Do Modern Arab Televangelists Argue or Preach? A Pragma Dialectical Analysis of Mustafa Husni's Live the Moment TV Show

Modern Arab didactic TV shows are widely categorised as religious; however, most of them target social issues from different perspectives to ensure a persuasive impact on a broad audience, specifically the youth. Despite their significance, almost no research has been conducted to determine the remarkable features of this genre. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the argumentative features of Arab didactic TV shows and investigate their preaching and persuasive functions. Four episodes from Mustafa Husni's (2014) Live the Moment show were randomly selected, downloaded from Husni's YouTube Channel, and manually transcribed. Following a qualitative-quantitative approach, the researchers translated selected examples and quantified the frequencies of the argumentative aspects utilised in the show, which were then descriptively analysed in terms of the pragma-dialectical theory (van Eemeren et al., 1996, 2002). The study findings indicated that the remarkable macro-structure features include the domination of the argumentation stage, the implicitness of both the confrontation and opening stages, and the absence of the conclusion stage due to the show's monologue nature. Moreover, the most frequent micro-structure argumentation elements are the coordinative and multiple structures and the causal and symptomatic schemes, respectively, for their persuasive and didactic functions. The study contributes to interdisciplinarity by enhancing the understanding of pragma-dialectics, uncovering the persuasive features of argumentation in this genre, and boosting the media literacy of producers of awareness-raising TV shows. Keywords: Argumentation stages; argumentation schemes; argumentation structures; didactic TV shows; Pragma-dialectics