AGGRESSION AND DIGRESSION IN THE THIRDPRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP.

Verbal aggression can be defined as an attack on another‘s self -concept, rather than his/her position. The effect or the perlocutionary act of verbal aggression includes lower self-concept, frustration, anxiety, anger, and resentment, embarrassment, and physical aggression. Thus, the interaction that involves this act may contain quarrels or conflicts. In this view, the talk may be taken away from the main concern for a while. Differently paraphrased, aggression and digression are linked in the interaction in a kind of relation. The questions raised in this study are; what is the relation between the two pragmatically interpreted phenomena? And are all the aggressive contributions in the interaction are digressive? The study aims at exploring the relation between aggression and digression in the American presidential debate between the candidates Clinton &Trump and finding out whether all the aggressions are digressive in nature. In fact, the data is the last presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (2017) which involves a great deal of challenge, conflict and quarrel. . It is conclude that personal attack is a fundamental strategy in representing


The relation between aggression and digression is based on two dimensions of analysis;
Digression is impolite act in the interaction: Dascal (2003: 237-8) claims that two main reasons are behind treating digression as impolite act in the interaction: a. The cognitive requirement of digression: Listeners need more complex cognitive processing of digressional dialogue than non-digressional dialogue. Digressions may consist of a set of marginal relevances to the main issue that listeners must connect and understand. This effort is required in in processing to make imposition on the addressee.
b.The interpersonal aspects construct a control move since digression is non -consensual shift of topic. This also involves a great deal of Imposition. Additionally, utterance-based digressions are themselves FATs since they threat the hearer positive face because of its non-consensual nature., also this kind of digression represent a threat to negative face, if cognitive requirements are considered, it can be viewed as mixture of positive and negative threatening face act (ibid).
2. Some strategies of representing digression are strategies of representing aggression (see 2).
This study aims at discovering the relation between aggression and digression in the American presidential debates between the candidates Clinton Trump and finding out if all the aggressions are digressive in nature or not. The study is divided into seven sections; an introduction to the study, providing a pragmatic background about the representation of aggression and digression, methodology of the analysis and description of the data are presented and the analysis of the aggressive digressions in the data is carried out following by some conclusions about it.
1.The pragmatic representation of aggression:-VA can be explicit or implicit. The latter is called by Agha (web3) a tropical aggression. This term is derived from the word ‗tropes' which means figurative form of language such as irony and metaphor. This kind of aggression. is viewed as a masked aggression and utilized as a politeness tactic. In this view, indirect aggression gathers two pragmatic effects which are mutually opposed to descriptions of acts; aggression and politeness (ibid).
The important question at this position is how to identify indirect or tropic VA. Although the current pragmatic theory does not provide any clear criteria for identifying the phenomenon of aggression in the talk, some pragmatic concepts can be utilized in this regard; 1. perlocutionary act: When the addressee feels abused, he act is aggressive. 2. intentionality: When the speaker has cognizable intended aggression, the act is aggressive. 3. Pragmatic categories like tense, evidentiality and honorification are aggressive.
The problem of these alternatives is they all tell nothing about the aggressive features of the utterance. Additionally, they themselves require criteria of identification. However, the first is adopted here due to the interactive nature of the data.
It is argued that when in conflict, the individual chooses to exploit an aggressive strategy after an valuation based on the effect/danger (Bjorkqvist, 1994: 79). The speaker tends to find a strategy as effective as possible, at the same time exposing the addressee to as little danger as possible. In this view, the usefulness of covert or indirect strategies is to minimize the effect exactly like the case when verbal strategies put distance to the opponent, and they are accordingly less dangerous than physical aggression and verbal skills means of aggression tend to replace physical ones whenever possible(ibid). VA can be represented by means of a set of linguistic strategies at various linguistic levels (In this study, some pragmatic ones are utilized to explain the relation between this phenomenon and the phenomenon of digression. Some references are consulted to identify these strategies ( Avtgis,‫‬ Theodore and Rance, Andrew,2010),(web 4 ) and (web 5). 30 1. Character attacks: It is informal or more precisely genetic fallacy which is a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance. However, attacks can be non-fallacious if they are part of the logical means in the arguementation. The attack involves; Physical appearance attacks, Self-concept attacks, accusing and blaming, judging , insulting and criticizing. 2. Intentionally practiced power like ambiguous or implicit threat, ordering, or commanding (Haller, 2014:4). 3. Malediction: Malediction or curse refers to such a wish or uttering of words made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, a spirit, or a natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft (Ben Dor,2011:104). 4. Teasing: It has multiple meanings and uses. In human interactions, teasing exists in three major forms: playful, hurtful, and educative. (Reddy, 1991:145). Teasing can have a variety of effects, depending on how it is utilized and its intended effect (ibid). 5. Sarcasm: Sarcasm is a harsh and bitter verbal or non-verbal remark (Kaye, 2011 : 180). Sarcasm may employ ambivalence although sarcasm is not necessarily ironic and only people can be sarcastic, whereas situations are ironic (ibid). 6. Profanity: It is a subset of a language's lexicon that is generally considered to be strongly impolite, rude or offensive (web 8). It can show a debasement of someone or something, or show intense emotion (ibid). Linguistically, profanity takes the form of words or verbal expressions that fall into the category of formulaic language. In its older, more literal sense, "profanity" refers to a lack of respect for things that are held to be sacred, which implies anything inspiring deserving of reverence, as well as behavior showing similar disrespect or causing religious offense (web 9). 7. Minimization, discounting and trivializing are abusive behavior that makes light of your work, your efforts, your interests, or your concerns. It is done very covertly, often with artificial innocence(web 10) 8. Withholding: It refers to refuse to share philosophies, feelings, intimacy, views and dreams with the partner (Web 7) 9. Mockery and insult: mockery is tool of a shallow person who is irritated by something and believes that his wit alone can dismiss what irritates him. Often he does not try to understand the person he mocks or see the situation in a bigger context (web6). Thus, mockery doesn't deserve violent reaction because such reactions only instill sense of brotherhood among those who chose to mock someone's faith and shows them as victims Jealousy also can be a reason behind mockery, which many times the person mocker doesn't realize. On the other hand, Insult can be an offense, but in a non-violent manner, perhaps a disproportionate reaction (ibid).

How to respond to VA?
Firstly, the utterance must be realized as an aggression , then the reaction can be in two forms; respond and remove. This can be carried out strategically as follows: 1. Recognize: VA that Verbal Abuse is a type of bullying in the form of harsh or insulting language directed at another person. It constitutes "psychological violence. One must differentiate between the verbal abuse which has no negative perlocutionary act such as when a relative, -friend,‖ colleague, mother, use some expressions like "dummy,‖ -crazy,‖ -a fool, -pathetic,‖ -weak,‖ -a mess,‖ -disgusting,‖ -terrible,‖ -desperate,‖ -a clown,‖ -a disaster‖ and aggression which is realized as offensive act . In short, one has a right to be spoken to in a respectful way, otherwise to respond or to remove (Evans.1992:73). 2. Respond: One must call out Verbal Abuse rather than side-step it unless one feels that it is not safe to do so. This is carried in terms of one`s limits that set his/her boundaries with a tone of Firmness that shows that one is serious (ibid: 127) 3. Remove: The other choice is to leave the place or to ignore the aggression (ibid).

3.The pragmatic representation of digression:-
The most extensive technical definition of digression is provided by rhetoricians who consider it as an optional part of speech which may occur at any position in form of a short sentence or a long paragraph (Santovetti, 2007:16). This definition highlights three important aspects of digression: Firstly, it is an optional part in the sense that its omission does not mean anything for the content of the discourse. In fact, this is a critical issue in the discussion about digression because if this phenomenon is marginal in the speech, why is then it intensively utilized in various kinds of discourse? And what does make it necessary in speech? Secondly, it may occur at any point in the speech. Thirdly, the length of digression is a matter of degree. It begins from short sentence and ends to several pages. Bublitz (1988: 101) suggests that there are three restrictions for digression: firstly, the current topic is changed. Secondly, the hearer can recognize the digression by marked or unmarked readopting to the previous topic. Thirdly, 31 the digression is less important than the global issue of the conversation which motivates the speaker to come back to it. Borderia and Arguedas (2009: 935) conclude that -language underspecifies digression; recognition of digression is made possible by cultural facts, which most cases belong to different level of study. This opens the door to two lines of research: to exploring, linguistic instructions and to exploring how extra-linguistic knowledge (e.g. Literary or meta-literary knowledge) interacts with language to give rise to our knowledge of digression.‖ This means that the linguistic means of expressing this phenomenon is determined by non-linguistic factors. This coincides with the dentition of pragmatics which shows that the study of language requires to study the interaction between language (what is uttered) and some non-linguistic factors, i.e. language cannot be studied in isolation of the context in which it occurs.
According to (Perry, 2009: 26) digression can be classified in terms of two axes; A&B: Axis A:-1. Simple digression: A digression that has no or little connection with other digressions in the discussion.

Systematic digression: A digression that is built on the topic of other digressions.
Axis B:-1-Articulated digression: A digression that is acknowledged by the speaker. 2-Non-articulated digression: It is a digression that is not acknowledged by the speaker, i.e. the speaker does not declare or express linguistically that he will make( or have made )digression. Thus, this phenomenon can be classified in a more detailed way as: 1. Simple articulated digression 2. Simple non-articulated digression 3. Systematic articulated digression 4. Systematic non-articulated digression Walton (1982: 21) suggests that irrelevance in argument is represented in relation to three kinds of relevance by some forms (he calls criticisms) of irrelevance. These kinds of irrelevance are; local relation between stimuli and responses, global relation between the proposition and over-all issue and local relevance of the advancer of the truth by using the conditional (C if B-then A).Accordingly, the irrelevance can be represented by ( ibid:): 1. Failure of subject matter or overlap of pairs of propositions. 2. Redundant premises in the argument (irrelevant premises) 3. Invalid premises 4. Following genetic fallacious argument, rationalization, drowning the wrong conclusion and using the wrong reasons : 93) 5. Question-answer relevance or the failure to answer the question directly7 6. 6. Pertinence (The impertinent proposition has on relationship with what has gone before; it is useful strategy in some critical discussion like obligation since the aim to trap the other party in to inconsistency).

Methodology
In the present study the data is taken from Moderated presidential debates. Moderated presidential debate is a kind of form in which the debates between the two candidates are presented , it is usually negotiated ahead of time between the two sides or whoever is hosting the event decides the, typically, each side gives an opening statement with a time limit and the moderator asks a question of one debater, who has a set amount of time to respond (Schroedm, 2016:15-20). Then the other person gives a refutation. Some moderators allow for a good back-andforth to keep going. Other formats are more strict: question, 90 seconds for the response, 90 seconds for the refutation, but in some versions of this format, questions are suggested by the audience ahead of time and the moderator searches through the slip-ups of paper to pick the best ones or the formats have the moderator thinking up the questions and follow-up questions (ibid). The question here is divided into two interrelated parts; are all the aggressive fragments in the debates aggressive? And how are the aggressive digressive argument represented in the presidential debates namely, the American ones between Trump and Clinton 2017? To answer the questions above, all the digressions in the debate are investigated, then the aggressive ones are analyzed in detail. All the digressions are presented in appendix1 , but the detailed analysis is presented to the aggressive digressions only, focusing on the some points written in bold in the discussion. The analysis is based on linking the pragmatic strategies of aggression and digression in the aggressive digressive texts.

The aggressive digressions may be in form of one utterance or a kind of comment. In the text " I am a very strong supporter of the Second Amendment. And I am --I don't know if Hillary was saying it in a sarcastic manner, but I'm very proud to have the endorsement of the NRA." the digression is systemic and it is locally related to the previous one. The speaker stops a sequence of digressions by starting answering the question and explaining the reasons
behind his support to the law of bearing guns. The digression is articulated by the speaker by the ending marker "but" , moreover; it is locally related to the expression the moderator asks, "Why you support the national right to carry law?‖ This partial digression consists of only one stage (introducing a new subject). The speech act of accusation is utilized to say that Clinton says that he supports NAR but in satiric way. Thus, the emphasis on the style of saying this is not part of the logical argumentation. the use of the expression -I do not know‖ to soften the strength of the accusation and minimize the imposition is a polite tactic to reduce the aggression imposed by the accusation. In fact, WikiLeaks is mentioned as a source of news in the question, but Clintons exploits to attack her opponent and to produce this digression which is marked by the initiating marker ‗but'. Clinton produces the digression with many details to make her argument more acceptable, especially that this case is considered dangerous threat to Trump in the election. This is a complete digression and all the stages are presented in and all the strategies in all the stages involve aggressive strategies. It seems that Clinton criticizes Trump to quote from Wikileaks which is involved in a complicated problem in the election in .Clinton tends to seek agreement of audience by selecting a desirable talk for them and a crucial case that press has dealt with in various ways in various occasions which is the case of the illegal cooperation between Trump and Russia in the elections. The implication here is that Trump is engaged in dishonest elections and he tries to win by illegal ways and some foreigners give him hand. Then, Clinton blames Trump to quote from Wikileaks which is engaged to be espionage the main topic is that Trump allows Russian government to be engaged in espionage to support him in the election. The minor topics are; Russians have given some private information to Wiki Leaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet and this has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of American intelligence agencies have confirmed. These accusations is followed by a blame to the moderator because he has ignored the main issues in this debate by emphasizing that the questions related to the case of Russian interference in the election is more important than the question raised before in the debate. Coming back to the issue of open border as one of the main controversial issues in the elections, Clinton criticizes Trump`s election campaign by describing it as something never has happened before in the American election. Clinton respond to this digression by saying--well, that`s because he`d rather have a puppet as president of the United States. Clinton wants to say that Putin wants s doll(puppet) as president to play with not a strong president like her. This illusive metaphor in which she refers to Trump as a puppet which Putin can play with as he can is a systematic digression because it is related to the previous one. Thus, it seems that such digressive digressions may take the whole debate to illogical exchanges of hurtful and impolite utterances. This chain goes on when Trump responds saying -You`re the puppet!‖ and repeat this twice interrupting his opponent while she is taking about Trump`s tendency not to admit that he cooperate with Putin in an illegal way in this election. At this point, they both come back to the issue raised about the role of Putin and Russia in the American election. The strategy used is trivialization and minimization of the address by using a popular metaphor of puppet which is used to describe the very person . When Trump insists that he is doubt that She or anybody knows about the real identity of the hackers who interfere in the elections, Clinton says -Well, he'd rather believe Vladimir Putin than military and civilian intelligence professional who are sworn to protect us.‖ This new attack is not digressive because it is logically part of her arguementation about the illegal cooperation between Putin and Trump. She seems to incite the audience by claiming that this candidate does not trust the honest American more than the strangers and by emphasizing the credibility of these whom Trump does not when describes them as -military and civilian intelligence professional who are sworn to protect us‖. This strategy of criticism is carried out through exploiting what the opponent says to defend him and this praise to those who confirm the news about Putin is utilized to adapt the audience `s interest which an important politeness strategy in debates. Trump, then produces an excuse for Clinton to talk like this about Putin in a new systematic digression -she does not like Putin because has outsmarted her at every step of the way.‖ This teasing seems very offensive especially for a person who wants to lead the country. It is a digression represented by an excuse because it is not logically relevant to the logical standpoint but to subject-off war of attack and defense. However, this part of the debate can be described as a quarrel between the two parties who go out the come back to the main issue which is the role of Putin in the election and his cooperation with Trump in elections. Aggression may contain sever insult including every day lexical items like stupid and idiot . For example -…. . Nobody can believe how stupid our leadership is‖ which is said by Trump as a conclusive statement to his arguementation about the American attitude from ISIS and ceasefire in Syria. The aggression is not aggressive because it is logically in harmony with the other parts of her argument. This means that politicians may use lowslung style by very direct and general insults which convey no message rather than insulting.

Aggressive digressions usually leads a kind of digressive quarrels in which the two parties go away from the topic and come back and complete the digressive fragment and so on
Accusation is an important strategy in attacking the other party in debates, the following example shows how this strategy works; -she raising the money from the people she wants to control. Does not work that way.‖ Trump here accuses Clinton to design the financial strategies in the country for her own benefit. This aggression is not digressive too because he uses to support his standpoint about Clinton financial plan.
In the non-aggressive digressions there can be also some implications, but the indirectness and minimizing the focus on the causing the hurt or disturbances to the addressee make the text far from being clearly aggressive.
In the text -As you know, The border patrol agents,16,500-plus ICE last week, endorsed me, first time they ever endorsed a candidate it means their job is tougher, but, they know what is going on, they know it is better than anybody. They want strong borders. They feel we have to have strong borders.‖ the digression is simple since it is not based on a previous one. It is articulated by the initiating marker ‗as you know' via the speaker -Trump. Additionally, it is locally related to the expression he uses before the digression -Clinton wants to have open border‖. It is a complete digression which consists of three stages. Trump is asked about the reason of thinking that giving amnesty is wrong. He justifies his opinion by claiming that having the border open is something very 34 dangerous. In supporting this viewpoint, he digresses by reporting that Border Patrol agents (16,500-plus ICE) endorse him because they know that they need stronger borders. this appeal to people which is fallacious since that argumentation cannot be considered if only some people endorse those who adopt it is utilized as a pragmatic strategy. Trump tries to exploit audience sympathy to those who work for stronger American homeland by utilizing the fallacy of appeal to pity. He states that they suffer and their job becomes tougher and this makes them, for the first time in the history of election in USA support a candidate. He indirectly praises himself and indirectly says that those who are considered experts in this issue are in his side, then others must be so. Coming back to the issue of border, again he insists that the border must be open only because the agents want and feel that they must be. Thus, he highlights TP by taking the talk back to the issue of border by the fallacy of appeal to people. It seems Trump does not attack any one directly but his argument contains negative evaluations to the current leadership to which the opponent belongs. Hence, the aggression exists but it is not directed to someone and this is part of the nature of presidential debates in which the opponents try their best to defend themselves and make the other party lose more voters.

Conclusion:-
Presidential debates in America is one of the most important tools in the candidates` campaigns. These debates involve a great deal of aggressive style and strategies due to the purpose of the dialogue itself. This dialogue is found to make the candidates explain their points of view of the issue about which they disagree. Thus, the element of the challenge directs the whole talk. The parties use these aggressive utterances in a digressive way in the sense that they insert them in two ways; inappropriate speech acts or irrelevant content. The aim of this insertion is to cause more pressure that leads to weaken the opponent position in the election.
The relation between aggression and digression is manifested in some strategies of the representation which they share like accusation and insults. Additionally, digression ,as an act in the interaction, is viewed as a kind of aggressive or impolite verbal contribution. At any rate, some statements can be generalized ; 5. As you know, The border patrol agents,16,500-plus ICE last week, endorsed me, first time they ever endorsed a candidate it means their job is tougher, but, they know what is going on, they know it is better than anybody. They want strong borders. They feel we have to have strong borders. 9-But it is clear, when you look at what Donald has been proposing, he started his campaign-bashing immigrants, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals and drug dealers, that he has a very different view about what we should do to deal with immigrants. 6. As you know, The border patrol agents, 16,500-plus ICE last week, endorsed me, first time they ever endorsed a candidate it means their job is tougher, but, they know what is going on, they know it is better than anybody. They want strong borders. They feel we have to have strong borders.
-And Donald knows a lot about this. He used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower. He underpaid undocumented workers, and when they complained, he basically said what a lot of employers do: "You complain, I'll get you deported." 7. Well, as he was talking, I was thinking about a young girl I met here in Las Vegas, Carla, who is very worried that her parents might be deported, because she was born in this country but they were not. They work hard, they do everything they can to give her a good life. And 36 you're right. I do n't want to rip families apart… 8.President Obama has moved millions of people out. Nobody knows about it, nobody talks about it. But under Obama, millions of people have been moved out of this country. They've been deported. She doesn't want to say that, but that's what's happened, and that's what happened big league. 13. When it comes to the wall that Donald talks about building the wall, he went to Mexico, he had a meeting with the Mexican president. Didn't even raise it. He choked and then got into a Twitter war because the Mexican president said we're not paying for that wall. 9. President Obama has moved millions of people out. Nobody knows about it, nobody talks about it. But under Obama, millions of people have been moved out of this country. They've been deported. She doesn't want to say that, but that's what's happened, and that's what happened big league.
12. I was all set to terminate, you know? And this wasn't like…this wasn't a game I was playing. I'm not playing…you know, I wasn't playing chess or poker or anything else. This was, I was, I'd never even thought about…it's always the best when you really feel this way. 10.But you are very clearly quoting from WikiLeaks. And what's really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions. Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet. This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election. So I actually think the most important question of this evening, Chris, is, finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually encouraged in the past? Those are the questions we need answered. We've never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before. 11. Now we can talk about Putin. I don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If Russia and the United States got along well and went after ISIS, that would be good. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our president. And I'll tell you what: We're in very serious trouble, because we have a country with tremendous numbers of nuclear warheads --1,800, by the way --where they expanded and we didn't, 1,800 nuclear warheads. And she's playing chicken. Look, Putin from everything I see, has no respect for this person.