Word Choices in Post-9 / 11 Speeches and the Identity Construction of the Other (original) (raw)

Political Discourse Analysis

International Encyclopedia of Langiage and Social Interaction

Defining political discourse as talk and text produced in regard to concrete political issues (language in politics) or the actual language use of institutional political actors (language of politicians), this article outlines traditionally recognized and newly identified links between language and politics. After clarifying some conceptual ambiguities and elaborating the historical roots of political language research, the article surveys themes, actors, methods, data, and research goals of PDA, based on key texts and the latest studies in the field.

Political Discourse Analysis: Exploring the Language of Politics and the Politics of Language

This essay overviews the body of research known as political discourse analysis (PDA). I begin by situating this work within the linguistic and political turns that took place in the latter part of the 20th century within the human and social sciences. I then discuss different conceptions of what comprises the political and the appropriate objects of study for PDA. Adopting an inclusive conception of politics and discourse, I consider the relationship between PDA and critical discourse analysis (CDA). I close with a review of studies of political discourse in terms of their theoretical and analytic frameworks and the socio-political issues they address.

Revisions to the theory of political discourse analysis

Revisions to the theory of political discourse analysis, 2022

This article describes classical approaches to understanding political discourse analysis as one of the most promising methods of political analysis. The article examines both the critical discourse analysis approaches proposed by G. Kress and L. Сhouliaraki (socio-semantic approach), N. Fairclough and R. Wodak (socio-cultural approach), and T. Van Dijk (sociocognitive approach), as well as the postmodern theory of discourse analysis proposed by M. Foucault and developed by his followers, in particular E. Laclau and S. Mouffe. The objective of this essay is to compare and contrast different methodologies for the advancement of political discourse analysis. There are a number of factors that make this article relevant. In the first place, modern methods of studying political reality are in crisis. They are no longer as effective at comprehending the social processes of our time as they once were. Secondly, the popularity of interdisciplinary research methods is growing every day, and political discourse analysis is seen as a vivid example of such a method. Thirdly, consciousness, which is still considered an insufficiently studied phenomenon in the social sciences, can finally be replaced by language. Language or discourse is considered here as the bricks of which consciousness is composed and thanks to which it can perform in the social space. This approach allows us to ignore the physical and biological manifestations of consciousness in favor of social ones, which allows us to interpret the socio-political reality of our time as accurately as possible and predict future changes. As a result, we define political discourse analysis as a kind of general political analysis based on postmodern discourse theory. We are sure that this type of analysis has the greatest prospects for the study of such social processes and social relations as power, conflicts, inequality, political identity, etc. This article will be interesting for those who are engaged in political discourse analysis and developing it, as well as for other scholars who study the philosophy of science, methodology, political psychology, and quantitative and qualitative research methods in the social sciences.

A Radical Shift to a Profound and Rigorous Investigation in Political Discourse: An Integrated Approach

Drawing on overarching methodological frameworks of Hallidayan grammatical metaphor, Fairclough's perspective on critical discourse analysis and rhetoric, this study attempts to posit a novel, integrated and practical approach to political, the media, advertisement and other discourses. To this end and based on the proposed approach, it aims to critically and eclectically exemplify and dissect three speeches delivered by Mr. Barack Obama, former president of the US, to first manifest the integrated approach practicality and adeptness through analysis; then by virtue of analysis to unveil how language is manipulated and distorted by orators in order to convey seamlessly intended messages and political creeds to the audience. Surveying recent annals of literature, to date no one has conducted an integrated study applying these disciplines in an individual paper and this study as a trial one can be useful for upcoming research. The analysis depicts practicality and efficiency of the integrated approach and displays that the speeches abound with nominalizations, modal verbs, parallelisms and antitheses. Furthermore, there are some three-part listing, the use of passivization, quotations and modality metaphors. Therefore, a tendency to utilize more nominalizations, parallelism and other devices by the speaker can be a fundamental reason for making his political language more powerful, impressive, persuasive and ambiguous as well.

A Political Discourse Analysis of the Speeches of President Obama and Prime Minister Gillani

Journal of Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies

This paper examines the discourse of the two political speeches made by the Pakistan Premier Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and the US President Barack Obama after the elimination of Osama Bin Laden on May 3, 2011. The objective of this analysis is to discover and explicate how ideology is established and unveiled by the use of language. For the stated purpose, the framework of this study draws on Halliday’s model of transitivity (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) through which we aim to investigate the transitivity choices employed by the individual speakers, the participant roles (Hasan, 1985) assigned to the enemy and the pronoun choices (Butt et. al., 2004) made by the two speakers in order to reveal a particular socio-political stance disseminated through the two speeches in two cultures: of the USA and Pakistan. The findings indicate that linguistic choices in transitivity play a fundamental role in conveying of implicit and dominant ideologies.