Journal of Language and Politics - Current Issue

Abstract

This position paper argues for an interdisciplinary agenda relating crises to on-going processes of normalization of anti- and post-democratic action. We call for exploring theoretically and empirically the ‘new normal’ logic introduced into public imagination on the back of various crises, including the recent ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe, COVID-19 pandemic, or the still ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gathering researchers of populism, extremism, discrimination, and other formats of anti- and post-democratic action, we propose investigating how, why, and under which conditions, discourses and practices underlying normalization processes re-emerge to challenge the liberal democratic order. We argue exploring the multiple variants of ‘the new normal’ related to crises, historically and more recently. We are interested in how and why these open pathways for politics of exclusion, inequality, xenophobia and other patterns of anti- and post-democratic action while deepening polarization and radicalization of society as well as propelling far-right politics and ideologies.

Abstract

This article questions the offensive realist explanation of the war in Ukraine found in the work of John Mearsheimer. It argues that Mearsheimer’s failure to take seriously predispositional factors means his account of the war offers an incomplete basis for discerning motives, predicting the conflict’s evolution, or responding to Russian aggression. To address this deficit and explain how ideological beliefs and meanings expressed in discourse are shaping Russia’s prosecution of the war, the article sets out an interpretive framework that draws on insights into armed conflict and ideology from the likes of Michael Freeden and Jonathan Leader Maynard as well as contributions to Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) primarily in the work of Teun van Dijk. To explore the Russian ideological and discursive aspects at play in the Ukraine war, the article fixes its analytical gaze on an address delivered by Putin to the Russian nation on February 24, 2022.

Abstract

This study examines how emergent Twitter publics are organised and engage with political scandal and personalisation during Covid-19 in the UK. The analysis is centred on a series of media events around Chief Adviser to the then-UK Prime Minister, running from May 2020 to May 2021. The samples comprises original tweets that contain key hashtags, amounting to 38,326 items. These are subject to topic model analysis to identify semantic fields, before using critical discourse analysis. We find hashtags help constitute emergent Twitter publics, and that tweets follow conversational patterns and conspire in tactics of intertextuality. Dissention to government conduct engages resourcefully with the affordances of Twitter: constituting publics, shaping discourse, and articulating with parallel discussions on political performance. Further, a computational approach can systematise the identification of domains of discourse and relevant lexical sets, providing an evidence-based understanding of even novel and emergent political discourses in online discussion.

Abstract

The European migrant crisis constitutes one of the greatest challenges of the second Decade of the 21st century. Controlled by the populist Law and Justice, the Polish government has been one of the few to oppose receiving refugees, although it is obliged to through the cooperation of EU states. The authors analyzed 852 parliamentary speeches of 24 Polish political leaders since 2011 to 2019. Considering the analysis results, it is possible to conclude that the more severe the crisis became, the more dynamically the number of reports on the migrant crisis increased in parliamentary discourse. The research confirms that the two biggest parties present dramatically disparate views on the issue. The study also confirms that the views and declarations of the analyzed political leaders are compatible with the views of their electorates.

Abstract

This paper examines the shifting boundaries in populist discourses in China, with a focus on how the political leader’s discourse socially constructs the people. By combining critical and post-structuralist discourse analysis, we argue firstly that prevalent Western-centric approaches to the study of populism only partially capture the notion of the people in contemporary China, the study of which requires a mixture of elements from these approaches. Secondly, that the image of a Chinese people embracing the Chinese Dream and the promise for a New China, is narrated in a context where the Chinese Communist Party infuses all levels of society with messages of development, prosperity, peace and freedom. And thirdly, that while previous leaders would normally address the people in a formal and detached way, the distance between leadership and the people has been reduced in the Xi Jinping era.

Abstract

In the context of the China-USA trade dispute, this study reports a discourse analysis of legitimation tactics used in the People’s Daily, a major English-language news outlet produced by the Communist Party of China (CPC). My analysis centres on a dataset of 65 commentaries between March 2018 and January 2020, and identifies the five key tactics at work: authorization, moralization, rationalization, hypothetical future, and integration. These tactics (and their sub-tactics) are deployed for delegitimating the US-initiated “America First” trade policy, and for legitimating the Chinese state’s position and countermeasures. Orienting to Western scholarship about the news media’s role as an “echo chamber” for State/political agendas, I compare the pattern of legitimation in the People’s Daily commentaries with the pattern previously found in an analysis of Chinese state white papers. This comparison highlights key similarities but also differences in terms of genre, language, and ideological coherence.

This article reviews Lifestyle Politics in Translation: The Shaping and Re-shaping of Ideological Discourse

This article reviews Critical discourse analysis: A practical introduction to power in language978-0-367-13369-6

This article reviews Systemic functional political discourse: A text-based study978-1-138-35971-0

This article reviews When Politicians Talk: The Cultural Dynamics of Public Speaking978-981-16-3578-6US$ 149.99