Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 21, Issue 3, 2022

Abstract

Since presidential primary debates in US election campaigns serve the function of identifying the most promising nominee for the subsequent presidency, they constitute a highly adversarial multilogue. Debaters do not only exchange factual arguments but also use diverse forms of impoliteness geared towards damaging the public image of political opponents and persuading audiences to vote accordingly. Combining political discourse analysis with pragmatic approaches to impoliteness, this paper examines the ways in which verbal aggression in debates inflicts damage on the addressee’s positive and negative face. On the basis of five Democratic and five Republican debates from 2016, it is shown that impolite utterances fulfil the four central strategic functions of (a) delegitimization, (b) coercion, (c) entertainment, and (d) (self-)defence, all of which support the macro-function of political persuasion through the construction of personal preferability.

Abstract

Figurative framing, in the form of metaphorical expressions, is especially effective in carrying conceptual content on an issue and affecting public opinion. One topic that has been heavily debated in contemporary Hungarian media is migration. Framing starts with the label that journalists select to refer to fled people: bevándorló (“immigrant”), migráns (“migrant”) or menekült (“refugee”). Depending on the label, different associations emerge, resting upon differing (metaphorical) conceptualizations evoked by the labels. We analysed metaphorical compounds based on the keywords in a media corpus of approx. 15 million words. Our results indicate that while all three keywords evoke predominantly negative frames and evaluations that build on stock metaphorical conceptualizations of fled people as also identified in the international literature – such as flood, object, business, war and crime –, the distribution of these metaphors does vary, depending on a) the selected keyword; and b) the political agenda of the media source.

Abstract

In recent years, the Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quad concept have been introduced and advocated by various countries. Since the second term of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” has been widely promoted. Assisted by corpus linguistics, this paper aims to explore the implicit ideology by providing insight into the context model from CDA perspective, and to decode the discursive construction by combining “ideographs” and “policy triggers” as Ideological Rhetorical Criticism instructed. The study shows these political texts are rich in forms of rhetorical strategies of “routinization”, “hegemony”, “uniformization” and “naturalization” used to construct a discursive system to distinguish “them” from “us”, so that to realize political aims.

Abstract

This article explores how the concept of democracy is constructed, conveyed, and instrumentalised in the discourses of the populist radical right in the current EU context. The comparative analysis of the speeches of the leaders of two dissimilar PRR parties in government (Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and in opposition (French Rassemblement National) in the run-up to the 2019 European elections using tools of the discourse-historical and discourse-conceptual approaches to CDS highlights the common core of PRR interpretations of democracy, influenced by the shared axiological, institutional, and discursive framework of the EU. It shows that in the EU the PRR constructs the concept of democracy as an ideological complex, by diluting its essentially populist interpretation of democracy with liberal democratic elements. Only by advancing nativist and authoritarian interpretations of the people, does the PRR bring the concept of democracy in line with its ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism.

Abstract

While much research has been done regarding right-wing discourse in modern Europe, the literature of Polish far-right discourse is still insufficient. The present paper discusses the discursive strategies of Grzegorz Braun, one of the leaders of Confederation Liberty and Independence, which were implemented by the politician during the 2019 Gdańsk mayoral campaign. In order to provide a comprehensive analysis of Braun’s discourse, audiovisual materials were included in the study. The findings show that Braun employs positive presentation of the Catholic Church and himself, and negative presentation of his opponents (LGBT activists, immigrants, the European Union, the elites), whom Braun considers to be in an alliance against Poland and its core values under the name of the “Gdańsk Pact”.

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