Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2019

Abstract

This paper focuses on reader comments published in two online UK newspapers (Mail Online and Independent) in response to articles about one discreditable incident involving a far-right political leader. The concepts of articulation and fixation are used to examine how these readers engage with the politician’s actions using ethical categories. While Independent readers build theoretical articulations between the politician’s actions and a generalised crisis of confidence in politics, readers of the Mail Online, regardless of their political sympathies, accept ethical categories as fixed points to anchor the discourse.

Abstract

The article examines the romantic narratives told by the “Islamic State” in the propaganda online videos of foreign fighters. Employing a method of narrative analysis, based on insight from Literary Studies and Narratology, it holds that while narratives of jihad differ to “war on terror” narratives told in the West with regard to their content, narratives of jihad employ a very western romantic genre style. Focusing on the narrative elements of setting, characterisation and emplotment the article illustrates a romantic narrative of jihad which contains classical elements of a romantic story in which the everyday person is forced to become a hero in a legitimate struggle against an unjust order for the greater good and in aid of the down trodden. The article thereby aims to contribute to the debate on why such narratives of jihad have an appeal in certain parts of western society.

Abstract

The study explores how Facebook was framed during the “tent protest” – the largest social protest in Israel’s history. Findings from of a content analysis of the local Israeli press indicate that Facebook was framed mainly as a political instrument assisting the protest, especially in the stages of recruitment, organization and dissemination of information to protesters. Alongside such positive framing, also evident, albeit less frequently, was negative framing that portrayed Facebook activities as incompatible with genuine political action, and portrayed the “Facebook generation” as lazy and spoiled.

Abstract

Historical politics is usually an institutionalised top-down phenomenon, in which the government or the cultural elites selectively formulate a historical narrative to unify and homogenize the imagined nation-state. Yet, there are also grassroots movements in the public sphere, which participate in the uses and abuses of history for identity politics. We focus on one such case: the football supporters’ commemoration activism. While football supporters’ social activism and the role of football matches as lieux de mémoire have received significant scholarly interest, their commemoration activism is as yet poorly described. In this paper we investigate how two regional newspapers of differing political position report this issue. The DHA-inspired qualitative analysis shows that Gazeta Wyborcza writes about it relatively rarely and views it as an appropriation of collective memory. Głos Wielkopolski on the other hand constructs football supporters as a rejuvenating force in local identity and memory politics.

Abstract

Inspired by Aristotle and modern political theory, Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) introduce a model into Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) on the basis of deliberation and conductive argumentation (reasoning). This study makes an attempt to appraise the efficacy and adequacy of this model through examining Trump’s UN speech on Iran in 2017 in the light of other mainstream analytic tools and frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings suggest that the model is a step toward including the cognitive interface in PDA, and that the premises adduced in Trump’s speech could serve the purpose of delegitimizing Iranian government and ‘Iranoregimephobia’, hence calling for confronting Iran. It is concluded that if integrated with other approaches, the model could serve to possibly counter-balance the subjectivity and skepticism associated with CDA-oriented studies, thus possibly proving itself as a practical, effective, and informative tool for the critical study of political discourse.

Abstract

This article focuses on how common-sense knowledge is enacted by middle managers in order to make sense of contemporary public administration. Specifically, the article demonstrates how managerialization and market logics is embedded in actors’ perceptions of public administration and becomes manifested through understandings and legitimations. The article presents an analysis of conversational data from middle management positions within a Swedish government agency. The analysis demonstrates how actors categorize a traditional hierarchy together with contemporary ideas of consumerism. It is also demonstrated how actors draw on legitimations of authority and mythopoesis in order to make sense of and to understand their managerial role within the agency. As such, the article contributes to contemporary public administration literature and its discussion regarding the effects of embedding marketization logics on actor and organizational levels as well as to ethnomethodologically informed literature within the social science and humanities.

Abstract

Studies have covered a variety of aspects related to the translation of political texts and propaganda. However, little has been written about the role that heterolingualism and translation can play in the original versions of these very texts. This article investigates a case in which multilingualism in propaganda was employed to reflect and comment on multilingualism and diversity in the political reality. It analyzes two highly controversial televised election advertisements from the Israeli 2013 campaign and their use of both Hebrew and Arabic in speech and in interlingual and intralingual subtitles. The analysis shows that code-switching and subtitles can play a role in conveying the political message and in masking it at the same time. It also suggests that the political use of heterolingualism and translation in the propaganda itself should be more profoundly explored.

This article reviews Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe

This article reviews Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres