as one of the cooperative principle maxims which, according to him (ibid., p. 72), states that the speaker must be relevant in what he says to the context in which he is involved.
According to Johnson (2000, p. 203), this criterion can be used to judge fallaciousness of an argument.What kinds of relevance means for Johnson is the propositional relevance to distinguish it from topical relevance and audience relevance (ibid.).In this sense, relevance is considered to be as a property of the premises that must be applied to the evidence presented to support the conclusion.Relevance has been dealt with as a pragmatic criterion because what is considered to be relevant in one context may not be in another (ibid., p. 208).
Sometimes politicians, in their attempt to conceal the truth, try to switch the conversation to a different topic.Thus, they violated the relevance criterion to achieve their ends.

4-Sufficiency
According to this criterion, enough evidence should be presented to prove the target claim (ibid., p. 209).It is also considered to be a pragmatic criterion in the sense that: first, what is sufficient in one context may not be so in another; second, it is closely related to Gricean maxim of quantity (ibid., p. 255).
In conversation, the hearer assumes that the speaker will provide the relevant information as informative as required.But, if the speaker chooses to manipulate so he will conceal critical information.This omission of information gives a deceptive nature to the conversation (McMcornack, 1992, p. 11).Walton (2007), besides other scholars, takes the responsibility of developing this theory.Fallacy, according to Walton (2007, p. 159), is a crafted means of deliberate deception.It is presented in the context as a means of influencing someone to accept something in the argument or claims presented mainly before the fallacious argument.That's why the researcher feels necessary to discuss this concept and related it, as a process, to the concept of concealment, the main subject of this study.Damer (2009), on the other hand, concerns himself with the results of violating the criteria of acceptability, relevance and sufficiency while the fallacy that results from violating the truth criterion has been the concern of Luque's (2011) model.
Fallacy, as a process, has a starting point and an end point and it is a dynamic entity that moves through different stages toward a collective goal based on the collaborative conversation (Walton & Reed, 2003, p. 12).Walton & Godden (2007, p. 8) suggest that the process of fallacy occurs on three stages: 1-The start-point stage: in which the arguer presents the main topic in the form of argument in order to persuade the participant to take an action concerning the topic in question.
2-The argument stage: in which the arguer employ the fallacious argument to reinforce the previous argument in a deliberately manipulative way.
3-The end point stage: in which the role of the participant in evaluating and responding to the fallacious argument comes.
Politicians strongly rely on fallacious argumentation to accomplish their aims and goals.They, among others, are highly interested in using fallacy to persuade the targeted audience.Their tools are rhetorical persuasive linguistic elements by which they aim at influencing others' beliefs and values as well as changing their thoughts and attitudes.To achieve their aims, they totally neglected reasonableness of argumentation and focus on the emotions of the addressee who may be convinced by such fallacious argument (ibid., p. 21).They are after effectiveness rather than reasonableness, thus they prefer principles of influence like fear, pity, emotion, interest, flattery, value, reciprocity as well as appeals to social beliefs, self-interest, threats and finally to authority and power they are authorized to (ibid., p. 30).

Contextualization of Concealment
In dealing with pragmatic concepts, context becomes a must concept in this argument since utterances can have different meanings in different contexts.The misunderstanding of any text by the hearer comes from constructing and selecting a wrong context in interpreting the speaker's utterances.The fact that the same utterance can have different meanings in different contexts is very important to be explored.Van Dijk (2002, p. 225) necessitates the availability of the factor of context as well as intended aims and the participants to say that this is a political discourse.No political discourse is so called unless it is delivered in political situations.A context for Van Dijk is a mental representation or model constructed by the speech participants of or about a certain situation.
The theory of context of situation for the current study is of Hymes ' (1972, pp. 13-53).Hymes' S P E A K I N G model of context is of great suitability for the present study.These contextual factors are: 1) Setting and Scene: Setting is the time, place and physical circumstances in which the event occurs whereas scene is the psychological setting, i.e. the cultural definition of a setting which comprises the degree of formality and sense of seriousness.
2) Participants: This contextual factor covers the speaker, the hearer and the audience.
3) Ends: This means the aims and the goals of the speaker(s) in certain speech event besides the outcomes, i.e. the effects of the event.
4) Act-Sequence: This factor refers to the form and order of the event.
5) Key: It refers to the clues employed by participants in a speech event helping to demonstrate the tone, manner, or spirit of the speech act.6) Instrumentalities: Stands for the form and style of speech.7) Norms: Symbolizes both the social rules that grip the speech event in addition to the participants' actions and responses.8) Genre: This factor represents the type of discourse.
All these factors must be available in the political speeches in order to be realized as fully comprehended speeches; otherwise the participants will not be able to achieve mutual understanding.

Persuasive Argumentation in Concealment
Persuasive argumentation integrates the aims of argumentation with those of persuasion.The two aims do not conflict because there are situations by which one can accomplish a change in behavior to act easily by accepting a reasonable agreement.Persuasion aims work on reinforcement of a position since they go on stimulating an action.So the argumentation's knowledge integrates with the pragmatic persuasive effectiveness, therefore, they complete each other (Davidson, 2001, p. 15).
Normally, humans practice the activity of giving and asking for reasons due to their rationality and sociality characteristics (Luque, 2011, p. 2).He (ibid., p. vii) states three dimensions of argumentation: logic, dialectic and rhetoric.The three dimensions work as follows: logic which studies the links between sets of premises and conclusions of an argument which the interlocutors reach to them; dialectics looks at the argumentation as an activity of interaction where the participants argue to settle a difference of opinion and fallacious arguments, and rhetoric which is the persuasive arguments based on the beliefs of the target audience and helps the speaker to persuade them and.Thus, rhetorical argumentation aims to persuade others through choosing premises which display the principles of the specific audience.
Argumentation is "the use of crystal clear thinking-logic-and evidence to convince a person to adopt a particular opinion," while persuasion is "while trying to prove his/her point, a person uses emotional language and dramatic appeals to beliefs and values" (Nettel & Roque, 2012, p. 56).These two concepts seem contracted and overlapped but it is worth mentioning that there is an argumentative discourse without persuasion and persuasive discourse without argumentation, thus there is a kind of overlapping between these two concepts.This overlap is called "persuasive argumentation" (ibid., p. 55).
Persuasive argumentation shares common characteristics of argumentation as well as persuasion.But the former is the means while the latter is the end.This allows the fact that all "means for persuading are good, as long as they manage to reach their goal" (ibid., p. 59).Argumentation, from the means' point of view, supports a stand point and its domain is the knowledge, on one hand, while persuasion, on the other hand, means the acceptance of a position and its domain is seeking an action (ibid.).
Persuasive argumentation consists of the aims of argumentation plus the aims of persuasion.These aims complete each other because "those of persuasion go beyond the simple support of a position, since they actually seek to provoke an action," (ibid.)thus, argumentation aims join the pragmatic aims of persuasive effectiveness.
Speaking of means, persuasive argumentation has a wide range of compatible means that are combined together; that of argumentation is reasonableness and that for persuasion are pathos, ethos and rhetoric.Since persuasion and argumentation share the quality of reasonableness, it is possible to bridge them and combine them and call them "persuasive argumentation".Persuasion, on the other hand, and as O' Keefe (1990, p. 15) notices, cannot happen if the persuader has no freedom and free will therefore, the persuasive argument cannot occur unless there is a consent, i.e., the acceptance of the reasons given by the persuader himself, thus acceptance beside reasonableness lead to effectiveness.
As far as the persuasive argumentation is concerned with concealment, Van Dijk (2006, p. 361) considers the limits between persuasion and manipulation as indefinite and context dependent.It seems that Van Dijk (ibid.)agrees with the idea that persuasion has a covert nature and thus it will be manipulative when he differentiates manipulation from persuasion.He considers that manipulation is a form of persuasion but without its negative association because of its legitimate influence.So participants are free to believe the arguments of the persuader or not, while in manipulation, participants are assigned a passive role so they are victims of manipulation.
As far as this study is concerned, the political argumentation is its main scope of interest.It is a means of showing power and making definitely right decisions which meet the interest of the public and consequently persuading them to adhere to the speaker's aims and goals.These aims and goals are examples of political argumentations.They are not made randomly and unpredictably but are clearly recognizable by the observers and are heavily context dependent in which the details of any specific case are reflected (Van Eemeren & Houtlosser, 2009, p. 116).

The Model of the Analysis
The model intended to be developed here is an eclectic model based on borrowing some ideas and terms from other models which have been discussed earlier.
Each situation in the data under analysis is considered a situation in which concealment is obviously recognized.Such judgment is taken depending on the availability of the three criteria of: emotion, deception, and pressure to acquiesce in order to make a non-subjunctive and proper judgment on each situation.These three criteria should be available collectively or individually.After making such judgment, the analysis will start by identifying the concealment strategies.The analysis will be done throughout three stages.Each stage is different from the other stages in its own concealment and pragmatic strategies.In general, these stages are: the start-point stage, the argument stage and the end-point stage.
The start-point stage is the point where the speaker introduces the topic to be discussed or proved.In this stage, the speaker employs the concealment strategies of: fear, sympathy, sense of gratitude and feeling of guilt if the target does not consent to the speaker's wants.The speaker manifests this stage through using certain pragmatic strategies.These strategies comprise breaching Grice's maxims, personal inclusive deixis, politeness strategies, and rhetorical devices.
In the argument stage, the speaker issues an argument which is structured through violating the criteria of a good argument and CP.The argument stage involves concealment strategies of: self-deception, fake assumption, false promises, misleading, and outright lying.These components are realized through out the following pragmatic strategies: fallacy, breaching Grice maxims, politeness, rhetorical devices and deixis.
The end-point stage is specified for testing the effect of the concealment on the addressee.This stage is issued by the arguer as a means of influencing the addressee to show his evaluation and response to such arguments.This response is shown through the concealment strategies of: brow beating, wearing down other's resistance, making someone agree and give wrong reasons in favour of the speaker.These components are realized through out the pragmatic strategies of breaching Grice's maxims, politeness, personal inclusive deixis, and rhetorical devices.

The Data and the Analysis
The selected situations can be described as follows: They are political in genre, vary in length, concord in theme, and finally they have the same contextual factors as specified by Hymes' (1972, pp.13-53) S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G model of context.
The speech of Blair, delivered on March 18, 2003 in The House of Commons about foreign policy of the UK and on the war against Iraq, will be the subject of the analysis in this study.This speech was delivered couple of days before the war started.

Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to placate the implacable, to persuade towards reason the utterly unreasonable, to hope that there was some genuine intent to do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil. Now the very length of time counts against us. You've waited 12 years. Why not wait a little longer?
1-Criteria: The three criteria are obviously manifested in this situation.Blair tries to evoke his people's emotions by raising their feelings of guilt and by making deceptions through presenting fake assumptions, misleading and outright lying as well as by imposing pressure on them to adhere and comply with his assumptions.

2-Pragmatic Stages of Concealment
Blair's concealment stance is agitated by the following three stages: The Start-point Stage: This stage composed of and starts with the following sentence:

The Strategies of Concealment
Blair here raises the feelings of guilt inside his audience because if they don't consent to his proposals of dealing with the issue of Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction (henceforth WMD), there will be bad consequences for their refusal to use force with Saddam.For Blair, the only route to peace with someone like Saddam Hussein is diplomacy backed by force.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxims: He, covertly in this situation, breaches the maxim of quality because the UN issued a number of resolutions to deal with Saddam, but Blair ignores them and chooses the decision of war without the consent of the UN.
2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: To achieve his manipulative influence, Blair appeals to pathos and logos.
3-Politeness Strategies: They are represented by the strategy of "seeking agreement" through raising such a safe topic.

The Strategies of Concealment
1-Faked assumption: This strategy consists of delivering and faking untrue assumptions to the hearer: in this argument, the faked assumption, misleading and outright lying are quite clear when he says that "the world has to learn the lesson all over again that weakness in the face of a threat from a tyrant, is the surest way not to peace but to war." This assumption is untrue because the resolutions which have been issued by the UN don't show the weakness as Blair claimed but the UN issued number of resolutions by which it prevented the military actions against Iraq.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxims: As a reasonable consequence, he breaches the conversational maxims of quality and quantity.
2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: pathos and logos are jointly used by Blair to manipulate his audience.

b. Overstatement: The substitution trope of overstatement manifested itself in this sentence. "And now the world has to learn the lesson all over again that weakness in the face of a threat from a tyrant, is the surest way not to peace but to war."
c. Profound Words: They are realized by the words like "weakness", "threat", "tyrant", "peace" and "war".
3-Politeness Strategies: They are represented by the strategy of "seeking agreement".

4-Fallacy:
Concealment in this stage is realized through the pragmatic strategy of fallacy.Fallacious assumptions are presented here by using: a. Fallacious argument of Relevance; Manipulation of emotion.The speaker conceals the truth through the argument of manipulation of emotion by which the arguer tries to persuade others to accept a claim by appealing to their emotions instead of giving evidence for the claim.

Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to placate the implacable, to persuade towards reason the utterly unreasonable, to hope that there was some genuine intent to do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil. Now the very length of time counts against us. You've waited 12 years. Why not wait a little longer?
The Strategies of Concealment 1-Browbeating: Blair tries to make the audience agree with the decision of war against Iraq so he resorts to the means of browbeating by touching their feelings when he says "Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to placate the implacable".
2-Wearing down the Other's Resistance: Blair tries to wearing down the audience resistance to the decision of war against Iraq by encouraging them to believe that any resolution will be made without force, "to hope that there was some genuine intent to do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil", is, in fact, dangerous because this hesitation will be considered as a weakness and will be used against them.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxims: He breaches the maxim of quantity because he doesn't provide adequate information to support his claim.

2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices
a. Argumentative appeals: The three persuasive appeals of ethos, pathos and logos are collectively used to achieve the manipulative influence.
b. Rhetorical Question: Blair resorts to the substitution trope of rhetorical question "Now the very length of time counts against us.You've waited 12 years.Why not wait a little longer?" as a supportive manipulative strategy to make his audience accept what he says since the answer is obvious.c.Profound Words: They are realized by the words like "victims", "desire", "hope" and "evil".
3-Personal Deixis: They are realized by the first personal deixis expressions "we", "our" and "us" to attend manipulative ends since they strongly express an in-group feeling.
4-Politeness Strategies: Blair manipulatively resorts to "seeking agreement", "include both the S and H in the activity" and "claim a common ground" as a means of politeness strategies.

That is why this indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us. Dangerous if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us.
1-Criteria: Three criteria are employed in this speech.They are namely; emotion, deception and pressure to acquiesce criteria.Blair tries to evoke his people's emotions by raising their feelings of fear.The deception process continues by means of concealing facts and hiding actual situation in Iraq.Besides, he imposes his thoughts on his audience and forces them to accept his decision of attacking Iraq.

2-Pragmatic Stages of Concealment
Blair's concealment stance is agitated by the following three stages: The Start-point Stage: This stage starts with the following sentence:

The Strategies of Concealment
Blair, in this stage, depends on addressing the emotional side of the audience as well as strengthening their feeling of fear by saying that Saddam isn't cooperating to make them believe that Saddam is still developing WMD and consequently invoking them to accept his claims about Saddam and WMD by means of the following pragmatic strategies: The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment 1-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: Blair appeals to the audience emotions (pathos) as the most powerful means of manipulation.
b. Overstatement: Blair resorts to the substitution trope of overstatement as a pragmatic strategy here which serves to attract the hearer's attention to his claim But still no-one, not the inspectors nor any member of the security council, not any half-way rational observer, believes Saddam is cooperating fully or unconditionally or immediately.c.Profound Words: They are realized by the words like "hope", "cooperating fully", "unconditionally" and "immediately".
2-Personal Deixis: Deixis is realized by the first personal deixis "us" and "our" which have been employed by the speaker in an attempt to gain his addressees' empathy with the aim of manipulation since they strongly express an in-group feeling.
3-Politeness Strategies: Politeness is represented by the strategies of "claiming a common ground with the hearer" and "seeking agreement" as means of positive politeness.

The Strategies of Concealment
1-Fake assumption: This strategy consists of delivering and faking untrue assumptions to the hearer.Blair deceives the audience by making them believe that the UN has the ability to make resolutions concerning the issue of Saddam with WMD, but not its implementation.This is why Saddam considers, as Blair thinks, this hesitation as weakness against them and continues developing his program of WMD and this will encourages the other tyrannical regimes to do the same thing.
This assumption is untrue because though the UN issued number of resolutions by which it prevented the military actions against Iraq and started its implementation, but Blair and his coalition continued recruiting their armed forces and they actually started their military actions in Iraq.He is lying and misleading the audience throughout this faked assumption.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxim: As a reasonable consequence, Blair breaches the maxims of quality, quantity and relevance.
2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: logos and pathos are clearly manifested in this part of Blair's speech.
b. Rhetorical Question: Blair resorts to the substitution trope of rhetorical question "What would any tyrannical regime possessing WMD think viewing the history of the world's diplomatic dance with Saddam?" as a supportive manipulative strategy to make his audience accept what he says since the answer is obvious .c. Profound Words: They are realized by the words like "truth", "forcible disarmament", "weakness", "tyrannical regime", "diplomatic dance", "feebleness" and "implementation".
3-Personal Deixis: They are realized by the first personal deixis expression "our" to attend manipulative ends since it strongly expresses an in-group feeling.4-Politeness Strategies: Blair manipulatively resorts to a polite tone using "seeking agreement" and "claim a common ground" as a means of politeness strategies.5-Fallacy: Concealment in this stage is realized through the pragmatic strategy of fallacy.Fallacious assumptions are presented here by using: a. Fallacious argument of Relevance; Manipulation of emotion.The speaker conceals the truth through the argument of manipulation of emotion by which the arguer tries to persuade others to accept a claim by appealing to their emotions instead of giving evidence for the claim.

That is why this indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us. Dangerous if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us.
The strategies of Concealment 1-Browbeating: He tries to force and impose his standpoint regarding the war on his audience by saying that this indulgence to deal with a dictator like Saddam has to stop because it is dangerous.
2-Wearing down the Other's Resistance: Blair tries to wearing down the audience resistance to the decision of war against Iraq by encouraging them to believe that any resolution will be made without force is an indulgence and dangerous at the same time by saying that "if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us." The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment 1-Breaching Grice Maxims: Blair breaches the maxims of quality, quantity and relevance.He is considered to be uninformative by saying untrue and irrelevant claims.

a. Argumentative appeals:
Blair concludes what he has said by using the three persuasive appeals to achieve his manipulative end.
3-Personal Deixis: Blair exploits the inclusive "us" and "our" as a powerful manipulative pragmatic strategies since they strongly express an in-group feeling.4-Politeness Strategies: They are represented by the strategies of "seeking agreement" and "claiming a common ground" which are used by Blair to enhance his manipulative argument.

Faced with it, the world should unite. The UN should be the focus, both of diplomacy and of action. That is what 1441 said. That was the deal. And I say to you to break it now, to will the ends but not the means that would do more damage in the long term to the UN than any other course.
To fall back into the lassitude of the last 12 years, to talk, to discuss, to debate but never act; to declare our will but not enforce it; to combine strong language with weak intentions, a worse outcome than never speaking at all.1-Criteria: The three criteria are obviously manifested in this situation.Blair tries to evoke his people's emotions by raising their feelings of fear and by making deceptions through presenting fake assumptions, misleading and outright lying as well as by imposing pressure on them to adhere and comply with his assumptions.b.Fallacious argument of Relevance; Appeal to Force or Threat is also used.This kind of argument occurs when the arguer tries to persuade his respondents of a certain standpoint or a claim by threatening or frightening them of the bad results instead of exposing evidence for the claim or view.

The End-Point Stage
It is the stage of concluding the concealment process.It is used here to conclude the argument given in the previous stage.This stage is represented by the following sentence: To fall back into the lassitude of the last 12 years, to talk, to discuss, to debate but never act; to declare our will but not enforce it; to combine strong language with weak intentions, a worse outcome than never speaking at all.

The Strategies of Concealment
1-Browbeating: He tries to force and impose his standpoint regarding the war on his audience by saying that to declare our will but not enforce it; to combine strong language with weak intentions, a worse outcome than never speaking at all.
2-Wearing down the other's resistance: Blair is trying to get the audience to agree to the war resolution by reminding them that all they have done in the past years is just talk and discussions and their decisions have not found their ways to apply on the ground and this is actually far more dangerous than not to express their views so they have to implement the decision of war because this decision will ensuring their credibility in the future.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxims: Blair breaches the maxim of quality.3-Personal Deixis: This component is realized by the first personal deixis "our" which is used with the aim of claiming a common ground between the speaker and the hearer.
4-Politeness Strategies: The pragmatic strategies above are presented politely by means of "claiming a common ground", "seeking agreement" and "being pessimistic" politeness strategies.

Situation 4
To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest, turn the UN back into a talking shop, stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East; leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better.

Tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered. I will not be party to such a course. This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing. I beg to move the motion.
1-Criteria: The three criteria are obviously manifested in this situation.Blair tries to evoke his people's emotions by raising their feelings of their fear and sympathy and by making deceptions through presenting fake assumptions, misleading and outright lying as well as by imposing pressure on them to adhere and comply with his assumptions.

2-The Pragmatic Stages of Concealment
Blair's concealment stance is agitated by the following three stages: The Start-Point Stage: This stage starts with the following sentence: To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest, turn the UN back into a talking shop, stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East; leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better.

The Strategies of Concealment
Blair raises the sense of fear inside his audience by saying that retreat will make their efforts to maintain international peace at stake.He enumerates a list of critical issues that Western people are concerned with like the rule of the UN and the future of the Middle East and its effect on them.He also tries to draw the sympathy of the audience by mentioning the suffering of Iraqi people if they retreat from their decision of removing Saddam.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: is the influential appeal which expresses the values shared by the speaker and the hearer.It helps Blair drawing his audience attention to the credibility and reliability of his claims.Pathos is the most powerful persuasive appeal which has been used to attract the audience emotion.Then, he manipulates his audience logically to enhance his deceptive influence.

b. Overstatement:
To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest… on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better.
The substitution trope of overstatement is obvious in Blair's exaggeration in describing the risk of retreat from the decision of removing Saddam and consequently from the decision of war.c.Profound Words: They are realized by the words like: "retreat", "hazard", "dearest", "stifle" and "relinquished".
2-Personal Deixis: Deixis is realized by the first personal deixis "I" and "we" which have been employed by the speaker in an attempt to gain his addressees empathy with the aim of deception since it strongly expresses an in-group feeling.
3-Politeness Strategies: The pragmatic strategies above are presented politely by means of "claiming a common ground", "seeking agreement" and "being pessimistic" politeness strategies.

The Argument Stage
It is the second stage of achieving concealment.It starts with the following sentence: Tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered.I will not be party to such a course.This is not the time to falter.This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing.

The Strategies of Concealment
1-Fake assumption: This strategy consists of delivering and faking untrue assumptions to the hearer: in this argument, the faked assumption, misleading and outright lying are obviously clear.He is misleading the audience when he links the issue of removing Saddam with the fate and future of Britain and promoted this idea by saying "… at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered.I will not be party to such a course.This is not the time to falter.This is the time for this house….",in order to believe his claim.Then, he adds the issue of their confronting of the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing" to enhance his manipulative attempt and ensure the audience agreement for his decision of war.

1-Breaching Grice Maxims
As a reasonable consequence, the maxims of quantity, quality and relevance are obviously breached.This breaching is made through his using for the following pragmatic strategies.
2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: the three persuasive appeals of ethos, pathos and logos are collectively used to achieve the desired deceptive influence.b.Overstatement: This type of substitution trope is quite clear in the following sentence: This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right... c.Profound Words: They are realized by the words like "confront", "tyrannies", "dictatorships", "terrorists", and "risk".
3-Personal Deixis: This component is realized by the first personal deixis "we" which is introduced to create empathy and communion between the addresser and the addressee 4-Politeness Strategies: This component is represented by the strategies of "include both the S and H in the activity" and "claiming a common ground": "we will stand up for what know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing."5-Fallacy: Concealment is realized through the pragmatic strategy of fallacy.Fallacious assumptions are presented here by using: a. Fallacious Argument of Relevance; Appeal to Emotion.The speaker presents data that touch the audience emotions rather than reasonably support the claim.Such a type of arguing results in a fallacious argument of appeal to emotion.

The End-Point Stage
It is the stage of concluding the concealment process.It is used here to conclude the argument given in the previous stage.This stage is represented by the following sentence: I beg to move the motion.

The Strategies of Concealment
1-Wearing down the Other's resistance: Blair here tries to wearing down the audience resistance to the decision of war against Iraq.He also attempts to make them agree on his proposal.To deceive his audience, he portrays himself as a political man who is very interested in the will and consent of his audience and does not try to impose his proposals on them but he asks and begs in order to move their motion.The fact is that he makes the decision of war before asking them about their views.

The Pragmatic Strategies of Concealment
1-Breaching Grice Maxims: Blair breaches the maxim of quality.He makes the audience believe that their decision is decisive and the most important one while, in fact he took this decision long ago before that time.
2-Pragma-Rhetorical Devices a. Argumentative appeals: Blair concludes what he has said by appealing to his hearer's emotions (pathos) to achieve his end.
3-Personal Deixis: They are realized by the first personal deixis expression "I" to attend manipulative ends.4-Politeness Strategies: Blair manipulatively resorts to a polite tone using "seeking agreement" politeness strategy to gain the audience appreciation.

Results and Discussion
This section is primarily devoted to show the results of the analysis and then expose these results to a thorough discussion.The analysis of the data shows the frequency of each of the criteria, concealment strategies and pragmatic strategies achieved in each pragmatic stage as well as which of them scores higher frequency and as follows.The findings of the pragmatic analysis are statistically supported by the followings tables.The following tables show:  The statistical results of the criteria, in Table (1) above, show that the three criteria are collectively used by Blair differently.The higher frequency is scored by deception criterion with (12) times, equal to (50%), then pressure to acquiesce with (7), equal to (29.1%) and finally emotion with (5) times, equal to (20.8%).This means that Blair keeps on deceiving his people all the time by concealing facts and relies heavily on evoking their emotions and eliciting their sympathy to gain, in the end, their approval and support to invade Iraq.
The pragmatic structure of each situation is achieved by the pragmatic stages.He starts with evoking the emotions of his hearers as a start-point stage, then shifts to escalating the pace of his tone of his speech and fills it with deception and concealment in the argument stage, and finally he uses his powerful attitudes to make them adhere to his fake assumption and lying to browbeating them and consequently persuades them as an end-point stage.The statistical results show that fake assumption scores the higher frequency with (4) times, equal to (16.6%) among other strategies of concealment.Blair deliberately fakes assumptions and plots unreal and catastrophic consequences in case Iraq remains own mass destruction weapons.By this, he misleads his people with (4) times, equal to (16.6%) and lies with (4) times, equal to (16.6%).Next to fake assumption is fear strategy with (3) times, equal to (12.5%).This explains how Blair gains his people's consent to launch the war against Iraq by arousing fear in the hearts of his people and stirring their cautiousness from the expected coming evil if Saddam remains in power, in order to, finally gains his people approval and overcomes their resistance with (4) times, equal to (16.6%).Table (3) below confirms that pragmatic strategies of concealment are used all over the pragmatic structure in each stage in Blair's speeches.Table (3) above, shows that the primacy here is for the concealment pragmatic strategies which are numbered 2, 4, 1, 3 and 5 sequentially.These results are asserted by the frequency of the use of pragma-rhetorical devices that amounts (45), equal to (45.9%), politeness strategies with (21) times, equal to (21.4%), breaching of Grice maxims with (18) times, equal to (18.3%), personal deixis with (9) times, equal to (9.1%), and finally, fallacy with (5), equal to (5.1%) respectively.
The pragmatic strategies of concealment are interpreted in the following tables arranged according to their higher frequency: 1-Breaching the Grice's four maxims scores (18) times equal to (18.3%).This result verifies the essence of the Information Manipulative Theory and the Interpersonal Deception Theory from which concealment is branched.These theories are mainly focused on the breaching of Grice's maxims when manipulating, deceiving and concealing information.This type of pragmatic strategies is explained in details in the 2-Pragma-Rhetorical devices score higher frequency among other pragmatic strategies with (45), equal to (45.9%).This higher frequency verifies the fact that these devices are mainly used to help the politicians in general, and Blair, in particular to accomplish their aims of persuading the other partners since they breach Grice maxims.Pathos registers higher frequency with (12) times, equal to (26.6%).It is the most powerful persuasive appeal which has been used by politicians to attract the audience emotions.Next to pathos is logos with (10) times, equal to (22.2%).The occurrence of this argumentative appeal of pragma-rhetorical devices makes the speaker more persuasive and attracts more the attention of the listeners.
Profound words comes in the third level of occurrence with (9) times, equal to (20%).These are words which are quite normally used by politicians, have a great impact on the hearer when receiving them.They exaggerate the event when they are used in delivering any speech.Next to profound words is overstatement with (7) times, equal to (15.5%), pun scores nil frequency while ethos has (4) times, equal to (8.8%), rhetorical question has (2) times, equal to (4.4%), and finally, weasel words has (1) times, equal to (2.2%).
3-Personal deixis appear with (9) times, equal to (9.1%) appearance.This explains that using "we" and "I" are of a great benefit to achieve persuasion.Blair puts himself in the same boat with his people.Blair can claim common perspective with his people by using inclusive "we".4-Politeness strategies appear (21) times, equal to (21.4%) and this is quite normal in order to make others impressed by the attitudes of the speaker.Being humble and polite, derive the listeners' emotions and direct their compassion into the benefit of the speaker.Blair shows and conveys that some goals and desires of his people are admirable or of interest to him and he confirms the membership of the group and he and his audience belong to same set of persons and share same wants.The employment of politeness strategies is proved to be significant.The results are interpreted in As it is clear in the table, violating relevance criterion scores the highest frequency with (4), equal to (80%).This proves that Blair tries to appeal to irrelevant topics and attempts to strengthen a claim by resorting to appeals that are highly questionable or to the judgment of other people or to factors that have to do with emotions.All these appeals are irrelevant argumentation in order to support his claim.
As far as pragmatics is concerned, in the course of the analysis, it has been shown that breaching Grice's maxims is employed heavily, thus concealment can be explained by the exploitation of pragmatic aspect.Quite often, concealment is generated by exploiting features of Grice's maxims.The breaching of Grice's maxims takes place by the rhetoric devices and fallacious arguments.
As established by Grice, breaching of maxim of quantity comes from providing less information than necessary.The absence of details is one of main factors that contribute to the act of concealment; the maxim of relation is frequently breached as a consequence of giving irrelevant information.Thus the interpretation of the meaning of the text will be totally different from what is being said; the maxim of quality, as Grice says, is associated with lies, and it requires truthfulness.The absence of truthfulness takes place with occurrence of metaphor, overstatement and understatement; and lastly, the maxim of manner is breached by means of ambiguity, misleading, deception and alike.
The strategies of fake assumption, misleading and outright lying are clearly identified and recognized in the analyzed speeches.Blair rhetorically enhances the seriousness of the matter.His overstatement, rhetorical question, metaphor, profound words, understatement and alike all are used to mislead his recipients and thus force them to give him their consent.He keeps on describing Saddam as the source of evilness and the most brutal man in the world and if they do not fight him, he will become a source of threat to the whole world including the UK.

Conclusion
One may ask why Blair uses concealment as one of his strategies.The answer is to achieve persuasion.Concealment, as a process, in the political speeches of Tony Blair, is used in order to reach the end of persuading his audience.The pragmatic analysis of Blair's speeches shows a great deal of rhetorical devices which necessarily are the causes of breaching Grice's maxims.And the breaching of Grice's maxims necessarily results in a persuasion effect.He uses a great deal of faked assumption, misleading and outright lying to evoke fear and sympathy inside his audience in order to browbeating and wearing down their resistance to go to war.Blair uses these devices as a means of conveying his messages and as means of persuading his followers to believe in him and in his honesty with his people.

a.
Fallacious argument of Truth; Contradiction.The speaker conceals the truth through presenting data that contradicts with what actually happened.
appeals: Blair concludes what he has said by employing the two persuasive appeals of pathos and logos to achieve his manipulative effect.b.Overstatement: This substitution trope is clearly expressed in the sentence: to combine strong language with weak intentions, a worse outcome than never speaking at all.

Table 1 .
Criteria of concealment in Tony Blair's Speech

Table ( 2
) below, shows the more frequent strategies of concealment used by Blair, in each stage, as the time passes and the intention is almost made to go to Iraq.

Table 2 .
Concealment strategies in Tony Blair's Speeches

Table 3 .
Statistics of concealment pragmatic strategies in Tony Blair's Speeches

Table ( 5
) shows the rhetorical devices Blair uses, keeping in mind what persuasion effect they have if they are used in any discourse.

Table 5 .
Pragma-rhetorical devices in Tony Blair's Speeches

Table 6 .
Table (6): Statistics of politeness strategies in Tony Blair's Speeches Finally, fallacy scores (5) times, equal to (5.1%).This type of pragmatic strategies is explained in details in the Table(7)according to the types appeared during the analysis:

Table 7 .
Statistics of fallacy in Tony Blair's Speeches