- Home
- e-Journals
- Journal of Language and Politics
- Previous Issues
- Volume 20, Issue 1, 2021
Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2021
Volume 20, Issue 1, 2021
-
An introduction to the special issue on ‘Discourse Theory: Ways forward for theory development and research practice’
pp.: 1–9 (9)More LessAbstractThis article introduces the special issue of the Journal of Language and Politics on ‘Discourse Theory: Ways forward for theory development and research practice.’ In this introduction we discuss the aims and structure of this special issue focused on the development of the poststructuralist and post-Marxist discourse theory originally developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.
-
Politics as construction of the unthinkable
Author(s): Ernesto Laclau, Marianne Liisberg, Arthur Borriello and Benjamin De Cleenpp.: 10–21 (12)More LessAbstractThis article is the English translation of a text originally published by Ernesto Laclau in French in 1981 as part of the proceedings of the colloquium Materialités Discursives held in Nanterre on 24–26 April 1980. In this text, Ernesto Laclau reflects on the subject of hegemony as a discursively constructed phenomenon. Building on research on the discursive construction of the acceptability of popular front politics in 1935 during the Seventh Congress of the Komintern, the author proposes a number of broader arguments on the notion of antagonism and on some of the problems related to the Marxist conception of totality.
-
Moving discourse theory forward
Author(s): Benjamin De Cleen, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos and Yannis Stavrakakispp.: 22–46 (25)More LessAbstractThis article assesses the current state of play of the poststructuralist and post-Marxist discourse theory associated with Laclau and Mouffe and the ‘Essex school’, and identifies ways forward at the level of theory development, research practice and critique. The article starts by disentangling the different meanings of the notion of ‘discourse’ in ‘discourse theory’, clarifying the specificities of discourse theory as a theoretical and analytical framework and situating discourse theory in, but also beyond, critical discourse studies. It then moves to an assessment of the current state of discourse theory, its main contributions, and the identification of shortcomings and ways forward. This discussion is organized around five topics: methodology and the theory-analysis dialectic; the logics approach; the discursive-material relation; the role of fantasy and other psychoanalytic categories; and populism.
-
Discourse, concepts, ideologies
Author(s): Michael Freedenpp.: 47–61 (15)More LessAbstractTwo branches of discourse studies, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discourse theory (DT), could benefit through extending their critical focus and incorporating findings and methodologies of neighbouring disciplines. While indebted to the attentiveness of CDA to ordinary language, ideology studies have by contrast developed interpretative, non-judgmental analytical frameworks that explore the many-faceted features of ideology, power, and the political. In turn, the macro-focus of DT on binary distinctions, articulatory equivalences, and the construction of hegemony through empty signifiers, overlooks the complex internal conceptual morphology that produces multiple ideological vocabularies. Through a layered filtering of texts, utterances, and linguistic intensities, ideological micro-morphology reveals processes of semantic decontestation in order to defend, alter or criticize political thought-practices. It illuminates the complex interrelationship between word and concept and accepts fantasies as ineluctable and decodable features of communal life. By reaching out beyond their disciplinary confines, the interplay of these parallel approaches could enrich the scholarly understanding of the political.
-
Logics, discourse theory and methods
Author(s): Jason Glynos, David Howarth, Ryan Flitcroft, Craig Love, Konstantinos Roussos and Jimena Vazquezpp.: 62–78 (17)More LessAbstractLogics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights of Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) and post-Marxist political theory more conducive to critical empirical research. It also offered a language with which to counter positivist tendencies to colonize the space of methods and research strategies, showing how PDT could facilitate both explanatory and critical endeavours. Since its publication in 2007, a number of studies have applied the logics framework to empirical cases, while critically engaging with its methodological and theoretical arguments. The main purpose of this article is to evaluate some of these developments, and to set out some future challenges faced by this research programme.
-
The political nature of fantasy and political fantasies of nature
Author(s): Jelle Hendrik Behagel and Ayşem Mertpp.: 79–94 (16)More LessAbstractWithin post-structuralist discourse theory, there has been an ongoing interest in fantasy and the fantasmatic logic. We propose a new way forward and suggest a focus on fantasies of ‘nature’ and what is deemed ‘natural’. Fantasies are structurally entwined with language, desire, and political ontologies. Discourses of nature hold a privileged position in this entwinement. We use the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to explore how symbolic engagement with the world is supported by fantasmatic mechanisms. We argue that political fantasies express political subjects and objects via the imaginary mechanisms of splitting and projection. In an era of ecological crises and global pandemics, we find that fantasies that create a split between nature and society are a central part of the transformation of political imaginaries and discourses. Studying fantasies of various “naturecultures” and the politics of nature is thus an important new direction for discourse theory to explore anti-essentialist ontologies.
-
Critical fantasy studies
Author(s): Jason Glynospp.: 95–111 (17)More LessAbstractMany scholars have drawn attention to the affective power that aspects of discourse and practice exert in our social and political life. Fantasy is a concept that, like structures of feeling, rhetoric, myth, metaphor, and utopia, has generated illuminating explanatory and interpretive insights with which to better understand the operation of this power. In this piece I argue that there are distinctive virtues in affirming the value of the category of fantasy, from a theoretical point of view. Importantly, however, I also argue that the qualification ‘critical’ in Critical Fantasy Studies captures something about how such studies can draw out the normative, ideological, and politico-strategic implications of psychoanalytic insights and observations, and thus become part of a broader enterprise in critical theoretical and empirical research.
-
Doing justice to the agential material*
Author(s): Nico Carpentierpp.: 112–128 (17)More LessAbstractDiscourse theory has always paid explicit attention to the material dimension of social reality, with, for instance, the dislocation concept attributing an active role to the material. Still, it lacks attention for the specificity of the material-as-material, and tends to attribute a privileged position to the discursive as provider of meaning to these materials. This article argues that there is a need for a critical dialogue between discourse theory and new materialism, leading to the development of non-hierarchical approaches towards the discursive and the material realms. One particular approach, a model that is labelled the discursive-material knot, is proposed and developed in this article. This model expands the discourse-theoretical vocabulary so as to include bridging concepts such as invitation, investment and entextualisation. Moreover, it also allows for the development of new discursive-material research agendas, one of which, in relation to the environment and human-animal relations, is discussed.
-
Towards webs of equivalence and the political nomad in agonistic debate
Author(s): Tom Bartlett and Nicolina Montesano Montessoripp.: 129–144 (16)More LessAbstractDiscourse theorists often defend their discursive stance on ‘reality’ and the material with reference to Laclau and Mouffe’s quote that, while an “earthquake or the falling of a brick…exist externally to thought,” they cannot “constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive conditions of emergence”.
While fully endorsing this statement, we argue that it does not licence discourse theorists to consider discursive formations divorced from their material context, but obliges us to account for the constraints and affordances of the material conditions on the structuring of the discursive field itself. Drawing on previous work, we argue that material conditions may render discourse systems incommensurate, such that they cannot be articulated through chains of equivalence within a radically restructured field. We suggest as a way forward the concept of the nomadic politician continually traversing between equivalential systems in order to reconfigure and renegotiate key signifiers within the materially-constrained discursive fields of each.
-
“Symbolic photographs” as floating and empty signifiers
Author(s): Ilija Tomanić Trivundža and Andreja Vezovnikpp.: 145–161 (17)More LessAbstractThe article discusses the use of “symbolic photographs” – images in news reporting which have no direct connection to reported events – in news reporting. Such images deviate not only from the self-professed journalistic norm of factual reporting but also fundamentally challenge the act of civic eyewitnessing constitutive for visual journalism. Concepts of floating and empty signifiers from Discourse Theory are applied to “symbolic photographs” to analyse their ambivalent act of signification, their particular mode of iconicity and, by extension, the journalistic and political implications of their repetitive use.
-
The (discursive) limits of (left) populism
Author(s): Yannis Stavrakakispp.: 162–177 (16)More LessAbstractAs far as the study of (left) populism is concerned, Political Discourse Theory has been largely associated with a novel and challenging take on populist politics, first emerging in Laclau’s work in the 1970s and preoccupying Laclau, Mouffe and their co-travellers continuously since then. What has not been adequately articulated yet is what would be the limits of (left) populism as a political strategy from a discursive perspective. This short paper aims at remedying this lacuna in the relevant literature indicating certain ways forward for the discursive analysis of populism. The argument operates both at a theoretical and conceptual level as well as at the level of historical, empirical analysis.
-
Beyond populism studies
Author(s): Benjamin De Cleen and Jason Glynospp.: 178–195 (18)More LessAbstract‘Populism’ has become ever more ubiquitous in political analysis, to the extent that ‘populism studies’ appears on course to establishing itself as a field of research in its own right. This article warns about the dangers of such a development. Taking a discourse theoretical approach as our starting point – but also critically engaging with this tradition’s contribution to the hype about populism – we suggest that ‘populism studies’ (and the preoccupation with populism this field embodies) risks reifying populism by focusing on populism as a phenomenon ‘as such’, and through an over-reliance on the concept of populism to approach that phenomenon. This, we argue, hampers a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the exact role populism plays in different populist politics. This is not a call for abandoning the concept of populism altogether, but a call for de-centring the concept and for moving beyond academia’s ‘populist moment’.
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 24 (2025)
-
Volume 23 (2024)
-
Volume 22 (2023)
-
Volume 21 (2022)
-
Volume 20 (2021)
-
Volume 19 (2020)
-
Volume 18 (2019)
-
Volume 17 (2018)
-
Volume (2018)
-
Volume 16 (2017)
-
Volume 15 (2016)
-
Volume 14 (2015)
-
Volume 13 (2014)
-
Volume 12 (2013)
-
Volume 11 (2012)
-
Volume 10 (2011)
-
Volume 9 (2010)
-
Volume 8 (2009)
-
Volume 7 (2008)
-
Volume 6 (2007)
-
Volume 5 (2006)
-
Volume 4 (2005)
-
Volume 3 (2004)
-
Volume 2 (2003)
-
Volume 1 (2002)
Most Read This Month

-
-
Radical right-wing parties in Europe
Author(s): Jens Rydgren
-
-
-
Right-wing populism in Europe & USA
Author(s): Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski
-
-
-
Uncivility on the web
Author(s): Michał Krzyżanowski and Per Ledin
-
- More Less