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- Volume 6, Issue, 2007
Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2007
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2007
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‘I’ll tell you what the truth is’: The interactional organization of confiding in political interviews
Author(s): Anita Fetzer and Marjut Johanssonpp.: 147–177 (31)More LessThe goal of this article is to examine the context-dependent nature of acts of confiding in political interviews and to identify its genre-specific constraints and requirements. It looks at their distribution in British and French political interviews with regard to form, function and possible perlocutionary effects. The communicative act of confiding is compared and contrasted with disclosure, self-disclosure and revelation, and the necessary and sufficient conditions required for confiding in a felicitous manner are examined. Particular attention is given to the genre’s status as mediated and public discourse with public and political information. The most prominent strategies for realizing acts of confiding are analyzed by comparing and contrasting implicit and explicit realizations as well as their communicative functions in the British and French data.
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Detecting stories: Revealing hidden ‘voices’ in public political discourse
Author(s): Shaul R. Shenhavpp.: 177–200 (24)More LessThe article argues that notwithstanding politicians’ desire to conceal from the public parts of the content of their indoor discussions, we nevertheless find ‘traces’ of their closed door debates in their public addresses. The article suggests that we need to regard at least some of these traces as an inevitable part of the process of constructing political discourse. It provides a comparative analysis of in-camera and public political discourse in Israel, suggesting techniques for identifying unintentional disclosure of information. These techniques are applied to cases drawn from Israeli politics in which politicians have sought to conceal information in public and semi-public forums. Such scrutiny can not only help to sharpen our discernment of the hidden voices in political discourse, but also to understand a crucial mechanism for the construction of borders between confidential and public political discourse.
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The ‘spectre of anti-Americanism’ in the British public debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq
Author(s): Joseph Burridgepp.: 201–221 (21)More LessThis paper draws upon insights from rhetorical and discursive psychology in order to attend to a particular dimension of the public debate in Britain surrounding the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is concerned with discourse regarding the relevance of ‘anti-Americanism’, and the difficulty that circulation of such an accusation fostered for critics of the war. It uses examples drawn from British national press coverage, and the content of parliamentary debates, to describe some of the main responses made by critics of the war to the possibility that their arguments could be undermined if described as anti-American. The three techniques identified are the display of ‘pro-American credentials’, the discursive separation of the American government and its people, and the differentiation of the self from more extreme elements who are nevertheless on the same side. By focusing upon such responses, the paper attends to a gap in existing literature concerned with the alleged inhibiting effect that accusations of ‘anti-Americanism’ can have upon dissent, and argues that things are more complex than is often understood by accounts which stress how dissent is decided or regulated.
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One message, many tongues: An exploration of media multilingualism in Nigerian political discourse
Author(s): Tunde Olusola Opeibipp.: 223–248 (26)More LessThe essay sets off by arguing that since the 1950s, there has been a growing enthusiasm in political advertising discourse. This was because political advertising became prominent as an effective communicative and publicity tool in the 1952 U.S. presidential election campaign when Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed its instruments to win the most prestigious and highest political post in the U.S. (Reece 2003). Since that time, several rhetorical strategies have been adopted by politicians all over the world to cast and communicate political messages to their various audiences. Most previous research efforts appear to be in the monolingual or L1 settings (e.g. Chilton and Schäffner 1997; Obeng 1997). In this study, we examine how Nigerian politicians demonstrate their bilingual creativity in an innovative manner, employing linguistic facilities to publicise and sell their political programmes, especially in the use of media multilingualism, a novel persuasive strategy that has come to characterise political campaign texts. Specifically, we consider this recent phenomenon in Nigerian political discourse in which political candidates ‘marry’ and exploit the resources of both the exogenous (English) and indigenous languages (and sometimes along with pidgin) in the same campaign texts in order to woo voters. So the term ‘media multilingualism’ here is taken to be the variety of code-mixing and codeswitching in written political texts. The paper thus examines inter/intrasententially code-mixed facts found in the written campaign texts and discusses their functional implications especially as part of the discourse strategies deployed by the politicians to elicit support and woo voters to support their candidatures. Relevant literature on codeswitching and theories (e.g. Speech Accommodation Theory) that provide theoretical underpinning for the study are reviewed. An attempt is also made to demonstrate that codeswitching in political discourse is an interpersonal strategy that can be used to create, strengthen or destroy interpersonal boundaries, and thus it functions as a discourse strategy for pragmatic and strategic purposes (Wei 2003). The framework for analysis follows the insights provided in Rational Choice Models (RC) as seen in the works of Myers-Scotton (1993), Myers-Scotton and Agnes Bolonyai (2001) and Wei (2003). The essay concludes by presenting a summary of some important analytical observations that arose from the study. It also suggests that a similar pattern is bound to occur in political discourse found in other L2 contexts. The data set for this work came from selected political texts produced during the 2003 governorship and presidential elections campaigns in Nigeria and sourced from selected Nigerian national newspapers.
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Language ideology, citizenship, and identity: The case of modern Germany
Author(s): Holly Hansen-Thomaspp.: 249–264 (16)More LessIdeology plays a very important role in the development of policies related to language and naturalization. Drawing on notions proposed by Piller (2001) of identity and ideology and their influence in the development of citizenship legislation, this paper takes a close look at the case of Germany. By tracing the roots of prevailing language ideologies in Germany, such as the as ‘one nation-one language’ belief, and the related belief of language as intrinsic to Germanness, this paper will illustrate how ideologies affect both policies, such as the 2000 Immigration Reform Act and its imposition of new language tests, and certain issues of identity related to nationhood and citizenship.
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Bringing Discourse Theory into Media Studies: The applicability of Discourse Theoretical Analysis (DTA) for the Study of media practises and discourses
Author(s): Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleenpp.: 265–293 (29)More LessWhen Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe published an elaborate version of their discourse theory in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), they were met with fierce resistance by a unified front of traditional Marxists and anti-poststructuralists. The debates on post-Marxism dominated much of the book’s reception. This focus, combined with discourse theory’s rather abstract nature, its lack of clear methodological guidelines, and its more natural habitat of Political Studies, caused discourse theory to remain confined to this realm of Political Studies, despite the broad ideological definition of the political preferred by the authors. This article aims to revisit discourse theory and bring it into the realm of Media Studies. A necessary condition to enhance discourse theory’s applicability in Media Studies is the re-articulation of discourse theory into discourse theoretical analysis (DTA). DTA’s claim for legitimacy is supported in this article by two lines of argument. Firstly, a comparison with Critical Discourse Analyses (CDA) at the textual and contextual level allow us to flesh out the similarities — and more importantly — the differences between CDA and DTA. Secondly, DTA’s applicability is demonstrated by putting it to work in a case study, which focuses on the articulation of audience participation through televisional practices. Both lines of argument aim to illustrate the potential, the adaptability and the legitimacy of DTA’s move into media studies.
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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