Institutional preconditions for strategic maneuvering in health brochures

This article examines the possibilities and limitations of strategic maneu- vering in the argumentation stage in advisory health brochures. It describes the con- ventions of health brochures and characterizes them in terms of an argumentative activity type in the medical domain by using the extended pragma-dialectical theory. The main institutional preconditions for strategic maneuvering are that the discus-sion concerns a piece of health advice, that the relation between the health institution and the reader is asymmetrical, and that the discussion is implicit. For each of the
three aspects of strategic maneuvering, the preconditions are further specified. The
choices from the topical potential are affected by the type of standpoint, the implicit-ness of the discussion and the topic of the brochure. Audience adaptation is affected by the implicitness of the discussion and the heterogeneity of the readers. The selec-tion of presentational devices is affected by the institutional point of health brochures and by the convention that readers should not be pressured into changing their be-havior. The preconditions for strategic maneuvering help to determine when and why certain strategic maneuvers are chosen and why they might derail.