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- Volume 12, Issue, 2013
Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 12, Issue 4, 2013
Volume 12, Issue 4, 2013
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How Does A Prime Minister Speak?: Kevin Rudd’s discourse, habitus, and negotiation of the journalistic and political fields
Author(s): Geoffrey Craigpp.: 485–507 (23)More LessThis paper investigates how political subjectivity is framed and expressed through language use in television political interviews. The paper argues that Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field provide a useful framework for analyses of political subjectivity in news media interviews, but it also argues that the more sociological emphasis of Bourdieu’s theory cannot sufficiently account for the constitutive importance of discourse in the agency of the habitus and the boundaries and authority of different fields. As such, the analysis also draws on critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how Prime Ministerial discourse involves negotiations of different constitutive features of an individual subjectivity, and also negotiations between a particular habitus and the exigencies of the journalistic and political fields. Through an analysis of interviews of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on influential Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programmes, Insiders and the 7.30 Report, it is argued that the Prime Minister attempts to exercise political authority through an ensemble of discourses, initiating different relations with the interviewers, political colleagues and opponents, leading public figures in other fields, and the Australian public. Keywords: Television interviews, subjectivity, political style, habitus, fields, discourse, journalism, Rudd, Australia
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Between public and private: Conversationalisation in French politicians’ blogs
Author(s): Lotta Lehtipp.: 508–536 (29)More LessThe article shows that while public discourse is claimed to be undergoing a process of conversationalisation – i.e. adopting features of casual and informal communicative situations – this process does not apply to any great extent to French politicians’ blogs. The parameters investigated in a corpus of 80 politicians’ blog posts during September 2007 are private and informal topics, and conversation-like interaction. The main focus of the study is on the minority of blogs in the material which are in fact conversationalised. These blogs are examined from the point of view of persuasion, as devices in constructing a credible image of the author. The results show that while these few conversationalised blogs construct an image of the author as an ‘ordinary’ person close to the public, the majority of the blogs create an authorial image as a remote political expert. The extent to which the construction of a lay image is successful, however, is questioned in the analysis. Keywords: Conversationalisation, politicians’ blogs, genre, ethos, peopolisme
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The discoursal construction of candidates in the tenth Iranian presidential elections: A positive discourse analytical case study
Author(s): Ali R. Abasi and Nahal Akbaripp.: 537–557 (21)More LessThis qualitative case study investigates dissent in the news discourse of a major pro-reform newspaper covering the Iranian presidential election debates that took place in June 2009. Drawing on appraisal theory as its analytical lens, the article examines the evaluation of the three major candidates in the paper’s coverage of the debates. The article begins with the broader sociopolitical context situating the watershed debates and a description of the legal framework within which the Iranian press operate. The analysis next details the function of attitudinal resources in the discursive representation of the political actors. As central to an ideologically invested strategy, evaluative linguistic resources are found to sharply dichotomize the political actors along a range of positive and negative value positions that dissent from those advanced in the narratives of the dominant power. Keywords: Appraisal, news discourse, discursive representation, elections, Iran
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Despierten, Latinos (‘Wake up, Latinos’): Latino Identity, US Politics and YouTube
Author(s): Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Patricia Bou-Franch and Nuria Lorenzo-Duspp.: 558–582 (25)More LessThis study examines the schemata underlying the social dimensions and relationships associated with the processes of Latino identity construction in 500 YouTube postings in response to the Obama Reggaeton video. According to Van Dijk (1998), such schemata allow members of a given group to provide answers to questions such as who they are, what criteria need to be met for membership in their group, and what kinds of relationships are established among their group and other social groups. Along the lines of Wodak et al. (1999), our study unveils six main thematic contents or categories that discursively realize the social dimensions and relationships associated with the Latino identity, and tests them in a corpus of unsolicited data in a deindividuated environment, YouTube, in which social identity, such as the Latino identity, is salient. The analysis lends validity to these categories, as they were found to be highly relevant to the corpus. We argue that the Latino identity is essentially political, both in the narrow and the broad senses of the word (see Gee 2005; Joseph 2006). Furthermore, the Latino identity can only be properly understood within the identity politics climate of the US. Keywords: Latino identity, CMC, YouTube, social identity, ethnic identity, diasporic, migrant on-line communities
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H.R. 2499 Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2010: Language policy and the Burton Amendment
Author(s): Elaine M. Shenkpp.: 583–605 (23)More LessIn 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Puerto Rico Democracy Act, a bill that ostensibly focused on the authorization of a plebiscite on the Island’s future political status in relationship to the United States. Nevertheless, the final text included language policy on (a) ballot language, (b) official language legislation, and (c) language ideologies favoring English as the “language of opportunity ”. Using CDA, this paper examines the House discussion of the bill on April 29, 2010, as found in the Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the 111th Congress. The paper focuses on how the discussion of the bill shifted from political status issues to the inclusion of language policies to be imposed on the Island, the role of the Burton Amendment in shaping these policies, and the ways in which the construction of identity with and through language was both promoted and erased on the House floor. Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, Spanish, English, Puerto Rico, legitimate language, erasure, identity construction, language policy
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Representational Discourses on the Erased of Slovenia: From Human Rights to Humanitarian Victimization
Author(s): Andreja Vezovnikpp.: 606–625 (20)More LessIn 1992, the Slovenian Ministry of Interior Affairs deprived 25,000 ex-Yugoslavians of their citizenship. This symbolic act of violence is the most severe symptom of the Slovenian transition towards democracy. Since 1995 this group of erased citizens is known as the Erased of Slovenia. This contribution is a critical analysis of political discourses on the issue of the Erased that appeared in the Slovenian printed press between 1995 and 2008. The presented qualitative analysis explores 312 units of op-ed articles, mainly commentaries and editorials, which have been selected on the basis of two keywords: erased, erasure. The contribution aims to show that the notion of the Erased functioned as the “nodal point” around which two antagonistic political discourses were formed. The aim of the analysis is to find out which empty or hegemonic signifiers are produced in this antagonistic relation and how this affects the political desubjectivation of the Erased. Keywords: discourse, the Erased, antagonism, hegemony
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Writing the history of the victors?: Discourse, social change and (radical) democracy
Author(s): Felicitas Macgilchrist and Ellen Van Praetpp.: 626–651 (26)More LessRecently, interest in radical democracy and communism has increased dramatically among cultural theorists. This paper draws attention to two other fields in which a similar shift is visible. First, popular scholarly writing on communism, anarchism and socialism. Second, curricular materials for history teaching. Drawing on ethnographic field work at an educational publishing house in Germany, the paper analyses the production of a history textbook. Analysis identifies ambiguities and tensions in the way forms of political organisation and practice are discussed and changes made. One change involves the subtle revalorization of the 1918 revolution and the early days of the Weimar Republic, which could be considered an attempt at shaping a ‘radical democracy’. The study contributes to emerging work on discourse and social change which aims to not only critique dominant discourse but also explore fissures in hegemonic formations. By analysing the production of these history materials, we explore competing discursive possibilities – ways of understanding and enacting democracy – circulating today. Keywords: history, democracy, textbooks, discourse analysis, ethnography, editorial meetings, political theory
Volumes & issues
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Volume 24 (2025)
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Volume 23 (2024)
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2015)
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Volume 13 (2014)
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Volume 12 (2013)
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Volume 11 (2012)
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Volume 10 (2011)
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Volume 9 (2010)
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Volume 8 (2009)
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Volume 7 (2008)
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Volume 6 (2007)
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Volume 5 (2006)
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Volume 4 (2005)
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Volume 3 (2004)
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Volume 2 (2003)
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Volume 1 (2002)
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