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- Volume 24, Issue 1, 2025
Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2025
Volume 24, Issue 1, 2025
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Discourse Theory and Strategic Communication
Author(s): Thomas Jacobspp.: 25–49 (25)More LessAbstractThis contribution explores the nexus between Discourse Theory and Strategic Communication. Traditional positivist and rationalist approaches to business, economics, politics, and management often marginalize strategic communication as merely instrumental; whereas discursive approaches, and Discourse Theory in particular, recognize its constitutive role in shaping social realities. This contribution therefore argues for the development of a discourse-theoretical approach to Strategic Communication, highlighting its potential to offer new insights and understandings. It first examines existing uses of the notion of discourse in Strategic Communication, before discussing Discourse Theory’s potential added value to its study. Next, it emphasizes the importance of Discourse Theory scholars engaging with Strategic Communication topics. Finally, two examples contrasting non-discursive and discourse-theoretical approaches are presented, focusing respectively on populism and authenticity in corporate marketing campaigns. Overall, this paper advocates for a deeper integration of Discourse Theory within the study of Strategic Communication.
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Supplementing the tropes
Author(s): Alan Finlaysonpp.: 50–68 (19)More LessAbstractThis article explores the articulation of poststructuralist Discourse Theory (DT) with Rhetorical Political Analysis (RPA). Critical of the ways in which Ernesto Laclau’s ‘rhetorical turn’ reduces rhetoric to the tropes, and to catachresis in particular, I argue that tropes involve more than naming and that they must be understood and analysed as parts of larger argumentative propositions. Supportive of the general approach of DT I outline two rhetorical concepts, ‘enthymeme’ and ‘invention’ which can contribute to the critical analysis of the discursive terrain of politics. RPA, I argue, refocuses our attention on the forms of political agency and action which take place in specific and particular situations, in ways which are also of value to the formation of political strategies.
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Community organising and radical democracy
Author(s): Julius Schneider, Rebecca Warren and Jason Glynospp.: 69–90 (22)More LessAbstractCommunity organising is a way of doing democratic politics distinct from electoral and radical protest politics yet has been largely overlooked in discourse studies and activist scholarship, particularly when compared to the attention paid to ‘flashier’ grassroots movements. We aim to contribute to rectifying this shortcoming by exploring the conceptual connections between community organising and the political discourse theory of radical democracy. Our theoretical argument is supplemented with an illustrative vignette-based exploration, drawing on the experiences of community alliances and their members within Citizens UK, the UK’s community organising umbrella organization. We show that while radical democratic theory can help ground community organising practice and its dilemmas in a conceptually illuminating way, community organising practice, in turn, can help put some valuable ‘flesh’ onto what many consider to be the rather abstract pronouncements associated with radical democracy and its failure to elaborate what an agonistic politics looks like in practice.
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Studying affect through discourse theory
Author(s): Emmy Eklundh and Sebastián Ronderospp.: 91–114 (24)More LessAbstractThis article presents a methodological argument for examining the affective dimensions of political identity formation, with a pivotal focus on the role of practice. Grounded in a psychoanalytically inspired discourse theory framework, it advocates for expanding research beyond textual sources to investigate the affective investment inherent in political engagement and the process of collective identity formation. Through an examination of two empirical case studies — the Just Stop Oil movement in the United Kingdom and the ascent of Javier Milei in Argentinean politics — the article proposes four principles to study the articulation of political identities through practice: Signifiers are not just words; beyond counting words; policy is central, and fantasy is a cipher. By underscoring fantasy as a critical dimension in identity formation and, suggesting that, by transcending the conventional Schmittian friend/enemy divide, novel avenues for analysing collective identities will surface.
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When performance studies meet discourse theory
Author(s): Théo Aiolfipp.: 115–141 (27)More LessAbstractDespite its versatility as a methodological tool, discourse analysis suffers from a logocentric bias, a tendency to primarily focus on text while ignoring the non-textual components of discourse. Although poststructural approaches to discourse analysis like Discourse Theory (DT) have developed an understanding of discourse going beyond language, there are few practical methodological tools for scholars from these traditions to engage with these non-textual elements. This article fills that gap by providing an original qualitative methodological tool, the Political Performance Analysis Protocol (PPAP) which adapts one of the signature methods of Performance Studies to political performances. It does so by describing the four constitutive elements of political performances — background symbols and foreground scripts, actor, audience and mise-en-scène — and empirically illustrating them through the case of Greta Thunberg’s “How dare you?” performance at a United Nations to show the PPAP’s relevance as a tool complementing other forms of discourse analysis.
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“A massive field of action”
Author(s): Jenny Gunnarsson Paynepp.: 142–162 (21)More LessAbstractSince the publication of Laclau’s and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, issues related to gender and discourse have been a recurring yet not central theme in discourse theory (DT). Not only are the authors’ formulation of an anti-essentialist theory of hegemony explicitly influenced by feminist theoretical debates, but also much subsequent work has engaged with feminist theory. In Mouffe’s more recent work on left populism, however, references to feminist theory and politics are almost entirely absent — while at the same time issues of gender, reproduction and sexuality have become increasingly central to politics both in many national contexts and geopolitically. Against this background, this article argues that it is today urgent for DT to re-engage with feminist theory — not least in relation to issues of anti-essentialism — and to revive the exchange between the two theoretical fields, focusing especially on issues related to the specificities of bodily materiality.
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Review of Butler (2024): Political Discourse Analysis: Legitimization Strategies in Crisis and Conflict
Author(s): Bahram Kazemian and Shafigeh Mohammadianpp.: 163–167 (5)More LessThis article reviews Political Discourse Analysis: Legitimization Strategies in Crisis and Conflict
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Review of Handford & Gee (2023): The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis
Author(s): Yunhua Xiangpp.: 168–171 (4)More LessThis article reviews The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis
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Review of Korhonen, Kotze & Tyrkkö (2023): Exploring Language and Society with Big Data: Parliamentary Discourse Across Time and Space
Author(s): Yaoqi Lyu and Qiurong Zhaopp.: 172–175 (4)More LessThis article reviews Exploring Language and Society with Big Data: Parliamentary Discourse Across Time and Space
Volumes & issues
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Volume 24 (2025)
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Volume 23 (2024)
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2015)
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Volume 13 (2014)
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Volume 12 (2013)
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Volume 11 (2012)
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Volume 10 (2011)
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Volume 9 (2010)
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Volume 8 (2009)
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Volume 7 (2008)
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Volume 6 (2007)
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Volume 5 (2006)
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Volume 4 (2005)
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Volume 3 (2004)
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Volume 2 (2003)
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Volume 1 (2002)
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