The State Awaking Or Stealing? Reverse Effects Of Discourse Strategies In The Croatian Public Space – A Corpus-Assisted Study (original) (raw)

Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Serbian Election Posters

Jezik, književnost, značenje. Jezička istraživanja: zbornik radova (ur. B. Mišić Ilić & V. Lopičić), 2016

In recent years (political) sociology and linguistics have vested some interest into the research of political slogans. Even if these explorations led to a number of important insights and conclusions concerning the essence of slogans, this genre (type of text) still remains an object for further analysis. Though slogans are a kind of "primitive symbolic action" (McConnell 1971: 69), and (maximally) condensed and sublimated short texts, they still embody an amount of linguistic material worth investigating. Precisely because of their compressed and elliptic form (language data), slogans are convenient for "expressing" hidden (implicit) meanings. when we take into account a "material substrate" of a slogan, as for example on a billboard/hoarding or poster, and when we include other semiotic elements in the analysis, then implicit and explicit meanings become enriched or modified (via these other semiotic [visual/pictorial] codes)-and discourse analysis, at the same time, becomes more complex and demanding. The corpus for this study consists of campaign posters used by one presidential candidate in the 2012 elections. This paper argues that a (political) poster-containing a short text (=slogan + possibly some other textual inscription)-relies obviously also on other semiotic code(s) leading to the pragmatic and semiotic enrichment of (complete or incomplete) proposition(s) expressed in a slogan. The analysis examines the interplay and interdependencies between these different codes on the poster and the outcome of this interaction for the overall political/communicative function of a political poster.

POLITICAL RHETORIC IN ELECTIONS

This study describes a tool for identifying the prevailing rhetorical tones in electoral speeches (here the 2014 presidential campaign in Romania), especially from the print press. The application, abbreviated PDA, allows for a rapid and robust interpretation of the electoral language, requiring an interdisciplinary approach. By emphasizing the rhetoric component at the level of speech, electors identify with the candidate, who becomes the personification of their common expectations. Rhetoric diversity is an important problem for receiving message, due to the heterogeneity of auditors. This investigation is intended to give support to specialists in political sciences, to political analysts, sociologists and election's staff, being helpful mainly in their interpretation of the electoral campaigns, as well as to the media, in their intend to evaluate reactions with respect to the developments in the political scene.

The Language of Political Slogans in 2016 Slovak Parliamentary Elections

2018

This research focuses on the investigation of political slogans produced during the 2016 Slovak Parliamentary Elections. Slogans were collected from street advertisements, such as billboards and posters, in the town of Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. The pool of slogans was processed through several linguistic methods, such as semantic, morphemic, stylistic, and axiological analyses, which helped to reveal the linguistic design of political slogans on the one hand, and some of the features of regional political environment on the other. In terms of their semantic content, the largest share of slogans contains a promise to create more jobs and improve social welfare. Theaxiological vector of slogans aims at patriotism, honesty, and justice, whereas politics is dismissed as something primarily harmful. Grammatically, most slogans employ 1st person plural (e.g. we do smth, let’s do smth) as their predominant choice of verb form, which signals that the candidates in the election tend to spea...

Analysis of Visual and Persuasive Language Used on Billboards Promoting Candidates of the 2019 Elections

KnE Social Sciences

The 2019 elections were the first occurrence involving votes for the president, Regional Representative Board (DPD), House of Representative (DPR) and Regional House of Representative (DPRD) all on the same day. In this study, the billboards used in campaigns are investigated and their linguistic aspects scrutinised. The study uses a qualitative description analysis method, involving two billboards originating from the nationalist and Islamic camps which won the general elections in 2019. The study uses two approaches in analyzing the first billboard: 1) semiotic social analysis to analyze images and symbols on billboards and 2) persuasive discourse to analyze existing taglines. The study demonstrates the presence of a dominant type of persuasive discourse that contains an invitation and affirmation. On the billboard, the researchers found that the candidates used many key figures to increase their appeal and also used the billboards to educate voters about callot-casting, Keywords:...

Powerful posters – A multimodal analysis of Slovenia’s 2018 parliamentary elections

Ars & Humanitas: L. 14 Št. 1 (2020): Prepričevalna moč sodobnega političnega in medijskega diskurza, 2020

Given the rise of far-right and populist rhetoric in Europe, particularly in light of the 2015 refugee crisis and the racist and xenophobic responses to it, this paper provides a multimodal analysis of the campaign slogans and posters of Slovenian political parties that gained parliamentary seats during the 2018 parliamentary elections that were, alongside focusing on issues pertaining to the Slovenian political landscape, heavily infused with concerns and potential solutions on how to tackle the challenges currently faced by Europe. The aim is to examine the linguistic and visual tools used by parties across different ends of the political spectrum and indeed if the use of certain elements is characteristic of a determined political orientation. A brief outline of Slovenian party dynamics and the conditions that have contributed to them is followed by an analysis of parties' political campaigns. Using the tools of political discourse analysis, the first part is centered around parties' choice of syntax and lexis in their political slogans, as well as the imagery on their posters, whereas the second portion is devoted to a linguistic analysis of how parties frame and address five key common issues in their political programs: pensions, corruption, finance, healthcare and safety. Their stances and how these differ or coincide based on their place on the political spectrum are exemplified by short excerpts from the programs.

Textual Analysis of Populist Discourse in 2014/2015 Presidential Election in Croatia

Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 2016

Populism has been vastly present in Croatian media discourse as a common point of reference but it has been almost completely left out from scientific inquiry. Building on the premise that populism is reflected in communication practices of politicians, parties and movements, this paper uses content analysis to examine interviews of the four presidential candidates during election campaign in Croatia in 2014 (first round) and 2015 (second round). We apply a two-level approach to measure populism on two distinct but related levels - as a thin-centered political ideology and as a political communication style. Populism as ideology is examined through the presence of positive references to the people, relationship to political elites and references to ‘dangerous others’. The analysis of populism as political communication style is primarily set to determine efforts of the candidates to use populist cues to resonate with the voters. The presence of populist style is here examined throug...

Aggressive rhetoric in Croatian post-election political discourse

Res Rhetorica, 2021

Aggressive rhetoric in Croatian political discourse became particularly prominent during the parliamentary election in 2015. A deep polarization of society yielded a new political option, one of the strongest since the beginning of Croatian independence in 1990. After the great election success, MOST got the opportunity to form the new Croatian Government either with HDZ or SDP, the two most influential parties in Croatia. This situation caused enormous tension in the post-election period and consequently intensified the politicians' aggressive rhetoric. The aim of this study is to describe, interpret and explicate linguistic and rhetorical devices which contributed to the aggressiveness, and ultimately conclude which of the political options listed above is the most aggressive.

Slovenian election posters as a medium of political communication: An informative or persuasive campaign tool?

Communication, politics & culture, 2012

To m a ž D e ž e la n a nd Ale m Ma k suti ! Abstract Election posters are a visual means of communicating political messages to a large audience, and they are an important print medium for political communication that is directly controlled by political actors. Posters have played a large role in election campaigns for the past two centuries, and as a result, this trend continues in many countries today. The legacy of socialism and the rule of the Communist Party made posters even more important in Slovenia, due to the medium's significant function in the propaganda machinery. By employing the informative-persuasive framework (Mueller & Stratmann 1994), we analysed the nature of electoral competition in Slovenian poster campaigning as well as the extent of its (dis)continuity with posters from the period of communist monism. Based on the content analysis of 841 posters from the communist and noncommunist periods, we observed that Slovenian posters in the post-1991 democratic era reflect patterns of poster campaigning characteristic of liberal democracies and demonstrate a clear break with posters from the communist regime. Those patterns confirm the general assumption that dominant political actors employ more persuasive poster campaigning, while the less established devote more attention to informative activities. !

Strategy and creativity in the use of political slogans: A study of the elections held in Spain in 2019

Communication & Society, 2022

The unquestionable predominance of slogans in political communication versus their declining relevance in the commercial kind underpins the objective of this study, which is to gain further insight into the strategies and creative discourses employed by political parties in their campaigning before the general, regional and local elections held in Spain in 2019, whereby the results are compared with those obtained in previous research. The aim is thus to determine the attributes of electoral slogans regarding such aspects as their semantic density, complexity, use of rhetorical devices, core focus or communication efficiency. Accordingly, this study is framed in the field of research on political advertising, employing content analysis. To this end, an analysis was performed on an extensive corpus of 197 slogans, selected according to the criteria of comprehensiveness, relevance and representativeness. In short, it can be claimed that the tendencies noted in previous studies have stabilized, albeit with some new developments in relation to briefness, the use of double or triple slogans, expressive focus, bilingualism, the use of visual resources (such as emoticons) or digital language (contractions), the presence of rhetorical devices, and the relevance of voters and candidates versus political parties, among other factors. Besides the specific evolution of their formal and content-related aspects, we argue that the relevance of political slogans still prevails, and rather than undermining their essence and uses, the advent of social media has instead enhanced them.

Let's Stop The Enemy! A Critical Discourse Analytical (CDA) Case-Study of the Rhetoric of a State-Conducted Survey in Hungary, April 2017

Colloquium: New Philologies, 2018

In April 2017, the Hungarian government launched a national consultation entitled 'Let's stop Brussels!' focusing on topical issues such as Brussels' prohibition of reductions in household utility charges; illegal immigration; foreign attempts to influence the domestic political scene; Brussels' attacks on tax reductions and job creation programmes in Hungary. The ruling party's intention of conducting the consultation was to gain alleged public support for the government's implementation of measures the EU has been concerned about. The present paper investigates the extent of the presence of manipulation in the rhetoric of the questionnaire of the consultation sent to Hungarian eligible voters by using van Dijk's (2006) triangulated Critical Discourse Analytical (CDA) approach. Van Dijk's three-layered approach to the investigation of manipulation in discourse is an integrated theory that establishes links between three different dimensions of manipulation: society, cognition and discourse. The findings of the study show that in all the three dimensions various rhetorical tools of manipulation were applied in the text of the national consultation.