scholarly journals Dialectics of the Swing (Voter)

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Andrew James Pendakis

This paper aspires to offer a brief genealogy of a new figure of political discourse and imagination I call the "radical centre". In opposition to earlier centrisms, discourses which emphasized moderation, harmony, and balance, this new configuration imbues the centre with a kind of revolutionary or radical potential linked to its capacity to avoid being "trapped" by the traditional political poles. Though this thought envisions itself as beyond ideology and in some sense beyond repetition of any kind the tropology of the centre is filled with repeating motifs and figures susceptible to analysis and critique. The claim of this paper is that the radical centre has become the dominant political rhetoric of our time and that its hegemony works to preempt the possibility of genuinely new (and inventive) forms of political imagination.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun Jacob

The main objective behind the parliamentary practice of Question Period is to ensure that the government is held accountable to the people. Rather than being a political accountability tool and a showcase of public discourse, these deliberations are most often displays of vitriolic political rhetoric. I will be focusing my research on the ways in which incivil political discourse permeates the political mediascape with respect to one instance in Canadian politics - the acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. I believe that incivility in the political discourse of Question Period must be understood within the mechanics of the contemporary public sphere. By interrogating the complexities of how political discourse is being mediatized, produced and consumed within the prevailing ideological paradigms, I identify some of the contemporary social, cultural and political practices that produce incivility in parliamentary discourse.


Author(s):  
G. R. Boynton ◽  
Glenn W. Richardson, Jr.

This chapter is a report about negotiating the boundaries of appropriate political discourse via Twitter. The instance looked at in depth is the communication about the shooting of Representative Giffords in 2011. The first month over 400,000 messages referred to Giffords and substantially more referred to the controversy about the campaign rhetoric of targets and reloading. The authors tracked the communication in 6 ongoing collections of streams of messages and 2 that resulted from the shooting and controversy. One stream was about how “terrorist” was used in characterizing the shooter. The major controversy was about the use of targeting or gun references in campaign rhetoric. Palin released a video using the phrase “blood libel” leading to opposing interpretations of the appropriate use of the term. The authors look in less depth at the controversy in early 2012 about Rush Limbaugh's characterization of a student who testified to a committee of the House of Representatives. That controversy reinforced points found in the communication about the Giffords shooting. It also reminds us that the boundaries of appropriate political rhetoric are continuously negotiated in a free speech society and that there is now a new domain for the negotiation in the new media.


Author(s):  
Елена Евгеньевна Михайлова

В русле воззрений американского теоретика Альберта Отто Хиршмана рассмотрены условия эффективности современного политического дискурса, в частности, его риторики, тематики и контекста. Показано, как аргументирует Хиршман три варианта реакционной критики, направленной на действия властей. Первый тезис предостерегает о возможном ухудшении результатов, второй - о напрасности усилий, третий - о высокой цене изменений. Несмотря на конфронтацию и полярные прогнозы реформ, в риторике реакционеров и прогрессистов обнаруживается глубокая взаимосвязь. Свобода как возможность интерпретации, равенство интересов и прогресс - таковы базовые ценности политической риторики. Предпринятый Хиршманом анализ полярных жанров политической риторики наводит на мысль о том, как важно непрерывно повышать уровень споров, иметь открытое пространство для диалога, гибкой критики и выразительных средств аргументации. In line with the views of the American theorist Albert Otto Hirschman, the author considers the conditions for the effectiveness of contemporary political discourse, in particular, its rhetoric, themes and context. It is shown how Hirschman approaches three variants of reactionary criticism aimed at the actions of the authorities. The first thesis warns of a possible deterioration resulting from the changes, the second - claims the futility of efforts, the third - predicts the high cost of changes. Despite confrontation and polarizing predictions of reform, the rhetoric of reactionaries and progressives is deeply intertwined. Freedom as an opportunity for interpretation, equality of interests and progress - these are the basic values of political rhetoric. Hirschman's analysis of the polar genres of political rhetoric suggests how important it is to continuously raise the level of debate, to have an open space for dialogue, flexible criticism, and expressive means of argumentation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 20-30
Author(s):  
Grasiella K. Harb ◽  
Youssef M. Serhan

With the rise in the spate of deaths in America and the failure of Trump in containing coronavirus pandemic, the president is losing his hopes of winning the coming presidential election. Amidst Trump’s confusion, Covid-19 becomes a pre-text in his political rhetoric in an attempt to blame China for the pandemic, raise tension between U.S. and Beijing, and regain credibility from the public. Accordingly, the research paper aims to explore how Trump’s outrageous language unveils his ideological hegemony and contributes to the spread of xenophobia towards China. A multidisciplinary qualitative analysis was adopted to analyze one of Trump’s blunt political discourse. The analysis was based on Fairclough and Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model, along with Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Model. The findings of the study are significant in raising the public’s awareness of the manipulative social function of language in enhancing racism and inequality of power between nations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kwabena Sarfo Sarfo-Kantankah

Using the concepts of apologia, image repair and rhetoric, this paper examines the strategies employed by a former president of the Republic of Ghana to simultaneously maintain his reputation after losing the 2016 Ghanaian general elections and campaign for re-lection as the standard bearer of his party. The paper finds that the former president did not accept responsibility for the electoral loss, but used several indirect ways to deny responsibility for the defeat. He employed bolstering, accusation/attack, playing the victim, throwing a challenge and the God’s will factor as defence strategies in order to repair his image. He exploited the Aristotelian appeals of logos, ethos and pathos to boost his persuasion. In doing so, he deployed several rhetorical tools such as metaphor, allusion, rhetorical questions and parallelism to enhance the expression of the defence strategies. The analysis reveals that, as noted in the literature, some of the image repair strategies espoused by Benoit (1995, 2015), for example, outright denial and mortification, hardly apply to political contexts – the former President’s defence was indirectly expressed. Thus, the paper concludes that combining the concepts of apologia, image repair and rhetoric in the analysis of political discourse can illuminate political discourse analysis. The paper has implications for communicating defence, reputation repair and political rhetoric.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Yuryevna Aleshina

The article considers the problem of political discourse transformation as exemplified by European (British&Russian) political rhetoric of the 20th century. Considered is the complex nature of political discourse comprising both its variable and invariable aspects reflecting discursive constancy and change which are regarded as manifestations of the sliding mode usually applicable to exact sciences phenomena. The major factors of transformation depend on social change caused by dramatic events in history, namely political conflicts. The invariable part of political discourse is concentrated around the text structure with dicteme as the main information and structure unit of the text and discourse. The variable part is determined by factors of speech regulation including target content of the utterance, status of the speaker and the listener, pre-supposition and post-supposition. Genre and register specificity of political discourse as its constant characteristics reflect the change. Conclusions offer some generalizations Virtual Learning offer for Biologic Informatics aspects


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-57
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Ablett

Abstract Donald Trump famously used Hillary Clinton’s ‘toilet business’ or Marco Rubio’s ‘sweating like a pig’ as talking points in his campaign for the U. S. presidency. He thereby managed to use disgust’s intrinsic link to fear as a catalyst to negatively influence people’s opinion of his opponents. It was a tactic he also successfully used to rally his supporters against groups of people like ‘lying’ journalists or ‘rapist’ Mexicans. The mechanism of dehumanising the Other via association with disgust can be regarded as a dangerous tool of political rhetoric. In times like ours, where political discourse is commonly drenched in emotional hyperbole, it is paramount that we come to understand our emotions and learn how easily they may be hijacked for political purposes; this is especially true for such a seemingly ‘intuitive’ emotion as disgust. In his play I, Malvolio dramatist Tim Crouch gives voice to a Shakespearean character who has become a victim of discrimination via disgust. Crouch turns the perspectives around and allows the audience to see the story from the deplored’s point of view. This paper uses Crouch’s play for an exemplary analysis of the underlying structures of repulsion, and its relation to fear, and investigates the aesthetic possibilities of redemption.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Loda

AbstractIn March 2017, Georgian citizens were able to travel visa-free to the Schengen Area. This development was highly significant to Georgia, whose narrative of “belonging to Europe” has long contrasted with the travel restrictions for Georgian citizens, who were previously required to undergo complicated consular procedures. However, this was far from being a routine bilateral negotiation. Visa disparities mirrored the contractual asymmetry between Tbilisi and Brussels. This article focuses on how Georgia calibrated its political discourse vis-à-vis the European Union. After outlining both the symbolic and political relevance of visa liberalization, this work assesses the Georgian political rhetoric at different times: in 2005, when Georgia unilaterally lifted visa requirements for Western visitors, and in 2015 and 2016, when visa liberalization was widely expected. The article’s theoretical framework and the final conclusions are relevant to the study of visa regimes and the external relations of small states.


2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHELLE E. JOLLY

This study explores the role of the press in the gendering of political discourse and the politicization of women in San Francisco during the rule of the Vigilance Committee of 1856. Although some historians have noted the gender dimension of the reform and vigilance movement, a broader discussion is warranted. To build readership and support for his reform agenda, James King of William, editor of the Daily Evening Bulletin, used gendered political rhetoric, inviting women to participate in political debate through letters to the editor. His tactics inspired rival editors to write in gendered terms and even to include women's voices in their columns. But women's participation in public political debate in mainstream newspapers was short-lived. Still, their involvement in the reform and vigilance movement of 1855-1856 contributed materially to the politicization of women in San Francisco.


2002 ◽  
Vol V (II) ◽  
pp. 11-21
Author(s):  
Tahir Mahmood ◽  
Muhammad Ahsan Bhatti ◽  
Muqarrab Akbar

This study is basically an analysis using political discourse, with an angle to investigate the appeals in political rhetoric. This study uses Aristotle's model for persuasion and to find out the ethos, logos and pathos elements in the speeches of Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan. This study is presenting the analysis of Imran Khan's first three speeches on the panic situation of the spread of corona-virus. The study reveals that there is a sizeable use of logos and pathos in the speeches on Covid19. Using pathos in the speeches, there is the use of different appeals, i.e. fear, nationhood, hope and religion. There is significant use of fear and religious appeal in the category of pathos, while the use of logical appeal was also in ample size.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document