Backsliding of the left: or how Viktor Orbán’s right-wing conservative illiberalism emerged as a normative ideal in Bulgarian political discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Julia Rone
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Right Wing

scholarly journals A Swirl of Semiosis of Communication in Media and Political Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Griselda Zárate ◽  
Olga Nelly Estrada
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Meaning Production ◽  
Ad Populum ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies ◽  
Semiotic Process

The 2016 US elections offer the opportunity for interpretation within a continuum of semiotic processes. This is particularly acute in regards to previous events, such as the visit in August 31, 2016 of US president candidate Donald Trump to Mexico. This paper aims to approach this political event as a cultural text containing several subtexts with diverse layers of meaning production: the mentioned visit as a candidate; Mexican president Peña Nieto’s dismissal of secretary Videgaray; Candidate Trump’s rally in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Drawing from Lotman’s ideas, special attention is given in this semiotic process to the inflection point where the paths of history cross and become unpredictable (1999; 2013; 2000). Also, it incorporates this theorist views about the concept of text and semiosphere (1996), in particular as container of collective cultural memory, and meaning production, as well as a point of view from a gender perspective. The analysis includes rhetorical devices, such as ad populum and ad hominem arguments, metaphors, as well as pragmatic strategies, such as intensifiers and attenuators to appeal to audience emotions, which make evident a populist right wing ideology embedded in political discourse.

scholarly journals The ‘new’ League success in the red belt and its post-fascist inheritance: evidence from 2018 National Elections

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moreno Mancosu ◽  
Riccardo Ladini
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
First Republic ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

In 2018 national elections, the Lega, an Italian xenophobic right-wing party, has dramatically increased its consensus in the ‘red belt’, the central part of the country traditionally ruled by center-left parties. Pundits have argued that this performance can be attributed to the effect of the new leadership of Matteo Salvini, who shifted the ideological location of the party (that now aims at being a national right-wing party), combined with the drop in preferences of Forza Italia, the ally/competitor in the right-wing ideological spectrum. This paper aims at providing new insights in the explanation of these electoral outcomes, by hypothesizing that geographical trajectories of diffusion of the party are correlated with the presence of geographically clustered post-fascist minorities present in the region since the First Republic age. By employing official figures at the municipality level, the paper analyses the relationship between the percentages of votes for the MSI (the most relevant post-fascist force during the First Republic) in 1976 and the Lega Nord in the 2006-2018 period. Consistent with our hypothesis, the post-fascist inheritance is significantly correlated with the local prevalence for the Lega Nord in 2018, after the change in the political discourse and leadership of the party. Empirical analyses provide evidence of our expectations, even when controlling for unemployment rate and percentage of immigrants.

Security threat: a reality or right-wing political discourse phenomenon

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-461
Author(s):  
Marium Fatima ◽  
Ghulam Ali Murtaza ◽  
Shahid Ahmed Afridi ◽  
Arshi Saleem Hashmi
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Security Threat

Living Through It: Anger, Laughter, and Internet Memes in Dark Times

2020 ◽  
pp. 136787792096599
Author(s):  
Hollis Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Historical Moment

In this article, the author examines online political discourse as it is made manifest in internet memes in order to illuminate the lived, felt dimensions of progressive politics at a historical moment when those politics seem especially imperiled. The author argues for an understanding of online engagements with politics as being borne of oscillation as users move between platforms as well as affective states. The goal: to underscore how anger and laughter provide progressives with different opportunities to weather, make fun of, and combat the ascendancy of right-wing populism. Rooted in literature on affect and scholarship on internet memes, especially feminist internet memes, the article examines several different memes that circulated between 2016 and 2020, including #pussygrabsback, #neverthelessshepersisted, Prankster Joe Biden memes, and Creepy Joe Biden memes.

The Seriousness of Play: Johan Huizinga and Carl Schmitt on Play and the Political

2020 ◽  
pp. 155541202097561
Author(s):  
Alexander Lambrow
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Johan Huizinga ◽  
The Right

This article addresses the political dimensions of Johan Huizinga’s seminal work Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture (1938). More than just a foundational text in academic ludology, this text positioned itself as a polemic against the right-wing political discourse going on in contemporaneous Nazi Germany, represented chiefly by Carl Schmitt. Through his concept of play, Huizinga hoped to resolve what he perceived to be the confusion of play and seriousness among a group of reactionary theorists narrowly focused on the Schmittian Ernstfall, the “serious case” of inimical violence. This article analyzes the usage of the concepts of “play” and “seriousness” in Huizinga’s and Schmitt’s respective corpuses and, finally, places their work in dialogue in order to understand the difficulties involved in defining play as unserious and unpolitical.

scholarly journals CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN THE GERMAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE AS A REFLECTION OF MIGRATION PROCESSES (BASED ON OFFICIAL STATEMENTS OF THE PARTY “ALTERNATIVE FOR GERMANY”)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 8-18
Author(s):  
T. S. Medvedeva ◽  
V. E. Kazakova
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right ◽  
Alternative For Germany

The paper considers the metaphorical models as a way of conceptual-metaphorical representation of migration policies pursued by the German federal government in the texts of official statements of the right-wing opposition party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD). The study aims at analyzing the functioning of conceptual metaphors in the German political discourse focused on migration processes. The study is based on the texts of AfD’s official statements within the 2016th and the 2019th years posted on the website https://www.afd.de/ The overall number of the analyzed texts is 70. The theory of political metaphor is currently one of the most urgent and dynamic fields of linguistics. In our opinion, the metaphorization of migration processes is understudied and needs addressing the topic. As a result of the research, the conclusion is made that the metaphor serves as one of the most important and effective ways of manipulation aimed at controlling the public awareness and contributing to shaping political viewpoints that benefit the addresser. Throughout the study we analyzed the basic metaphorical models used to describe migration processes in Germany; a classification of predominant metaphors based on the sources of metaphorical expansion was worked out. Besides, we tried to trace the dynamics of using the metaphorical models within the four-year period. In 2016 as well as in 2019 nature-morphic, anthropomorphic, sociomorphic models were widely used in the official statements of the AfD party. However, the number of the metaphors in the texts dated 2016 is half as much as in 2019 (184 versus 120). In both periods of time the sociomorphic model proved to be the most popular but it is much more frequent in 2019. However, in the texts dated 2016 it comprises additional concepts of religion and hospitality. The nature-morphic metaphor is twice more frequent in 2016. The percent of anthropomorphic and cognitive metaphors in both periods of time remains unaltered.

scholarly journals Rituals between religion and politics: the case of VHP’s 2001-2002 Ayodhya-campaign

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 162-175
Author(s):  
Erik Reenberg Sand
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
The North ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sangh Parivar

The present paper deals with rituals in a political discourse, namely the rituals employed by the right wing, Hindu nationalist movement, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), in its campaign for a Rama temple in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. As is probably well-known, VHP is part of a group of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar, or sangh family, which also includes the presently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the ultranationalistic organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The rituals of VHP are instruments of the construction of an ideal Hindu society and part of an encounter between Hindu-nationalist tenets and the secular, political establishment. However, the rituals employed by VHP can not be said to represent a separate ritual genre, since they are not different from similar, traditional Hindu rituals. What makes them different is their context and their motives, the fact that they do not serve ordinary material, eschatological, or soteriological aims, but rather political aims, as well as the fact that the ritual agents in this case do not seem to have a satisfactory juridical legitimacy to perform the rituals.

scholarly journals "Normalisierung nach rechts": Politischer Diskurs im Spannungsfeld von Neoliberalismus, Populismus und kritischer Öffentlichkeit

2015 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Wodak
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
School Children ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Complete Sample ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right

In recent years, we can observe a shift towards the right, in politics and the related political discourse. This paper analyses this development for debates on migration in Austria, while drawing on the concept of "normalisation". The basic assumption is illustrated with an example of Austrian debates following the terrorist attacks in Paris, 7.–9.01.2015. In the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a complete sample of 72 newspaper articles in the period of two weeks in January/February 2015, it becomes obvious that the notion of "unwillingness to integrate" ("Integrationsunwilligkeit"), a completely vague notion (a "floating signifier") which remains undefined and was used only by the right-wing populist party FPÖ in the 1990s, has since moved to the middle of the political spectrum and was suddenly employed by the political mainstream in 2014 and 2015. Moreover, the analysis provides some evidence for the merging of two completely unrelated arguments: an argument about how to deal with non-compliance of adolescent migrant school children with an argument about the prevention of radicalisation in society.

Bound by a Frame of Reference, Part III: U.S. Policy and the Palestinians, 1988-98

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Christison
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Harsh Criticism

The policymakers most responsible for shaping policy on the Palestinian-Israeli question in both the Bush and the Clinton administrations, a team led by special mediator Dennis Ross, came of age politically at a time when the Palestinian perspective was virtually excluded from American political discourse. These policymakers, by their own testimony emotionally involved in Arab-Israeli issues because of their Jewish roots, are naturally inclined to view the issue from the traditional Israel-centered vantage point despite their occasionally harsh criticism of Israel's right-wing government and their vaunted understanding of Palestinian sensibilities. Part III of this series examines how the old frame of reference still determines policy even in an era when Palestinians are seen as legitimate participants in the peace process.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document