Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 21, Issue 5, 2022

Abstract

The goal of this study is to capture the meaning of interstate friendship from the perspective of international actors and to underline the benefits of analyzing speech acts as a tool for revealing the relational scripts that guide interstate relations. Analysis of the discourse surrounding 215 assertions of friendship made by statespersons in a variety of diplomatic encounters and cultural contexts allows us to identify the factors that state actors articulate to develop friendly interstate relations, the practices expected from a friendly state, and the goals attributed to practices of friendship. In the Conclusion we discuss the differences between interpersonal and interstate friendships, and how the speech act of friendship plays a part in the construction of interstate relations.

Abstract

Between 2014 and 2017, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) morphed from a terrorist organization into a proto-state that held a large swathe of territory, within which its strict interpretation of sharia law was enforced. We argue that ISIS discursively constructed itself politically by appealing to elements of both a traditional Islamic caliphate and a modern legitimate state. Linguistic and semiotic data is presented from political communications through social media that revolve around three key themes, specifically the construction of a utopian state founded on justice and engaged in righteous war, which all rely fundamentally on a conception of the modern state as holding a “monopoly on the legitimate use of force”, in Weber’s definition. We analyze this data from a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective, within a theoretical framework that draws on the political sociology of the state and political communications in asymmetric conflicts.

Abstract

The article examines, through the lens of cognitive semiotics, temporal agency and experiences that define the protestors’ identity within the space of the Floyd protests as visualized in AP sequenced news photos. The analysis points to the role of resemiotized chronotopic motifs that bring together the past, present and future times of racial discrimination. In this regard, the paper synthesizes the Bakhtinian chronotope with Multimodal Conceptual Metaphor. Synthesizing Multimodal Metaphors with the chronotope is meant to conceptualize the temporality of the social movement, assigning it agentive identity. That is, chronotopic temporality is deployed in this article as a metaphorical placeholder for movements agency and individuality. Two chronotopes interact within the visualized space of the protests: one is centred in the memories of past apartheid and a desired future, the other conceptualizes a resistant and angry present.

Abstract

This article explores how narratives and their discursive elements construct the idea of rebelliousness in subjects who followed different pathways through politics and activism after the Spanish 15-M movement. Methodologically, two representative examples of narratives have been selected on the basis of interviews with participants in the movement. To study these cases, the concept of rebel narratives is proposed from the perspective of narrative as social practice. The analysis applied here is based on a dialogue between the two cases studied, as discourses in which the activity of their tellers develops in certain contexts of discourse production. Based on this analysis, it is suggested that rebelliousness, in addition to manifesting subjective affiliations, fulfils a performative function with which the subjects legitimise their chosen path and constitute themselves, motivating, in the cases presented, revisions of the past or the rhetoric characteristic of a hero.

Abstract

The current paper explores the relation between deliberation, political legitimization and decision making in educational policy in the aftermath of the intervention by the troika in Portugal in 2011. Centring on political debates about equal opportunities in education in the Portuguese parliament, it explores how arguments, such as ‘crisis’ and ‘change’, were employed to frame – and covertly promote – a concession of sovereignty to international organizations and legitimize a turn in policy-making to an austerity doctrine regarding education policies. Findings reveal the interplay between a loose and polyphonic discourse of international organizations, and the construction of a narrative of failure regarding educational policies previously adopted, recontextualized and thus enabled the change towards neoliberal policies in Portuguese education policies, bringing about a leaner concept of equal opportunities in education at the national level.

Abstract

The article examines the various ways in which ‘solidarity’ is invoked and signified through narrative and categorial devices in a political debate following the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016. Analysing a floor debate in the European Parliament concerning a white paper released by the European Commission on the future of the EU held in March 2017, we investigate how politicians deploy references to ‘solidarity’ in service of different political agendas. Our research highlights the strategic use of ‘core’ values in political debate through the way different speakers appeal to ‘solidarity’ as a self-evident positive value within the EU, but which is then mobilised through different relevant actors and scenarios to argue contrastive political positions. Our analysis demonstrates how narrative positioning and category-bound normative expectations are harnessed to serve the aims of political persuasion by “populating” a shared principle of governance with purposeful sets of identities and interrelations.

This article reviews Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies and Beyond978-3-030-49379-0€ 109.99

This article reviews The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics$52.95978-1032096483

This article reviews The Rhetoric of Political Leadership: Logic, and Emotion in Public Discourse£90.009781789904574

This article reviews Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Reintroduction978-0-367-54777-6978-1-003-09057-1