Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2010

This study develops and illustrates the notion of dissonant political discourse. The discourse of dissonance is to be found wherever there is public debate on controversial topics or on topics requiring a decision, notably in the political arena. Discourse of this kind is characterized by arguments demonstrating both how hard and how necessary it is to face up to any decision that will put the decision maker in an inconsistent position. Findings confirm that voices heard in the arena of political discourse make use of dissonant argument when experiencing difficulties in justifying decisions. Ironically, it is precisely the evidence of difficulties encountered by the speakers that shows how continuation of the joint debate is ensured

This work examines the linguistic construction of gender identity in the discourse of Margaret Thatcher. Identity is defined in the terms of Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as an ‘emergent’ phenomenon, depending on local contexts of interaction. In analysing the contributions by media figures to processes of identity construction recourse is made to the theories of Turner and Oakes (e.g. 1989) in the field of social identity theory. Interviewers’ questions are examined for what they reveal about identity presuppositions. Mrs Thatcher at times plays along with these presuppositions, ignores them, or objects to them. Her answers tell us something about the identity she wishes to construct. The work focuses on Thatcher’s first major political breakthrough; her conquest of the Conservative leadership in 1975. The toolkit for examining identity in discourse proposed by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) is adopted, and Corpus Linguistics and the Appraisal Framework of Martin and White (2005) are used in support of the selected tools.

This study aims at understanding how politicians of both genders who are constantly in the media relate to, and manage, their mediated visibility. I assume that politicians who are constantly subject to visual exposure need to manage their experienced lack of control by developing various strategies in order to feel more empowered than perhaps is possible given the media’s power of framing their political personas. Six Swedish politicians in prominent positions were interviewed qualitatively using open-ended questions relating to their views on press photographers, the role of visuals and personal experiences of being visualised in the press. It was found that the politicians develop both manifest counter-strategies as well as more latent, reflexive ones which all imply an unwillingness to submit to the media’s visual framing power.

This paper looks at how the marriage metaphor structures the discourse concerning the relationship between political parties in Serbia. In January 2007, in the first general election to be held in Serbia since its union with Montenegro was dissolved in 2006, no party succeeded in gaining an absolute majority. Eventually, after more than three months of coalition talks, the main pro-reform parties agreed to form a government: the conservative and moderately nationalist right-leaning Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), together with the pro-Western Democratic Party (DS). Compiling a small data collection from the leading Serbian dailies and political weeklies we have tried to track the metaphors through highly argumentative discourse in regard to the formation of political coalitions and their break-up. The main aim of this study is to show how the metaphors may be mapped and used as a vehicle of public discourse for achieving overt or covert political and ideological objectives on the complex political scene in contemporary Serbia. We will also argue that Serbian political discourse is highly gendered, as gender roles, manifested through the assignment of wife and husband roles to political parties, are clearly delineated according to the traditional male-female dichotomy, implying stereotypical traits and patriarchal values characteristic of Serbian culture.

This paper argues that for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create certain identities as ‘other’, that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. To fix those identities as a-relational ‘substances’ in the universal language of law and science. And to use those ‘substances’ in games of inclusion/exclusion that simulate non-intervention while safeguarding the liberal ‘will to govern’. Centrally, the identities posited as ‘other’ are those the contemporary governmental discourses also posit as ‘particular’: the poor, the racialised and the gendered. Thus, it is argued that those governmental practices depend in equal measures on the simultaneously individualizing and totalising nature of governmental bio-power, on the particular/universal liberal tension and on the essentialising nature of scientific truths. Those points are illustrated by the US national family planning strategy’s construction of reality in terms of a ‘pathological mother’, a (m)other.

In the first two and a half months of 2008, conservative American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh declared a state of “race war” in the United States. According to Limbaugh, the primary combatants were Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who (at the time of writing) were competing to become the Democratic nominee in the 2008 race for President. As the most successful African-American presidential candidate in American history, then-Senator Obama was the subject of racially-charged comments and the target of racially-motivated mud-slinging. Despite his professed neutrality in what he portrayed as a purely internecine affair, however, Limbaugh was an enthusiastic enlistee in this war, fighting on what appears to be both sides in the service of the greater message. This paper uses an interdisciplinary framework, drawn from linguistic anthropology, social psychology, and Goffman’s (1981) study of participant roles, to analyze the strategies which Limbaugh deployed in the earliest days of the Democratic primary season to discuss race while reinforcing the playful, prescient, and persecuted “message”-persona (Silverstein 2003) which has made him synonymous with American conservatism today.

This paper describes the analysis of an 87 million word corpus of British newspaper articles which refer to the subject of Islam. In order to examine representations of Islam and Muslims, the corpus was subjected to a comparative analysis, by analysing the lexis that was used most significantly in the tabloid articles, when compared to the broadsheets, and vice versa. Concordances were then analysed in order to investigate the data in a more qualitative way. It was found that the tabloids tended to focus more on British interests, writing about Muslims in a highly emotional style, in connection with terrorist attacks and religious extremism, focussing on a small number of high-profile Muslim “villains”. On the other hand, the broadsheets had a more restrained reporting stance, writing about Muslims in a wider range of contexts, although their focus on world news resulted in them covering more stories about Muslims engaged in wars. The paper raises issues regarding the meaning of bias, and the process by which readers internalise lexical associations and the extent to which such associations impact on attitudes