Analyzing Genres in Political Communication: Theory and Practice

439 Pages·2013·13.56 MB·English

by  Piotr Cap (ed.)

Analyzing Genres in Political Communication
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society
and Culture (DAPSAC)
The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes
from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs
and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines
concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science,
international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics,
and gender studies.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac
General Editors
Ruth Wodak, Greg Myers and Johann Unger
Lancaster University
Editorial address: Department of Linguistics and English Language,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster LA1 4YL, United Kingdom.
[email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected]
Advisory Board
Christine Anthonissen Konrad Ehlich Christina Schäffner
Stellenbosch University Free University, Berlin Aston University
Michael Billig J.R. Martin Louis de Saussure
Loughborough University University of Sydney University of Neuchâtel
Piotr Cap Luisa Martín Rojo Hailong Tian
University of Łódź Universidad Autonoma Tianjin University
de Madrid of Commerce
Paul Chilton
Lancaster University Jacob L. Mey Joanna Thornborrow
University of Southern Denmark Cardiff University
Teun A. van Dijk
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, John Richardson Sue Wright
Barcelona Loughborough University University of Portsmouth
Volume 50
Analyzing Genres in Political Communication. Theory and practice
Edited by Piotr Cap and Urszula Okulska
Analyzing Genres
in Political Communication
Theory and practice
Edited by
Piotr Cap
University of Łódź
Urszula Okulska
University of Warsaw
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Analyzing Genres in Political Communication : Theory and practice / Edited by Piotr Cap
and Urszula Okulska.
p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 50)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Discourse analysis--Political aspects. 2. Public communication--Political
aspects. 3. Journalism--Political aspects. 4. Mass media--Political aspects.
5.  Communication in politics. I. Cap, Piotr, editor of compilation. II. Okulska,
Urszula, editor of compilation.
P302.77.A57 2013
320.01’41--dc23 2013020218
isbn 978 90 272 0641 1 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 7148 8 (Eb)
© 2013 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Notes on contributors vii
Analyzing genres in political communication: An introduction 1
Piotr Cap and Urszula Okulska
Part I. Theory-driven approaches
Chapter 1
Genres in political discourse: The case of the ‘inaugural speech’
of Austrian chancellors 29
Helmut Gruber
Chapter 2
Political interviews in context 73
Anita Fetzer and Peter Bull
Chapter 3
Policy, policy communication and discursive shifts: Analyzing
EU policy discourses on climate change 101
Michał Krzyżanowski
Chapter 4
The television election night broadcast: A macro genre
of political discourse 135
Gerda Lauerbach
Chapter 5
Analyzing meetings in political and business contexts:
Different genres – similar strategies? 187
Ruth Wodak
vi Analyzing Genres in Political Communication
Chapter 6
Presenting politics: Persuasion and performance across genres
of political communication 223
James Moir
Part II. Data-driven approaches
Chapter 7
Legitimizing the Iraq War through the genre of political speeches:
Rhetorics of judge-penitence in the narrative reconstruction
of Denmark’s cooperation with Nazism 239
Bernhard Forchtner
Chapter 8
Macro and micro, quantitative and qualitative: An integrative approach
for analyzing (election night) speeches 267
Thorsten Malkmus
Chapter 9
Reframing the American Dream: Conceptual metaphor and personal
pronouns in the 2008 US presidential debates 297
Michael S. Boyd
Chapter 10
The late-night TV talk show as a strategic genre in American
political campaigning 321
Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
Chapter 11
Multimodal legitimation: Looking at and listening to Obama’s ads 345
Rowan R. Mackay
Chapter 12
Blogging as the mediatization of politics and a new form
of social interaction: A case study of ‘proximization dynamics’
in Polish and British political blogs 379
Monika Kopytowska
Index 423
Notes on contributors
Michael S. Boyd ([email protected]) is an English language lecturer
(lettore) in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at the University
of Roma Tre and an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Interpreting and Transla-
tion Studies at the LUSPIO University, Rome. He teaches courses in general Eng-
lish and applied discourse analysis. His research interests include CDA, political
linguistics, new media, and (Critical) discourse analysis for translation and inter-
preting studies. He is the the author of articles on political discourse, ESP and new
technologies. Recent publications include “(New) political genres for the masses?
YouTube in the 2008 US presidential elections” in the volume Genres on the Move.
Hybridization and Discourse Change in Specialized Communication, “Participa-
tion and recontextualization in the new media: Political discourse on YouTube”
(forthcoming) and, with Claudia Monacelli, “Politics, (con)text and genre: Apply-
ing CDA and DHA to interpreter training”.
Dr. Peter Bull ([email protected]) is a Reader in Psychology at the Univer-
sity of York (United Kingdom), and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
He holds first degrees in both Modern History (University of Oxford) and Psy-
chology (University of Exeter), where he was also awarded his Ph.D. His principal
research interest is the detailed microanalysis of interpersonal communication.
He has over 90 academic publications concerned with this theme, principally in
the form of refereed journal articles. He is the author of The Microanalysis of Polit-
ical Communication: Claptrap and Ambiguity (2003), and Communication under
the Microscope: The Theory and Practice of Microanalysis (2002).
Professor Piotr Cap ([email protected]) is head of the Department of Prag-
matics at the University of Łódź, Poland. His research interests are in cognitive
pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, political linguistics, genre theory, busi-
ness communication, and methodology of linguistic analysis. His monographic
and edited publications include Explorations in Political Discourse (Lang, 2002),
Pragmatics Today (Lang, 2005), Legitimisation in Political Discourse (Cambridge
Scholars Press, 2006/2008), New Approaches to Discourse and Business Commu-
nication (Palgrave, 2009), Perspectives in Politics and Discourse (John Benjamins,
2010) and Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing (John
viii Analyzing Genres in Political Communication
Benjamins, 2013). He is Founding Editor of the international journal Lodz Papers
in Pragmatics (Mouton de Gruyter), Managing Editor of the International Review
of Pragmatics (Brill) and member of advisory boards of several journals and book
series in pragmatics and discourse analysis, including Pragmatics: Quarterly Pub-
lication of the International Pragmatics Association, and Discourse Approaches to
Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) (John Benjamins). He was a Fulbright Fel-
low at the University of California, Berkeley and Boston University, a Humboldt
Fellow at the University of Munich, and has given talks in Europe, Asia, Australia
and the Americas.
Anita Fetzer ([email protected]) is a full professor of English
linguistics at the University of Augsburg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. from
Stuttgart University in 1993 and her habilitation in 2003, and is currently en-
gaged in research projects on follow-ups in political discourse, and on the overt
and non-overt realization of discourse relations. Her research interests focus on
pragmatics, functional grammar, contrastive analysis, modality and evidentiality,
and context. She has had a series of articles published on rejections, context, and
political discourse. Her most recent publications are Contexts and Context: Parts
Meets Whole (2011, with Etsuko Oishi), Political Discourse in the Media (2007,
with Gerda Lauerbach), Context and Appropriateness (2007), and Recontextual-
izing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness (2004).
Bernhard Forchtner ([email protected]) is a Wilhelm-von-Humboldt
Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin. He ob-
tained his doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology and the Depart-
ment of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK. His thesis
explored the relation between public apologies, societal learning and self-righ-
teousness. He has published in the field of memory studies, at the interface of
sociological theory and critical discourse analysis, and on prejudice and discrimi-
nation. Recent publications include “Narrating a ‘new Europe’: From ‘bitter past’
to self-righteousness?’ in Discourse & Society, “Critique and argumentation. On
the relation between the discourse-historical approach and pragma-dialectics”
in Journal of Language and Politics and “Embattled Vienna 1683/2010: right-
wing populism, collective memory and the fictionalisation of politics” in Visual
Communication.
Helmut Gruber ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor of Ap-
plied Linguistics at the University of Vienna. He studied Psychology, Applied
Linguistics and Education at Vienna University. He has published in various
fields of Applied Linguistics such as Critical Discourse Analysis, media studies,
political discourse analysis, conflict communication, and Computer Mediated
Notes on contributors ix
Communication. He is co-editor of Pragmatics, the quarterly journal of the In-
ternational Pragmatics Association (IPrA), and member of IPrA’s consultation
board.
Monika Kopytowska ([email protected]) received her Ph.D. from
the University of Łódź, Poland, where she is currently affiliated with the Depart-
ment of Pragmatics. Her research interests revolve around media discourse and
the pragma-rhetorical aspects of the mass-mediated representation of conflict,
ethnicity, and religion. She has published internationally in linguistic journals
and volumes and is now working on the dynamics of proximization in the news
discourse. She is the co-editor of Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, the associate editor
of CADAAD Journal, and the editorial board member of The University of Nairobi
Journal of Language and Linguistics.
Michał Krzyżanowski ([email protected]) is Full Professor of Media
and Communication Studies at Örebro University, Sweden, which he joined in
2013 after holding posts at the Universities of Aberdeen and Lancaster (UK), Uni-
versity of Vienna (Austria) and Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (Poland).
He is specialized in Critical Discourse Analysis and has researched extensively on
media and political communication in the context of Europe’s social, political and
institutional change. He also works on developing new, qualitative and integra-
tive approaches in critical discourse studies (incl. discursive ethnography or dis-
course-conceptual analysis). Michał is Associate Editor of the Journal of Language
and Politics and serves on editorial boards of such journals as, inter alia, Critical
Discourse Studies or Qualitative Sociology Review. His recent book-length publica-
tions include: Ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis (2011); The Discursive
Construction of European Identities (2010); European Public Sphere and the Media:
Europe in Crisis (with A. Triandafyllidou & R. Wodak, 2009); The Politics of Exclu-
sion: Debating Migration in Austria (with R. Wodak, 2009); Qualitative Discourse
Analysis in the Social Sciences (with R. Wodak, 2008; Polish translation 2011),
Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (with A. Galasińska,
2008); (Un)Doing Europe: Discourses and Practices of Negotiating the EU Constitu-
tion (with F. Oberhuber, 2007).
Gerda Lauerbach ([email protected]) has retired as Professor of
English Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Goethe University, Frankfurt/
Main. Her teaching focused on semantics, pragmatics, conversation analysis and
critical discourse analysis, her recent research on political discourse on television.
She has published on discourse practice and ideology, on genre, preference and
inference, on argument and rhetoric, and on the interaction of the visual and