scholarly journals A cross-linguistic analysis of the ‘homework’ metaphor in German and English political discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 609-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Bisiada
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
American English ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
German Newspaper

A frequently encountered expression in political discourse across languages is the assertion that someone has not ‘done their homework’. As the expression is a combination of structural metaphor and understatement, it is a figurative frame that simplifies public debates by presenting complex issues such as economic reforms as simple tasks and stifles critical and consensual political debates by replacing questions of fairness and adequacy with unquestionable moral obligation. In spite of this manipulative force, metaphor research has paid little attention to this metaphor. I investigate its emergence and pragmatic effects in American and German newspaper discourse through the Corpus of Historical American English/Corpus of Contemporary American English and Die ZEIT corpora. Findings for both English and German show that, while the metaphor was originally used for positive self- and negative other-representation, it is now used increasingly often without specifying whether or not someone has done their homework, which is evidence to suggest that it has become accepted in public discourse as a normal way of framing political issues.

Nutzen von Erfahrungswissen in Krisen.

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-139
Author(s):  
Janina Barth ◽  
Andrea H. Schneider-Braunberger
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Business Reporting ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Media ◽  
German Newspaper ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Historical References

Abstract It appears to be almost self-evident that most people look towards past experiences for guidance during times of crisis. We would like to consider the empirical evidence for this assumption by analysing the public discourse regarding the reactions to crises, which includes general reporting, statements from politicians or discussions in the media. The outbreak of the Corona pandemic in Germany, starting in March 2020, opens the possibility to collect several preliminary findings by analysing relevant press coverage in the newspapers. Articles from different sections of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) and from the Handelsblatt were evaluated. As our main interest focuses on economic historical (not e. g. medical historical) research questions, we chose the F.A.Z. First, because its business reporting is important within the German newspaper environment in general. Second, because its reporting on the Corona pandemic was award-winning. Additionally, we focused on the Handelsblatt because the newspaper provides press coverage explicitly on financial, business, and political issues – all subjects directly affected by the Corona crisis. The analysis concluded that there was a rise in articles with historical references in general while the number of articles linked to businesses did not increase at the same time which can be linked to the absence of expert business history opinions on offer.

The Problem of Political Ignorance

2021 ◽  
pp. 156-187
Author(s):  
Maxime Lepoutre
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Group Cognition ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Epistemic Function ◽  
Scientific Questions

This chapter turns to the problem that political ignorance poses for democratic public discourse. It is often held (1) that ordinary citizens know too little to engage competently in public debates about politics and (2) that, because of the influence of group identity on political beliefs (or ‘group cognition’), this problematic ignorance is here to stay. The chapter argues that this influential worry fails, because it misunderstands the epistemic function of social group identities. The experiences involved in being a member of a particular social group are epistemically useful for deciding whose political judgment and what political information to trust. This is true even when it comes to scientific questions that bear on political issues, and even when people are dogmatically committed to their group perspectives. So, group cognition constitutes a useful tool for managing and overcoming political ignorance—and, by extension, for defusing the threat it raises for public discourse.

Bridges between Wedges and Frames: Outreach and Compromise in American Political Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 1280-1296
Author(s):  
ANDREW STARK
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Trade Offs

Wedges and frames, two much-studied strategies of American political combat, are generally thought to be partisan weapons, meant to manipulate voters into making trade-offs that favor the political actor wielding them. My inquiry here explores whether there exists anything comparably schematic to wedges and frames at work in attempts by American politicians not to polarize but to find consensus, not to cater to extremes but moderate them. Despite the seeming paucity of such efforts in American public discourse, there is one such common and as-yet untheorized scheme, which uses the two issue positions involved in wedges to overcome the ill effects of reframing and the two value dimensions involved in reframing to overcome the ill effects of wedges. I elaborate this discursive structure by examining its presence in a number of American political debates, showing how it differs from other contemporary normative-theoretic frameworks for understanding compromise in American politics.

scholarly journals ‘Grandmas’ in debate: A first-person story told in Taiwan’s presidential debate as a rhetorical device and public reactions to its credibility

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Ping-Hsuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
First Person ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Constructed Dialogue ◽  
Presidential Debate

This study examines data from a 2016 presidential debate in Taiwan to explore the use of first-person narrative in political discourse as a rhetorical device, and how public reactions to its credibility are influenced by the narrative’s context. While previous studies of political debate discourse (e.g. Kuo 2001) investigate, for example, the use of “constructed dialogue” (Tannen 2007), there is a lack of studies focusing on first-person narrative in political debates. Using three-level positioning as outlined by Bamberg (1997), I analyze a narrative featuring a grandma character told by presidential candidate Eric Chu, also comparing it to another candidate James Soong’s “grandma narrative.” I argue that the context places constraints on the effects of their narratives. Whereas Chu’s narrative, a traditional Labovian first-person story, is widely ridiculed with memes for its lack of credibility, Soong’s narrative, a habitual narrative, receives little attention.The analysis shows how Chu’s narrative serves his rhetorical purposes and suggests why the public doubts its credibility. At level 1 (characters positioned vis-à-vis one another), Chu presents himself as non-agentive with constructed dialogue, thereby excusing an earlier decision he made -- failing to keep his promise to finish his term as a mayor. At level 2 (speaker positioned to audience), he switches from Mandarin to Taiwanese, a local dialect, which can be seen as an appeal to his current audience. At level 3 (identity claims locally instantiated), the grandma character draws on the archetype of elderly women in Taiwanese culture, fundamental to national economic growth, while his description of praying at a temple casts him against the local tradition of religious practices in Taiwan. The study helps fill the knowledge gap regarding first-person narrative in political discourse, while highlighting the context in which political narratives are embedded and contributing to understanding positioning in Taiwanese public discourse.

scholarly journals Conocimiento cultural como base para la construcción de identidad nacional. Un análisis del discurso de la prensa sobre el default de 2014 en Argentina

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-103
Author(s):  
Simone Mwangi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Identidad Nacional ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
Crisis Events

AbstractEconomic and political crisis situations are interpreted differently in different societies and cultures. What is perceived as a major threat in one society can be experienced as an everyday occurrence in other societies. This shows that crises are not issues that exist independently of people, but that they are to a large extent the result of social interpretations. An example of how a community interprets events as a surmountable challenge, rather than a crisis, is Argentina’s public discourse on the 2014 default. Instead of a discourse that concentrates on economic, political and social problems, the event provoked a political discourse on national identity. The present paper uses the methods of descriptive discourse analysis to study this solution-driven way of handling crisis events. The investigation focuses on the cultural knowledge and discourse traditions used in Argentina to interpret the country’s situation in the summer of 2014. The study analyzes how these cultural and linguistic resources contribute to coping with the situation of default while strengthening national identity.

A statistical linguistic analysis of American english

Lingua ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 17 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 439-441
Author(s):  
H. Brandt Corstius
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Linguistic Analysis

Le Bon’s crowd psychology and post-truth

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Dusko Prelevic
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Community

The phenomenon of post-truth, in which truth (or facts or the best scientific evidence) is brushed aside in public debates, has recently caught the eye of many philosophers, who typically see it as a threat to deliberative democracy. In this paper, it is argued that Gustave Le Bon?s remarks on crowd psychology, which had been very popular in past (and brushed aside later on), might be relevant for a better understanding of psychological mechanisms that lead to post-truth. According to Le Bon, crowds are often irrational, whereas those who try to convince them to do something should use specific techniques of persuasion, such as affirmation, repetition, contagion and prestige, of which the last one can be undermined either by fiasco (the fastest way), or by critique (a bit slower, but nonetheless effective way). It is the age of posttruth that goes towards the neutralization of any critique (Le Bon himself considered such neutralization devastating for democratic societies), which has been, according to some authors, affected to a great extent by technological innovations in media, such as social media that some authors consider anti-social due to their negative impact on society. I argue that Le Bon?s insights might be useful to members of scientific and philosophical community in their attempts to eliminate the spreading of quasi-scientific views in public discourse.

"You Can't Just Say That the Only Ones Who Can Speak Are Those Who Agree with Your Position": Political Discourse in the Classroom

1993 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Fine
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Classroom Dynamics ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
School Classroom ◽  
Teachers And Students

In this article, Melinda Fine describes the classroom dynamics surrounding the discussion of controversial issues in a middle school classroom. Through observation and interviews, she creates a detailed portrait of the interactions among teachers and students, revealing that while discussions of emotionally charged social and political issues are often heated and difficult, they can still be constructive. Fine maintains that students are more resilient and able to handle disagreement than is often believed. She concludes by arguing that education in a democracy requires that teachers and students learn to deal constructively with political and social differences.

Family as a framing resource for political identity construction: Introduction sequences in presidential primary debates

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Sclafani
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
Family Discourse ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Family Identities

AbstractThis study investigates the construction of political identity in the 2011–2012 US Republican presidential primary debates. Focusing on candidates’ self-introductions, I analyze how candidates use references to family members and roles to frame their political identities or ‘presidential selves’. Family references are shown to (i) frame candidates’ personal identities as family men/women; (ii) interweave the spheres of home and politics and consequently, their private and public selves; (iii) serve as a tool of discursive one-upmanship in self-introduction sequences; and (iv) demonstrate intimate familiarity and expertise on the topic of national security. This study extends research on family discourse and identity by examining the rhetorical function of mentioning family-related identities in explicitly persuasive public discourse, and contributes to sociolinguistic research on political discourse by examining how family identities serve as a resource for framing political identities. (Discourse analysis, framing, family, identity, political discourse, presidential debates, sequentiality)

scholarly journals ‘You dribble faster than Messi and jump higher than Jordan’: The art of complimenting and praising in political discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zohar Kampf ◽  
Roni Danziger
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Communities

Abstract Communicating admiration and appreciation in public discourse are two important tasks for political actors who wish to secure relationships and advance models for civic behavior. Our goal in this study is to understand how political actors signal their desire to please addressees and advance political sociability by way of manifesting positive judgment towards others. On the basis of 241 utterances praising and complimenting others’ words and deeds, we identify the topics, patterns, and functions of these speech acts and the processes and struggles they evoke in Israeli public discourse. We conclude by discussing the role of positive evaluations in demarcating the boundaries of proper conduct in political communities and the ways the distinctive logic of politics is integrated with specific cultural speaking styles in influencing how members of the Israeli political community signal their appreciation and affect for other members’ skills, performances, and personalities.

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