Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 13, Issue 3, 2014

This paper contributes to the advancement of the established body of literature on language and identity by ascertaining how discursive representations of multilingualism at an institutional level have interplayed with the construction and the definition of European identities. Using the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak 2001), the analysis focuses on a corpus of official speeches given by the European Commissioner for Multilingualism to identify discursive strategies and linguistic devices and link them to wider socio-political and historic dynamics. Findings suggest that the institutional construction of Europeanness has primarily occurred through macro discourses predicated on cultural, civic and economic dimensions of multilingualism with some inherent tensions in contrasting representations of ‘diverse’ and multilingual EU-rope. It is suggested that through heterogeneous representations of multilingualism torn between identity politics and commodification, European identities emerge as hybrid and fragmented constructs in between national, post national and global dimensions. Keywords: European identities; multilingualism in EU discourses; institutional representations of language and identity; Discourse Historical Approach

In this article, I chart ways in which changing representations of migrants and refugees in the UK have contributed to their marginalisation. The article shows the findings from a study of the role immigrant organisations played in discussions of immigration control since the 1960s. The findings suggest that language about migrants and refugees has become both more marginalising and more difficult to challenge due to its increased complexity, with the increasing division of migrants into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ subgroups; an increased emphasis on ‘the nation’; and the increasing dissociation of discussions of immigration control from issues of race and racism, accompanied by ‘antiracist’ argumentation strategies and a denial of racism. The findings also suggest that speakers wishing to challenge such language, although able to present oppositional voices, may have difficulty getting those voices heard unless they in turn adopt aspects of the marginalising text and talk they wish to oppose. Keywords: migrants; refugees; representation; opposition; resistance; language; race; racism; antiracism; immigrant organisations

This article explores how non-elitist discourse of members of a political party can be considered as rhetorically well-equipped and ideologically powerful in legitimising a party’s controversial political narrative. By drawing on a well-known contentious political project – the New Labour ‘project’ of the UK’s Labour Party- the article proposes a way for party members’ discourse to be considered for this mode relatively autonomous rhetorical agency. Incorporating conceptualisations and methodologies of rhetorical and discursive psychology, the analysis of Labour Party members’ reflections on New Labour reveals how rhetorical power operates beyond the level of people consistently drawing on particular linguistic or grammatical repertoires. The article concludes that that rhetorical agency is not confined to those with sophisticated access to and knowledge of language’s workings and postulates that discourses of legitimisation may be as characteristic for their contradictions and inconsistencies as they are for their universal principles and grammar-like organisation. Keywords: rhetorical psychology; discursive psychology; political narratives; non-elitist discourse; party members and New Labour

This study focuses on the discussion of 1Malaysia, Malaysia’s latest national blueprint for unity and identity, in the New Straits Times (NST), Malaysia’s oldest and state-owned English language print media. We examine the means by which NST has constructed the latest political venture in forging a national identity, while negotiating the various challenges to such an undertaking. Employing the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, we look at distinctive nomination and predication patterns as well as the occurrence of high and low factuality. This is conducted primarily through an analysis of social actors, their predication and modality to show how these contribute to the construction of the 1Malaysia ideology. Findings suggest that the signifier of 1Malaysia serves not only as a reference point for discussing subjects of concern to reformists, but also provides opportunities for the newspaper to hold institutions to account. Keywords: 1Malaysia; national identity; ideology; critical discourse analysis; factuality; modality; referential strategies; predication

Discourse analysis in both its theory and practice is traditionally concerned with politics. The sphere of the non-political rarely attracts attention of the researchers. It appears to be invisible to discourse theorists and unprivileged in empirical studies of discourse. This article aims at filling this gap. With the example of a Russian village it dwells on the discursive organisation of rural communities whose radically “personalised” world resists traditional approaches to political logic and suggests different modes of relations, agency, and power. Keywords: village; rural communities; Russia; discourse analysis; and non-political

Immigration has become an object of political contention far from national borders. As migrants and immigrants move into interior cities, border discourses follow them, often propagated by conservative political factions seeking to extend their influence. This article examines one episode of contention around these processes – a struggle among officials, media organizations, and activists to shape the public narrative of a Midwestern U.S by discursively positioning in relation to border processes thousands of kilometers away. Using elements of critical discourse analysis, critical geography, and border studies, the article develops the concept of ‘discursive bordering’ to analyze how policy discourses and political imagery move across national territories, and how “local” actors redefine their own borders, and those of their cities, to resist or support these discursive incursions. Keywords: Policy discourse; political rhetoric; bordering; anti-migrant politics

This article employs critical intertextual analysis (CIA) to examine how American presidents from opposing political parties respectively inaugurated and extended the war in Afghanistan. After explaining the CIA framework, I investigate two post-9/11 “call-to-arms” speeches delivered by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. I find that Obama responds to changing circumstances (e.g. public dissatisfaction) by varying stylistic elements of Bush’s rhetoric. Nevertheless, he rearticulates the overarching features of Bush’s “war on terror” discourse. Thus, Obama ultimately achieves policy continuity, but only by employing micro-rhetorical strategies that create the appearance of change. I conclude that, if Obama had been more enterprising, he might have enacted real change – and broken completely with Bush’s rhetoric and policy of global war. Keywords: Afghanistan; Bush; critical intertextual analysis; Iraq; Obama; recontextualization; thematic formation; war on terror

This paper, framed under the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), explains social processes by analyzing discourse practices. It proposes (para)linguistic variables employed in the creation of (in)formality in discourse in relation to two Aristotelian persuasive modes: Ethos and Pathos (Kennedy 1991). These modes of persuasion reveal different ways to convey a political message in the current U.S. political scene.This paper compares the stylistic differences in speeches given by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to justify escalating troops in the conflicts of Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2009), respectively. I propose (para)linguistic indicators of formality associated with Aristotelian modes at the level of linguistic choices (“lexical variables” [Schilling-Estes 2004] and “marked register usages” [Myers-Scotton 2001]), textual organization (structure and predictability), non-verbal communication (i.e. laughter; Jefferson, Sacks & Schegloff 1987), and intertextuality (Blackledge 2005; Fairclough 1992, 2003) by means of new voices (Bakhtin 1981) into the here-and-now moment of discourse. Keywords: Political discourse; Bush; Obama; formality; style; intertextuality; persuasion

“Illegal alien,” as a category of analysis, should be understood primarily as a discursive formation, yet the emergence and spread of the category in public debate cannot be explained by its discursive qualities. Failing to see this has analytical consequences: it results in a constant sidetracking of the question of why illegality itself came to be a central issue, and in a reification of the category. This paper is intended as a methodological intervention aimed at solving these issues. The first part illustrates the absence of a strict legalistic basis for the category, and reviews key works that fail to incorporate this into their conceptual design. The second part, contrasts two periods of time in U.S. political debate – the mid-2000s when the category was dominant, and the 1930s when the category, albeit pushed by elites, failed to become central- suggesting the need for a discursive analysis that goes beyond discourse. Keywords: Illegal immigration; illegal alien; discourse analysis; methodology; discursive formations