Corruption in a Greek context: Analyzing a newspaper’s discourse on a major political scandal

Abstract

In this paper we examine the discourse on political corruption, with a focus on accusations of corruption and the self-defence discourse of the accused person. For this purpose, we study the discourse of the corruption scandal related with the Greek ex-Defence Minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos in 2011, as presented in articles published in the newspaper I Kathimerini. We specifically discuss how the accused is presented in the newspaper, how the accused presents himself and rebuts accusations and the newspaper’s stance, including the recontextualization of his discourse. By using tools of corpus linguistics in combination with Critical Discourse Analysis notions, our analysis points to the discourse strategies used, the extended application of topoi (namely of burden, responsibility, the scapegoat, and reality/appearance) and the biased treatment of the accused’s discourse, which is not only underrepresented but also distorted and ironically treated, suggesting that traditional Press in the Greek context aligns with political parties and the powerful through an array of linguistic devices.