scholarly journals Semantics of Saudi Political Discourse: A Significations Study of Prince Saud Al-Faicel Speeches

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
د. عبد اللطيف السلمي د. عبد اللطيف السلمي

the present study p urports to shed light on the problematics of the relationship between language and politics in general and on the semiotic formulation, in particular, of Prince Saud Al-Faicel political discourse. It attempts to explain how this discourse succeeded to formulate a political model capable, thanks to its argumentative and rhetorical tools, to decode or unlock regional crises and international transformations in order to make historical decisions. Such problematics reflect our particular perception of political discourse in its relationship with textual linguistics, along with the powerful semiotic discursive strategies and practices ever present in the analysis and interpretation of the political discourse of Prince Saud Al-Faicel. The Present study relied on an analytic frame following Norman Fairclough's model and other semiotic studies structured around lexicon and language construction. It also paid attention to analyzing the intricacies characterizing relations and strategies within power relations. The originality of the present study can be seen in its combination of the textual approach with the analytical one when dealing with political discourse.

Author(s):  
Abeer AlNajjar

This book aims to shed light on core questions relating to language and society, language and conflict, and language and politics, in relation to a changing Middle East. While the book focuses on Arabic, it goes way beyond a purely linguistic analysis by bringing to the fore a set of pressing questions about the relationship between Arabic and society. For example, it touches on the development of language policy via an examination of administrative mandates (top-down) in contrast to grassroots initiatives (bottom-up); the deeper layers of the linguistic landscape that highlight the connection between politics, conflict, identity, road signs and street names; Arabic studies and Arabic identity and the myriad ways countries deal simultaneously with globalisation while also seeking to strengthen local and national identity, and more.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942199423
Author(s):  
Anne M Cronin ◽  
Lee Edwards

Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the expense of an in-depth analysis of the political. Using our case study as a prompt, we highlight the diversity of ways that the political impacts cultural intermediary work and that cultural intermediary work may impact the political. We reveal the tensions that underpin practice as a result of the interactions between culture, the economy and politics, and show that the tighter the engagement of cultural intermediation with the political sphere, the more tensions must be negotiated and the more compromised practitioners may feel.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Shazia Ayyaz

This research focusses the interdiscursive analysis of political discourse to expose the hegemonic relations in the world politics. It is backgrounded in the issue of blasphemy that emerged after the release of the movie trailer The Innocence of Muslims. The researcher restricted the context of the study to the UN General Assembly meeting September 2012 where the issue was discussed in the presence of world political leaders. The data of the study contains the speech of the US president Barak Obama and is analyzed by using Fairclough’s (1992) concept of interdiscursivity and hegemony. The analysis is focused on the discourse of the dominant political actor to find out the power relations and hegemony as exposed through the interdiscursive references present in his discourse. The study concludes that the dominant political leader uses different discursive strategies to construct and sustain power relations and hegemony. Interdiscursivity helps him to construct powerful self-image and to marginalise the subordinate group by highlighting its negative aspects and suppressing its ideologies. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
Neyla G Pardo

This chapter analyzes speeches delivered by former Colombian President, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, between August 2002 and August 2009, which can be found on the official website of the presidency: ( http://web.presidencia.gov.co/discursos/ ). We attempt to identify the webs of meaning surrounding the concepts of ‘Democratic Security’ and ‘Communitarian State’ with awareness of the relationship between discourse, ideology and power. The aim is to better understand the political power of the plans, programs and projects developed by Uribe’s administration, and how this was affected by widespread deployment of the media. These policies are conditioned by a set of colonialist principles that are embodied in symbolic-discursive strategies that result in representations, by means of which mechanisms of marginalization, discrimination and polarized hierarchy are legitimized from the different social spheres. During the 7-year period analyzed there were controversial debates over the commission of crimes against humanity by national security agents, as well as corruption scandals over topics like ‘para-politics’, ‘false positives’, selective arrests, extrajudicial killings and violations of the sovereignty of bordering countries. Within this political context, we attempt to identify the inherent tensions and social conflicts. It is argued that the analyzed discourses reproduce colonialist thoughts, in relation to neoliberal principles and the application of global policies. Using the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we explore the strategies and resources used in Uribe’s speeches and how major themes are positioned to reproduce systems of beliefs, values and attitudes.


Author(s):  
Ibrahem Almarhaby

This study investigates the relationship between the Eastern Self and the Western Other by focusing on the influence of the French Other on the ideology of the Arab Self in modern Arabic travel literature. As a case study, the analysis has been conducted on Takhlīṣ al-Ibriz fī Talkhīṣ Paris [‘The extraction of pure gold in the abridgement of Paris’]. The 19th century, from which this source originates, is considered to be significant in terms of distinguishing modern travelogue literature from that of the medieval period, where the image of the Western Other in Arabs’ imagination dramatically changed due to colonialism. As one of the richest and most open approaches in textual analysis, the study adopts the thematic approach to shed light on the extent to which the ideological impact of the Other on the political, religious, civil and social domains of the Self can be seen in this wide-ranging travel source. The study infers that al-Ṭahṭāwī was greatly ideologically impacted by West in all of the allocated domains, as can be seen clearly in his comprehensive comparisons, descriptions and explanations. This influence is indeed what distinguishes this modern travelogue literature from the medieval ones.


Author(s):  
Silvana Neshkovska ◽  
Zorica Trajkova

The general pervasiveness of politics in modern society renders political discourse susceptible to analysis by many different profiles of researchers, especially linguists. This particular paper attempts to shed light on the usage of verbal irony in political discourse. The premise we put forward here is that politicians in their political speeches purposefully employ irony in order to enhance the persuasiveness of their speech. Moreover, we believe that the enhancement of persuasiveness is in a direct correlation with the pragmatic functions of verbal irony. To put it differently, 'seasoning' political speeches with ironic statements which evoke either humor; or express mild ridicule, or harsh criticism at the expense of the political opponent, is what makes them truly persuasive. The corpus compiled for the purposes of this research comprises political speeches delivered by American politicians in the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The results obtained primarily confirm the relatively high incidence of verbal irony in political speeches; then, they also point to the relatively high degree of persuasion attached to irony in general and its association mainly with expressing mild ridicule and harsh criticism.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moreno Mancosu ◽  
Riccardo Ladini

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.


2020 ◽  
pp. 030582982097168
Author(s):  
Ari Jerrems

Research across several disciplines has focused on the intersection between the international and the urban to shed light on transformations in global politics. Recently, this intersection has become the focus of critical International Relations scholars. Despite transversal interest, disciplinary boundaries often limit the scope of academic debate. In the interest of developing a transdisciplinary research agenda, this review article charts three different ways that scholars have theorised the relationship between the international, the urban, and the political across disciplines. A review of five recently published books, situated within a broader study of the literature, serves to do this.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-290
Author(s):  
Julia Lux

Abstract In times of crisis, comparative capitalism analysis has difficulties differentiating crisis symptoms and effects from trends that may be more long-term. In this paper, I propose that by looking at the discursive strategies of central actors within the political economy, we may improve our understanding of capitalist trajectories. Drawing on Regulation Theory and Gramsci, the main empirical argument is that the French accumulation regime and its regulation are changing to a more explicitly export-oriented and financialised capitalism. This is underscored by the political project of capital-friendly austerity corresponding to a shift in the relationship of forces, the establishment of a neoliberal understanding of competitiveness, and the fading-out of purchasing power. The theoretical contribution of the paper is to integrate more closely critical discourse analysis with a critical political economy perspective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-404
Author(s):  
Lisa Bhungalia

This article examines the political and productive work of humor under conditions of precarity, war, and occupation. Drawing on the case of Palestine but making links to other contexts of violence and war, it explores the transgressive power of humor to destabilize existing power relations and established hierarchies by calling into question the norms and “rationalities” that underpin our social world. Palestine’s laughter in particular, it contends, constitutes a mode and practice of refusal to normalize conditions of subjugation. Accordingly, this article explores how humor, as wielded on the part of subjugated populations, constitutes a different kind of political grammar that cannot be adequately captured by the language of resistance. To laugh in the face of power is not to say: “I oppose you”—rather it is to assert: “your power has no authority over me.” It is to refuse that power authorizing force. As such, this article maintains that closer inspection of the relationship between humor, laughter, and power carves out new space for a working theory of the political, one wherein power is not opposed but disavowed. This disavowal, I argue, is also productive: it is to assert that other political orders and possibilities exist.


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