Psycholinguistic research (e.g. Rumelhart [1977] and Schank and Abelson [1977]) has shown that superstructure has a marked role in the comprehension and recall of texts, which is due to the fact that readers have a purpose in mind when reading. Consequently, the gist is the textual realisation of the macrostructure influenced by the superstructure. In order to obtain the gist of a text, we need to obtain the macrostructure affected by the superstructure of the text in question. This approach, with reference to political texts, is also underscored, on the one hand, by Le (2004, p. 700), who, on the basis of van Dijk’s (1980) work, claims that “[t]he macrostructure corresponds to the semantic representation that is most likely to remain in long-term memory [...] and in this regard, it occupies a key position in the argumentation”. On the other hand, a similar argument is put forward by Kraus and Davis (1976), who talk about “injecting” political purpose messages in the brains of the receivers of political texts so that changes in the behaviour of receivers can be realised through positive reinforcement (Kraus and Davis [1976, p. 117] qtd. in Mazzoleni 2002, p. 203). Kraus and Davis (1976) also note that injecting political purpose messages and the positive reinforcement of such messages can only be realised if arguments are stored in the long-term memory. Therefore, it may be claimed that political persuasion is partly realised through the gist of the political text stored in the long-term memory. This issue will be further clarified in Section 3.6.

In order to do identify the gist of political texts, the macrostructure influenced by the superstructure needs to be obtained. In the scope of the current undertaking, the superstructure analysis will be based on Hoey’s (2001) Problem-Solution Model as detailed in Section 2.5 below. Before outlining the model, it will be shown on what grounds Hoey’s (2001) Problem-Solution Model can describe the communicative function of problem-solution type political texts. The notion of “function” is interpreted here as the author’s purpose behind text construction, which is realised through text type specific parts of a text, i.e. its superstructure elements (Tirkkonen-Condit 1985).