“Why did not your correspondent make an honest inquiry before so writing?”: The text structure and discourse of disagreement in Irish letters to the editor

This paper looks at disagreement in letters to the editor published by national newspapers in late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century Ireland. The research was conducted in the form of a qualitative analysis of argumentative discourse in letters, in many of which disagreement was expressed. Overall, findings provide evidence of recurrent discourse sequences of disagreement in news settings from a period where an Irish public opinion was to gradually shape up and legitimise ordinary people’s right to dissent.