A Pragmatic Study of a Political Discourse from the Perspective of the Linguistic Adaptation Theory

Badriah Khalid Al-Gublan

doi:10.5539/ijel.v5n2p151

Abstract

The emergence of the field of political marketing has highlighted the prominence of communication towards shaping the candidates’ image and building long-term relationships with voters. The linguistic characteristics of the political speech presented by candidates allow them to communicate to voters the superiority of his or her attributes over those of opponents (Kaid, 1999). Political campaigns are dynamic struggles between candidates to define the informational context for voters. Early researches (Kaid, 1981, 1986) suggested that political advertising has cognitive and behavioral effects on voters. It communicates the brand promise of a candidate blending functional and emotional benefits that voters gain from their relationships with a candidate. This study, based on Jef Verschueren’s (1999) Linguistic Adaptation Theory (LAT), proposes a pragmatic model for the analysis of a political election discourse. In this pragmatic model, it is shown that in such a discourse the process of adaptation to variables of the physical, social, and mental world is used. Such a process can be understood as the outcome of politicians’ choice making, dynamic negotiation and linguistic adaptation. The interpretation of a political discourse, on the other hand, can be better achieved by tracing the specific ways of meaning generation from the four focal points of context, structure, dynamics, and salience.

Highlights

Politics is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice
According to Baker and Ellece (2011), language is viewed as a social practice and is interested in the ways that ideologies and ‘power’ relations are expressed through language
As the research of a political discourse is concerned, the present study suggests that the continuous making of linguistic choices from the repertoire of forms and strategies to approach different pragmatic functions, which has taken a shape within the scope of Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory (LAT)

Summary

Introduction

Politics is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice. In this process, language plays a crucial role. Fairclough (1995) defines ‘power’ as asymmetries that exist between individuals participating in the same discursive event and in terms of how people have different capacities to control texts and discourses are produced, distributed and consumed. According to Baker and Ellece (2011), language is viewed as a social practice and is interested in the ways that ideologies and ‘power’ relations are expressed through language. According to Van Dijk (1985), when speakers and writers are able to influence the mental models, knowledge, attitudes and eventually even the ideologies of recipients may indirectly control their future action. Most forms of discursive and communicative access, such as control of setting, interaction, topic or style will be geared toward mind controlling of participants, recipients or the www.ccsenet.org/ijel

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