Thinking Politics in the Vernacular (original) (raw)
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Conceptual Model of Politics in American English
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 2020
Purpose of the study: The research is aimed at reconstructing a conceptual model of POLITICS as a social phenomenon that is activated by the word politics in the minds of American people. Methodology: As an appropriate methodology, "the semantics of lingual networks" (SLN) is used to analyse a 1000context sample of the word politics from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Specifically, a range of logical predicates (associated with POLITICS) is established and sorted by propositional schemas of basic frames. The latter is reproduced graphically in the network conceptual form and equated to the denotative meaning of POLITICS. Main findings: The conducted research made it possible to define 26 propositional schemas that are regarded as the conceptual model of POLITICS in American English. Novelty/originality: The research is the first attempt to study social phenomena via linguistic tools onlythose of cognitive linguistics (the SLN methodology) and corpus linguistics (analysis of a COCA sample where these phenomena are represented)rather than via techniques of politology, sociology, psychology and other social sciences themselves. Along with the conceptual model of POLITICS, the first-ever idea to convert it into the field cognitive model is offered as well (via operations of cognitive interpretation and prominence). As a result, the final model can be used to define what features of POLITICS are mentally the most relevant for the American community. The possibility of comparing several cognitive models of POLITICS is also stated. Applications of the study: The research results can be used for politological, sociological and psychological studies; to compile new curricula for philology undergraduates and postgraduates.
Political Language and Performance
The involvement of humans with the world is essentially manifested in our being constantly engaged in performing actions, evaluating the potential results or regretting the actual outcomes of our own or other people's deeds, assuming or disclaiming responsibility for the acts we actually perform or imagine performing, debating whether to act or to refrain from action or whether we should act in a certain way or another. Language plays a key role in structuring and mediating humans' political agency and moral reasoning. However, while language is often understood as a mere device for the transmission of information, the term " politics " often evokes in our minds large-scale processes involving local institutions, national governments, or international agencies. This course would like to challenge these traditional representations of both language and politics and provide an understanding of how the micro-political usages of language lie at the heart of human sociality. Through a series of readings and practical exercises we will see how the way that we say something is often just as (or even more) important than what we actually say. We will discover how language is inherently political and how politics entails an important performative and aesthetic component. Goals Throughout the semester, we will explore how, in our everyday lives, we are often (although not always completely consciously) involved in subtle and complex political dynamics concerning our own and/or our interlocutors' identity and " footing ". We will seek to understand how speakers construct credibility and assertiveness while communicating among themselves and how they manage issues of agreement, affiliation, and disalignment in the moral domain of everyday conversation and political speech making. At the same time we will examine how political discourse both in the US and in more " exotic " contexts constitutes a form of verbal art that entails different aesthetics of persuasion and reproduces different moral philosophies and cultural values. Students will be involved in conducting original research about the ethnography of everyday speech and political discourse in settings of their choice, either individually or in small groups. Through the selected readings, students will achieve a deeper appreciation of how speakers use language as well as other semiotic resources (i.e. space, nonverbal behavior, cosmetics, and clothing) to construct meaning. Throughout the semester students will also become acquainted with some basic multimedia technologies. They will be expected to: • Videotape and audio record human interaction in natural settings • Learn how to transcribe the talk they record
Creolizing political theory in conversation
Contemporary Political Theory, 2018
A "critical exchange" in Contemporary Political Theory on Jane Gordon's book _Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon_.
Political Theory and Ordinary Language: a road not taken
Polity, 2010
This article argues that political theory could gain from a revival of the form of ordinary language analysis advocated by J. L. Austin. It distinguishes three objectionable forms of scholasticism widespread in contemporary political theory, and shows how Austinian methods might help to combat them. To illustrate the potential of Austinian analysis in political theory, the final third of the article considers, in the light of pertinent ordinary language, the widely canvassed claim that coercion can involve "disrespect for persons"; these considerations suggest that this claim is more complicated, less obviously sound, and more interesting, than political theorists often assume.
On the linguistic features of American political discourse
Studia Anglica Resoviensia
The present-day public communication space is dominated by the language of politics, thus allowing political discourse to both influence and become one of the components of contemporary culture. The paper aims at discussing the typical linguistic features of a sample of political speeches given by the major actors in American political campaigns in the year 2012. Attention will be given to the use of rhetorical devices, which serve as examples of both the figurative use of words and their constituent part of political language-used here as an instrument to increase power and to suggestively, and most frequently, subjectively, convey knowledge about the world. Though the typical linguistic features of political speeches have thus far been the focus of many linguists and researchers during their analysis of this phenomenon of discourse, not much attention has been given to establish a comparison of the rhetorical devices used by American politicians to win the hearts of a specific political party voter, i.e. a Democrat or a Republican.
The series includes contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction -disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies.
The series includes contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction -disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies.
Pragmatics of Political Discourse
Political language is not in essence any different from other manifestations of language and therefore its specificity must be sought instead in the particular relationships that are established between the discourse itself and the extralinguistic context (Van Dijk, 1997, p. 24). It is there, within that framework of specific historical, economic and social coordinates, where the forms of political language appear in a more extreme way than in other textual genres and where the relationships between the explicit and implicit meanings become especially relevant. Whatever the case may be, when it comes to defining the limits of this discursive genre it would be wise to distinguish, at least initially, between political discourse in the strict sense of the term and other forms of public discourse with potential political implications (e.g. scholarly discourse, legal discourse, etc.). In this chapter, we will focus on analysing the first of these two discursive practices, so we will refer mainly to the first-frame participants in political discourse, such as politicians going about their parliamentary activity, being interviewed by journalists from the media, confronting each other in parliamentary and electoral melees or giving speeches before overjoyed followers at public addresses. Of the many subjects that can be discussed in the analysis of this type of discourse in the literature, in these pages we will review several pragmatic aspects of these verbal interactions in which politicians usually participate, such as some strategies and formats used by politicians in their interactions with journalists in political interviews (section 2), the different types of audiences faced and the tactics they usually display in order to seduce them (section 3), the face-work exhibited in conflict discourses between antagonists during political debates (section 4), or the increased number of mediatisation and conversationalisation processes in the way politics has been ‘doing’ in recent times (section 5). Now, considering the complexities of dealing with all these issues around the world, in this introduction we will focus mainly on political discourse pronounced in western democracies and, in particular, on the communicative behaviour that politicians usually display in some of the abovementioned subgenres and types of media, especially TV. Nevertheless, for space reasons, the new interactive media, in which politicians have recently begun to establish new forms of interaction with people (blogs, chats, social networks, etc.) will be dealt with only in passing (see section 5).