Authority-Based Strategy of (De)legitimization in American Electoral Discourse: A Case Study

The paper presents an analysis of (de)legitimization in American pre-election discourse based on the tactics of appealing to “authorities”, any entity, person or value which continue to retain confidence, have credibility or are otherwise entitled to authority in the society and family. Sixty 2020 election campaign speeches of U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden and U.S. vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris were the material of this case study. Our research approach is based on theoretical and methodological findings of linguopersonology and political linguistics. The main methods used are those of intent, semantic and stylistic analysis. The purpose was to identify, describe and categorize the authorities cited by the two politicians during their campaign and to correlate them to voters’ aspirations in the cities and states involved. The analysis of relevant contexts revealed that the choice of authorities is primarily guided by the expectations of target groups of voters to whom the campaign speech is addressed. For this reason, the pre-election discourse of the politicians under study includes the authorities which are important for different target groups of voters addressed all over the country. The study of the American pre-election discourse yields a general classification of authorities to which both politicians are appealing; it includes famous politicians, public figures, renowned experts, scientists, outstanding representatives of the culture and art. The politicians may also appeal to the authority of the speaker himself, their parents (mom, dad); edifying example of ordinary people (not celebrities); authority of high positions; authority of institutions and bodies; authority of universal values; authority of different kinds of texts (reports, laws, Scriptures), and sometimes authority of some mass media sources. The multiplicity of the authorities represented in our classification is explained in the paper as a logical consequence of addresser-addressee interaction. It also reeals the important role of the politician’s personality to appeal at a rally to “authorities” that might in his opinion be attractive for his specific audience. The paper presents the results of the analysis of the linguistic features of the appeal-to-authority tactics.

CAUGHT IN A CROSSFIRE: CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE (PRRD)

Through the use of critical discourse analysis, this study aimed to analyze PRRD’s campaign speeches with the purpose of establishing its discursive patterns. The study employed the descriptive-qualitative design which utilized Critical Discourse Analysis, anchored with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Halliday. Results show the highest frequency of the following lexico-grammatical features: modals will, would, should, and shall; pronoun I (me); and verb tense present simple. Results also reveal that verbal process constitutes the highest in terms of transitivity, while it is positive median politeness for modality. Also, the analysis reveals that the informative, regulatory, and instrumental are the dominant functions of language used by PRRD. Based on the findings, PRRD stressed his campaign speeches with willingness, determination, certainty, and fortitude, with greater involvement of himself; PRRD had gone extra-mile to attack the personalities of the other parties for self-projection and self-promotion, along with the expression of enthusiasm, optimism, and determination to elicit support from the populace; and PRRD focused on neutralizing the asymmetrical power relations that existed between him and the electorate, but with the emphasis of control, and needs of his countrymen. KEYWORDS—Critical Discourse Analysis, Campaign Speeches, Language Functions, Discourse Features, Transitivity, Modality

ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION IN THE SPANISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE 2019 PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Purpose. The article deals with identifying effective language means and techniques which form the basis of polarization, solidarity and positive prospect describing tactics that the argumentative strategy is realized through in speeches, debates and interviews of such Spain’s political leaders as Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado and Santiago Abascal. Methodology. The study is based on an integrated approach to the analysis of political discourse, combining communicative and pragmatic, semantic and cognitive as well as contextual analyses which allow determining speaker’s communicative and pragmatic intentions, detect the axiological component of language units meaning and their possible interpretations by national conceptual sphere hosts in the relevant linguistic and situational context.Results. The study analyzes the means of the argumentative strategy creation in the campaign speeches of Spanish leading political parties’ leaders, in their interviews and debates. The predominance of tactics of positive prospects description, polarization and solidarity were identified. The research characterizes the peculiarities of lexical, grammatical and stylistic units’ combining, taking into account the nationally determined specificity of lexical units’ meaning, which verbalize the demanded concepts of the national conceptual sphere of Spain. The analysis of the 2019 pre-election campaign discourse has allowed identifying of such specific features of the argumentative strategy as focusing on the future, emphasizing their own achievements and opponents’ shortcomings, desire to reduce the distance between the speaker and the addressee. The focus on the future context is embodied in the tactic of positive prospects description where grammatical and lexical units should indicate the clarity and certainty of politician’s position. The tactic of polarization, characterized by the use of antonymous lexical units, allows politicians to present favorably their own candidacy and negatively affect opponents’ image. The need to convince voters is transferred into in the tactic of solidarity consisting in the use of lexical units that indicate the convergence of views and belonging of the speaker and the addressee to the same community.Conclusions. The analysis of peculiarities of argumentative strategy realization in the Spanish political discourse demonstrates the effectiveness of such frequently used communicative tactics as positive prospects description, polarization and solidarity. They are based on the selection of lexical, grammatical and stylistic units, taking into account the situational and pragmatic context as well as national and axiological dominants of Spaniard’s world view.Key words: political discourse, pragmatics, communicative strategy, tactic, axiologemes, semantic and cognitive interpretation, linguistic context, conceptual sphere. Мета. Метою статті є виявлення ефективних засобів та прийомів у тактиках окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення та солідаризації, за допомогою яких реалізується аргументативна стратегія у промовах, дебатах та інтерв’ю політичних лідерів Іспанії, зокрема Педро Санчеса, Пабло Касадо та Сантьяго Абаскаля. Методи. Дослідження базується на комплексному підході до аналізу політичного дискурсу, у якому поєднано комунікативно-прагматичний, семантико-когнітивний і контекстуальний аналізи, що забезпечують визначення комунікативно-прагматичних намірів мовця, встановлення аксіологічного компоненту значення використаних мовних одиниць і їх можливі інтер-претації носіями національної концептосфери у відповідному мовному та ситуативному контексті.Результати. У межах дослідження було проаналізовано засоби реалізації аргументативної стратегії у передвиборчих про-мовах лідерів трьох провідних політичних партій Іспанії, інтерв’ю та дебатах за їх участю, виокремлено переважання тактики окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення, солідаризації та описано особливості поєднання обраних політиками лексичних, граматичних і стилістичних одиниць із урахуванням національно детермінованої специфіки значення лексичних одиниць, що вербалізують затребувані концепти національної концептосфери Іспанії. Аналіз дискурсу передвиборчої кампа-нії 2019 року дозволив визначити специфічні риси аргументативної стратегії: спрямованість на майбутнє, акцент на власних досягненнях та недоліках опонентів, прагнення скоротити дистанцію між мовцем та адресатом. Орієнтованість на майбутній контекст втілюється у тактиці окреслення позитивної перспективи за допомогою використання граматичних та лексичних засобів, що позначають чіткість та визначеність позиції політика. Тактика протиставлення, що характеризується вживанням антонімічних лексичних засобів, дозволяє політичним діячам вигідно представити власну кандидатуру та негативно вплинути на імідж опонентів. Необхідність переконати виборців втілюється в тактиці солідаризації, що полягає у використанні лексич-них одиниць, які вказують на близькість поглядів і приналежність мовця й адресата до єдиного цілого.Висновки. Проведений аналіз особливостей реалізації аргументативної стратегії в іспанському політичному дискурсі свідчить про ефективність трьох основних комунікативних тактик: окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення та солідаризації, добір лексичних, граматичних та стилістичних засобів побудови яких базується на врахуванні ситуативно-прагматичного контексту та національно аксіологічних домінант іспанського світогляду.Ключові слова: політичний дискурс,прагматика, комунікативна стратегія, тактика, аксіологема, семантико-когнітивна інтерпретація, мовний контекст, концептосфера.

Trumping Canada? Continuity And Change In Canadian Conservative Campaign Rhetoric

The Conservative Party of Canada has been widely noted for its meticulous branding and tight message control. In contrast, US president Donald Trump, representing the traditionally conservative Republican Party, demonstrates a remarkable lack of message discipline: his infamous unscripted candor often descends into vulgarity. Yet, despite his lack of message discipline, Trump was successfully elected president, suggesting that his distinctive rhetorical style may have contributed to his electoral appeal. This major research paper explores whether Donald Trump’s surprising victory may have inspired Canadian Conservatives to alter their own rhetorical strategies in the hopes of achieving similar success. I conducted a qualitative rhetorical analysis on six campaign speeches delivered by Conservative Party leaders in Canada’s two most recent federal elections (Andrew Scheer in 2019 and Stephen Harper in 2015). The results suggest that the Conservatives’ campaign speech rhetoric does not appear to be converging with Donald Trump’s. However, further investigation into other sites of discourse, such as leaders’ debates, press conferences, or party documents, may reveal otherwise—particularly when it comes to broader ideological orientation and the treatment of minority groups

Trumping Canada? Continuity And Change In Canadian Conservative Campaign Rhetoric

The Conservative Party of Canada has been widely noted for its meticulous branding and tight message control. In contrast, US president Donald Trump, representing the traditionally conservative Republican Party, demonstrates a remarkable lack of message discipline: his infamous unscripted candor often descends into vulgarity. Yet, despite his lack of message discipline, Trump was successfully elected president, suggesting that his distinctive rhetorical style may have contributed to his electoral appeal. This major research paper explores whether Donald Trump’s surprising victory may have inspired Canadian Conservatives to alter their own rhetorical strategies in the hopes of achieving similar success. I conducted a qualitative rhetorical analysis on six campaign speeches delivered by Conservative Party leaders in Canada’s two most recent federal elections (Andrew Scheer in 2019 and Stephen Harper in 2015). The results suggest that the Conservatives’ campaign speech rhetoric does not appear to be converging with Donald Trump’s. However, further investigation into other sites of discourse, such as leaders’ debates, press conferences, or party documents, may reveal otherwise—particularly when it comes to broader ideological orientation and the treatment of minority groups

Big data and democratic speech: Predicting deliberative quality using machine learning techniques

This article explores techniques for using supervised machine learning to study discourse quality in large datasets. We explain and illustrate the computational techniques that we have developed to facilitate a large-scale study of deliberative quality in Canada’s three northern territories: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. This larger study involves conducting comparative analyses of hundreds of thousands of parliamentary speech acts since the creation of Nunavut 20 years ago. Without computational techniques, we would be unable to conduct such an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of deliberative quality. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the machine learning techniques that we have developed with the hope that they might be used and improved by other communications scholars who are interested in conducting textual analyses using large datasets. Other possible applications of these techniques might include analyses of campaign speeches, party platforms, legislation, judicial rulings, online comments, newspaper articles, and television or radio commentaries.

Speaker’s verbal behavior and collective audience responses in Korean political oratory

An analysis was conducted of the discourse of South Korean political speakers in relation to collective audience responses, based on three situational contexts. Results showed marked contextual differences in the formatting of messages used to invite audience responses. In campaign speeches, explicit (dialogic) rhetorical devices (RDs) occurred most frequently, thereby supporting Bull and Miskinis’ (2015) hypothesis that such RDs are characteristic of political speech-making in collectivist far eastern societies. However, this hypothesis was substantively qualified by findings that (1) in the acceptance and inauguration speeches, implicit RDs were utilized more frequently than explicit (dialogic) RDs, and (2) in those two contexts, it was non-formatted messages that occurred more frequently than either explicit or implicit RDs separately.

Speech Act Analysis of Dame Patience Jonathan’s Speeches

This research work is centered on the speech act analysis of Dame Patience Jonathan. The main objectives of the work are to identify the types of speech acts in the selected Dame Patience’s speeches as well as to discover its effects on the citizens of the country. The theoretical framework adopted for data analysis is Searle’s speech act theory. For the analysis, only three speeches of Dame Patience Jonathan will be used. The speeches includes: Chibok girls speech, campaign speeches at Umuahia and Calabar. The study finds out that the speeches could have caused chauvinism and rivalry as well as proving that the then government is inept in solving the problem at hand. The findings also reveal different types of speech acts used by Dame Patience Jonathan using Searle’s speech act classification. The work identifies Declarative Speech act, Representative Speech act, Commisive speech acts and Directive speech act. The work also discovers how politicians such as Dame Patience Jonathan used language in such a way to manipulate the listeners/citizens. Furthermore, the work discusses the effect of Dame Patience Jonathan’s speeches on the people and how the people/citizens reacted to the speeches. The study recommended that if political figure wants to make a speech or address the citizens, s/he should weigh the speech and its consequence.