The potential of a strategy by means of which controvertible points can be deftly rebutted was duly recognised as early as in ancient rhetoric, with the figure of admittance – Greek paromologia or Latin concessio – occupying a prominent place among other rhetorical devices. Since then, the phenomenon of concessivity has been approached from various research perspectives, evolving with the development of linguistic theories and conceptual frameworks. In what follows, an overview of previous contributions to the study of concession will be provided, with emphasis placed on the model applied in the current research, that is the discourse-pragmatic understanding of Concession seen as an interactional sequence of moves.

Semantic-syntactic approach to concession

1.1.1. Defining concessive connection

Placing it in the broader context of contrast relations, earlier investigations of concession, which proliferated especially visibly during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century (e.g. König 1991; Ford 1993; Rudolph 1996; Grote, Lenke and Stede 1997; Di Meola 1998; Crevels 2000a, 2000b; Iten 2000; König and Siemund 2000; Verhagen 2000; Noordman 2001; Takahashi 2008; Latos 2009), focused predominantly on the interclausal interpretation of concession, with primary markers of this relation recognised on the sentence level marking the centre of research.