Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2008

In strategic contexts actors may costlessly renege on verbal commitments. Many analysts consequently reject negotiation talk as an empirical basis for examining political interaction. They focus on deeds (e.g., missile deployments, troop movements, defense expenditures), which more likely than cheap talk signal sincere intent. Dialogical or pragmatic analysts, however, apply tools of linguistics and formal logic in systematic examinations of negotiation talk. They finesse the problem of insincerity by imposing upon themselves the burden of showing the consistency of actors possibly insincere utterances with their interests and prior commitments. We present a dialogical analysis of the initial conversations between US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese leaders in February of 1973. The Chinese leaders test Kissingers sincerity by attempting to trap him in contradictions or drive him into implausible conversational commitments. This practice lends support to the heuristic proposed by dialogical/pragmatic analysts for finessing the problem of insincerity.

A large body of research on political parties is devoted to the family of extreme rightparties. Yet, systematic analyses of extreme right parties discourse remain scarce. Thepresent study addresses this gap in the literature by providing a discourse analysis of the VlaamsBelang, one of the most successful extreme right-wing parties in Europe. Moreover, by focusing onthis partys economic discourse, the study also sheds new light on the ongoing debate aboutthe economic viewpoints of the new extreme right parties. We conclude that the VlaamsBelangs economic rhetoric is in line with its ethno-linguistic, nationalist standpoints andpleas for a Flemish economic policy. The partys economic programme is built on liberalpoints of view and seems particularly aimed at attracting (dissatisfied) liberal voters.Importantly, as economic issues remain subordinated to the partys ideological core, itappears that the Vlaams Belang has largely instrumentalised its programme to expand itselectorate.

This paper aims to investigate the language used by newspapers in post-revolutionary Iran.More precisely, the paper sets out to analyze how such a language is deployed to representrelevant hegemonic ideologies. The approach adopted for this purpose draws inspiration mainly fromcritical linguistics, where it is hypothesized that, as far as the pertinent metadiscourse goes,media genres serve to activate and perpetuate social power relations. In keeping with thistheoretical stance, the paper argues that socially constructed texts can be said to perform twocomplementary functions; on the one hand, they shed light on the realities experienced in sociallife; on the other, they reveal such aspects of those realities as are constructed through the useof language. It is thus in this context that the media language used in the post-revolutionary Iranlends itself to analytical investigation, where the available data reveal the co-existence of threecompeting discourse processes of ‘Islamization’, ‘Iranian Nationalism’ and ‘Western liberalism’,relating to the third stage development of post-revolutionary Iran.

This paper analyses the last speech delivered in the Spanish Parliament (on 2 December 2003) by President Aznar, in which he attempts to discursively uphold the reasons for his decision to support Bushs Administration (although with a small number of troops), and prove his interpretation of events. This speech is the richest in symbolism: it was made after the end of the war and no weapons of mass destruction were found, and also because it took place several hours after the funeral service for seven Spanish intelligence agents, murdered in Iraq.

One of the most high-profile and glamorous speech situations to occur in many parliamentary democracies around the world is the spectacle of Question Time. Whereas most of what goes on in parliament may be drab, perfunctory and arcane, Question Time is often dramatic, adversarial, and highly publicised. It is, generally, the only parliamentary procedure to be televised and stands out in the public mind as one of the primary tests of a politicians ability to perform. But how might this performance be judged? Strangely, there has been little systematic linguistic research into the characteristic ways in which this political theatre is stage-managed by its actors. Using the Australian federal parliament as a case study, this paper attempts to elucidate some of the patterns that emerge from a close analysis of all opposition questions directed to government members over a weeks sitting of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Utilising the tools of systemic functional grammar, recurring discourse structures are identified as standard techniques of formal interrogation between political parties.

In this paper, I use articulation theory to examine the political discourse which surrounds the Bush Administrations proposed ballistic missile defense shield. I argue that there are three central articulations used by the Bush Administration to garner public support for the ballistic missile defense shield. They are: 1) the articulation of missile defense with national security; 2) the unity formed out of terrorism and the threat of a missile attack by rogue states; and 3) the articulation of missile defense with technological inevitability and progress. I illustrate how these dominant articulations discursively serve to garner support for the proposed shield by setting the parameters around which discussions of missile defense can take place. My primary argument is that the discursive unities made by the Bush Administration out of such elements as terrorism, technology, progress, and capitalism functions to perpetuate and justify a larger American project of exceptionalism, unilateralism, and military hegemony.

The aim of this study is to scrutinize the assumption that objective reporting is goodreporting, is ethical reporting. I do this by reflecting on different dimensions that areassociated with the concept of objectivity: (1) accuracy; (2) truthfulness; (3) fairness andbalance, and (4) moral neutrality. It is asserted that in many cases journalists are not objectivein their reporting either because they consciously prefer not to be or because they are beingmanipulated by their sources. I close by asserting that the values of not harming others andrespecting others should play a prominent part in the considerations of journalists. These arebasic ethical standards that sometimes require normative reporting. Consequently, morallyneutral coverage of hate speech and racism is a bad idea. It is a false and wrong conception.Subjectivity is preferable to objectivity when the media cover illiberal and anti-democraticphenomena.

The eve of the ongoing Iraq war was a decisive moment for world leaders since they, given American pressure, had to choose between being with US or with the enemies. It meant treading on potentially threatening issues that could harm inter-national alliances and friendships. This paper illustrates using transcripts of Jacques Chiracs (then French president) interviews the linguistic avoidance strategies used to avoid, redefine, recontextualise, reframe, and reassess concepts and topics considered threatening to the position held. The answers Chirac gives to the rather direct questions show his desire to avoid projecting the false idea that France is hindering American foreign policy. It is therefore not only his face that is at stake, but also that of his people, his political party, and the nation. Placing the analysis within the broader concept of multimodal communication, the paper adopts some of the findings made by Caffi & Janney (1994) and Janney (1999) to emphasise that strategies of avoiding implicative and threatening concepts in speech follow similar patterns of escaping from or avoiding harmful objects in the physical world.