La Pata de Cabra, Satire and Free Speech in Nineteenth-Century Mexico City

The article examines how La Pata de Cabra (The Goat's Hoof ), an over-the-top fantastical Spanish comedia de magia (magic play), came to figure centrally in serious debates about Mexican politics and society between 1845 and 1857. The article explores the play's popularity and its resonance in the press – it spawned at least half a dozen satirical newspapers – to argue that satire became a critical political language and form of expression that broadened and sustained debates in an era marked by volatile and often heavily restricted press freedoms. The article's focus on the La Pata phenomenon brings two fields of study, theatre and the press, into productive and necessary conversation.

Emotion and Reason in Political Language

This paper studies the use of emotion and reason in political discourse. Adopting computational-linguistics techniques to construct a validated text-based scale, we measure emotionality in 6 million speeches given in U.S. Congress over the years 1858-2014. Intuitively, emotionality spikes during times of war and is highest in speeches about patriotism. In the time series, emotionality was relatively low and stable in earlier years but increased significantly starting in the late 1970s. Across Congress Members, emotionality is higher for Democrats, for women, for ethnic/religious minorities, for the opposition party, and for members with ideologically extreme roll-call voting records.

Contextual meanings of political vocabulary

Political vocabulary is one of the most relevant subjects of study of modern linguistics, constantly updated, it serves as an indicator of the state of the political sphere of society and the political consciousness of a person. The article is devoted to lexemes that have firmly entered the current political vocabulary of our time: democracy, liberal, patriotism, patriot, nationalism, nationalist, opposition, president. Based on the analysis of modern explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, as well as the dictionary of political terms, it is concluded that terminological, special vocabulary in the modern political language is often used in an unusual meaning. In the article, using the method of contextual analysis, the evaluative connotative element of the meaning of the indicated lexemes is investigated. It is concluded that lexemes acquire a positive or negative evaluative value, first of all, depending on the context, the actual terminological meaning is leveled when used. The revealed meanings are non-systemic, accordingly, they are not fixed in dictionaries, while they are obvious to the carrier and are frequent. This indicates the specific nature of the modern political language, which is influenced by the modern journalistic style. The research results can be used to analyze controversial cases of the use of political vocabulary.

Lenguaje político y giro panhispánico en el primer manifiesto del movimiento Poesía ante la incertidumbre

Political Language and Reflections on the Concept of Canon from a Transatlantic Perspective in the First Manifesto of the Movement POESÍA ANTE LA INCERTIDUMBRE. In this article I intend to examine the strengths of Panhispanic or Transatlantic Studies, which represent an appropriate line of research into and analysis of the current circumstances of literature written in Spanish, from a vantage point capable of observing the plurality of changes in the Hispanic-American poetics of twenty-first century works. First of all, I define what is traditionally understood as a literary canon and outline the theoretical support on which I rely to argue my point of view. Secondly, I add the notes of the critics who propose a Transatlantic literary analysis, that is, the ideas of Panhispanism, as a way of analyzing current poetic productions, which I exemplify with the Poetry Facing Uncertainty movement. Keywords: canon, Hispanic American – Transatlantic literature, Panhispanic studies, Spanish poetry, Poetry Facing Uncertainty

Расплескавшийся цветом. К.В. Душенко Красное и белое. Из истории политического языка: Сборник статей / РАН. ИНИОН. Москва: Центр гуманитарных научно-информационных исследований, 2018

This review presents the author's views on the book Red and White, which deals with the multivariance of color symbolism of the political language of revolutions in France and Russia. Writers' ideas about color political language of that historical period are reflected in their literary works. The characteristic features of white, red, black and blue colors, which carry an active visual call at all times, are highlighted and described. Conducting his own analysis of the identity of the color palette of the French tricolor and Russian tricolor flags, the author of the article is based on the principles of perception of color by representatives of various ethnic groups, based on the experience of processing external impressions and mentality.

Linguistic Metaphors Shape Attitudes towards Immigration

Immigration policy has been one of the top concerns of American voters over the last decade and has attracted some of the most heated rhetoric in politics and news media across the world. Much like other political language, talk about immigration is suffused with metaphor. To what extent does the language about immigration, and specifically the metaphors used, influence people’s views of the issues? How powerful are these metaphors? In our studies, we exposed participants to one of four versions of a passage about an increase in immigrants in one town. The four versions of the passage included all identical facts and figures and differed in only a single word at the beginning of the passage, describing the increase in immigrant labor as either an “increase,” a “boost,” an “invasion,” or a “flood.” Although the passages differed only in this one word, participants’ attitudes towards this increase and their predictions about its effects on the economy differed significantly depending on the metaphor. Of course, opinions on immigration differ across political affiliations. Remarkably, the single word metaphor was strong enough to mitigate much of the difference in opinion on immigration between Democrats and Republicans in our sample. Further analyses suggested that the results are not due simply to positive or negative lexical associations to the metaphorical words, and also that metaphors can act covertly in organizing people’s beliefs.

'Boat People' and Discursive Bordering: Australian Parliamentary Discourses on Asylum Seekers, 1977-2013

This article draws upon content analysis of Australian parliamentary transcripts to examine debates about asylum seekers who arrived by boat in three historical periods: 1977–1979, 1999–2001, and 2011–2013. We analyze term frequency and co-occurrence to identify patterns in specific usage of the phrase “boat people.” We then identify how the term is variously deployed in Parliament and discuss the relationship between these uses and government policy and practice. We conclude that forms of “discursive bordering” have amplified representations of asylum seekers as security threats to be controlled within and outside Australia’s sovereign territory. The scope of policy or legislative responses to boat arrivals is limited by a poverty of political language, thus corroborating recent conceptual arguments about the securitization and extra-territorialization of the contemporary border.