Defining Political Reality for Europe. Political Discourse Analysis as a Method in International Relations Research

The present chapter proposes to build bridges between political discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. We intend to bring to light methodological benefits arising from the synergy of (political) discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, pointing to fruitful contribution from French text statistics. Taking the discourses of Nicolas Sarkozy as an example, we show how political discourse analysis can benefit from a reflection on corpora (their constitution, their role in the research process); on linguistic analysis and processing methods (particularly the computer-assisted methods of text statistics); and finally on the interpretative paths at a time of establishment of a numerical hermeneutics.

Isabela and Norman Fairclough have written a very important book whose full significance is perhaps in danger of being missed if we view it simply, in their own self-depiction, as a text for advanced students. Indeed, in what follows I want to argue that their book is much better seen as the occasion for a debate that we desperately need to be having about how to conduct political discourse analysis rather than as the elucidation of an agreed, almost official, methodology for the conduct of such a form of discourse analysis. At times their book reads like the definitive statement of the only credible approach to the analysis of political discourse as both political and as discourse, derived logically and forensically from a consideration of the specificity of the political itself. While I have considerable sympathy for the attempt to reflect and preserve the specificity of the political in an avowedly political discourse analysis, I have rather more problem, as will become clear in what follows, in the methodological absolutism that leads the Faircloughs to present their approach as, in effect, the only way to do political discourse analysis properly. At this stage in its development political discourse analysis needs a proliferation, not a narrowing, of methods and acknowledgement that there is more than one way to analyse political discourse politically. I will argue for a certain methodological pluralism in political discourse analysis, pointing to problems both with the approach to political discourse analysis that the Faircloughs espouse and with their attempt to foreground such an approach in an essentially Aristotelian account of the specificity of the political.

This process note explicates the methodological intervention of maintaining fieldnotes on government documents and its significance for historically situated international relations (IR) research. For the most part, IR scholarship treats archival documents as the neutral preserve of the state, representing its coherent national interests. Building on discussions around critical methods within IR, I argue that there is a need to reflexively engage with the writing and curating practices of the state. This process note deploys the ethnographic hallmark of thick description within IR research through critical annotations on archival documents and other government publications on India’s eastern Himalayan borderlands between 1880 and 1965. These annotations encourage a granular reading of government documents and situate them within a larger context of their production, reception, archival memorialisation and subsequent access. I propose that critical annotations help us move beyond post-hoc analyses of foreign policy in terms of success and failure. Instead, in viewing IR theorising as ‘unfinished dictionaries of the international’, I argue that critical annotations challenge a unitary view of the state and facilitate a more nuanced analysis of foreign policymaking emphasising historical contingencies within which policies are articulated and enacted.

This article considers the implications of incorporating participatory video in International Relations (IR) research. Drawing on existing aesthetic and visual IR research, I critically reflect on a case study incorporating participatory video in research investigating young women’s leadership in Asia and the Pacific. Through participatory video, young women redressed their common invisibility and challenged portrayals situating them as unable to lead and make decisions. In this way, participatory video disrupted and unsettled power relations often resulting in young people’s marginalisation from policymaking. Given its ability to make space for productive reflections on, and challenges to, existing power dynamics amongst and between researchers, research participants, and the state, participatory video can productively push the boundaries of IR research. Limitations and challenges of using participatory video are also evident and require reflection. Overall, I suggest that participatory video can generate new critiques and knowledge to productively shape current and future IR research, including through offering unique insights that could be missed by other methods in IR, including other filmmaking approaches.

The subject of the research is the process of the evolution of China's international discursive influence in the 21st century, particularly how China shapes its global influence through multi-level strategies in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. The article analyzes in detail the formation and development of Chinese international discourse, including its political and ideological foundations, as well as its practical application in global governance. The study examines how China expands its international discursive power through enhancing external discourse initiatives, promoting cultural and humanitarian diplomacy, and creating multilateral international platforms for dialogue. Furthermore, it explores how China, by developing new international norms and standards, challenges traditional Western dominance in the international order and actively promotes its national narrative on the global stage. The research methodology employs a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, including case studies and comparative analysis, relying on theories from political science, international relations, and discourse analysis. Using these methods, the study investigates how China utilizes international discursive power to shape its global influence. The innovative aspects of this work lie in the first comprehensive analysis of the concept of "international discursive power" and its institutionalization in China's foreign policy, as well as in examining how China employs various strategies to shape its global influence. In particular, the study analyzes specific examples, such as the Iranian nuclear issue and matters on the Korean Peninsula, where China applies its discursive power. The comparative analysis with the Western concept of "soft power" emphasizes China's unique path in global governance, based on promoting its own narratives and creating alternative platforms for international dialogue. Additionally, the article argues that, amid escalating strategic competition among great powers, the "battle of narratives" becomes an important factor in shaping the world order, offering a new perspective on international relations.

Drawing on recent Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) approaches that map text over relevant context as supported by Van Dijk (2006), in this research, it was tried to follow this research route. The main intention was to look at political discourse via the lenses of PDA to see whether ideologies and power relations of interlocutors in the target setting of this study could have possibly been aligned with linguistic elements-here rhetorical devices and to see to what extent such text-context mapping is recognized as relevant to language tools within the selected datasets. Accordingly, the researcher tried to follow a sample of political talk- live 2008 US presidential debates- among two Republic vs. Democratic campaigns. To do so, some political strategies for argumentation including Van Dijk’s model representing 'Authority', 'Topos or burden', 'Future Representations’, ‘Comparison', 'Consensus', 'Counterfactuals', 'populism’, 'generalizations', and 'number Games' were mapped over some linguistic rhetorical devices such as ‘metaphor’, ‘hyperbole’, ‘irony’, ‘euphemism’, etc. The common discoursal moves in Obama’s vs. McCain's speech statements were compared and contrasted among similar strategies to find any emergent rhetorical devices. Findings indicated that 1) the political candidates had made use of rhetorical and political moves in tandem within the same propositional units, 2) some employed discourse devices were paralleled with the majority of political strategies like repetition and metaphor, and 3) some political strategies had been used to excess like 'comparison’, 'populism' and 'future representation’ respectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the forms that the discourse of politics and policies of education assumes in Spain and the European Union, in correlation to the tendencies in the United States (Pini, 2003) and the recommendations of international agencies. This is a qualitative study that includes a description and documental analysis. The perspective is critical discourse analysis (ACD), complemented with political discourse analysis, critical theory, sociological theory and some postmodern authors. The corpus includes the current main law and official relevant documents related to national education policies which involve education.

The relevance of this study is conditioned by the comparison of the original texts (in Kazakh) and translated texts (in English) within the framework of the analysis of political discourse and translation analysis. The purpose of the study is to identify the features, patterns, and difficulties for translators to comprehensively assess the adequacy (quality) of the translation and recommendations for compilation to facilitate the translation process. The paper provides a comparative analysis of the modern Kazakh political discourse and its translation into English to identify the features of the translation of language tools, taking into account their pragmatic potential. The theoretical relevance and originality of this research are due to the considerably increased interest in the study of political discourse in the aspect of translation. A comparative approach in political discourse consisting of two languages can be a useful material for studying and comparing political discourse in each of the languages, as well as arouse interest in further research of translation in this language pair. The practical relevance lies in the fact that the presented results can be used in teaching courses of the following disciplines: onomastics, pragmalinguistics, terminology, political science, LSP (language for special purposes), and SPVE (special professional vocabulary of the English language). The materials of this paper can be useful in the field of international relations for international specialists, journalists, translators.

This essay overviews the body of research known as political discourse analysis (PDA). I begin by situating this work within the linguistic and political turns that took place in the latter part of the 20th century within the human and social sciences. I then discuss different conceptions of what comprises the political and the appropriate objects of study for PDA. Adopting an inclusive conception of politics and discourse, I consider the relationship between PDA and critical discourse analysis (CDA). I close with a review of studies of political discourse in terms of their theoretical and analytic frameworks and the socio‐political issues they address.

This article examines the linguistic and cultural encoding of conflictogemes in media discourse based on materials from three linguistic spheres: English-speaking, Russian-speaking and Kazakh-speaking media. The relevance of the study is due to the intensification of conflictogemes in both global and local information space, which contributes to the growing polarization of public consciousness. The primary focus is on the characterization of conflictogems — lexical units capable of provoking conflict and possessing semantic and pragmatic potential to shape public perception of socially significant events. The study substantiates the need for a comparative analysis of media texts in a multilingual and culturally diverse environment. The methodology of research combines critical discourse analysis, component analysis, pragmatic linguistics, and contrastive methods. The empirical database consists of a corpus of 300 media texts (100 in each language) selected according to thematic and regional criteria and published between 2020 and 2024. As a result of the analysis, five key semantic domains of conflictogems were identified: threat, enemy, chaos, security, and provocation. Their dominant stylistic markers (metaphor, hyperbole, euphemism, binary oppositions) and communicative functions (polarization, demonization, mobilization, fear activation, consolidation) were also identified. The results of the study show that each media culture uses different rhetorical strategies: Englishlanguage media emphasize universal values and mobilizing frames; Russian-language sources highlight internal opposition and ideological antagonism; and Kazakh-language discourse focuses on rhetorical stabilization and normative order. Conflictogems function not only as indicators of the political context but also as tools of cultural encoding, reflecting sociocultural values and editorial policy. The study concludes that cross-linguistic analysis of conflict rhetoric makes it possible to identify the underlying cognitive and pragmatic mechanisms of audience influence. The results obtained have practical significance for media linguistics, sociolinguistics, political discourse analysis, and intercultural communication.

In this article the author is going to answer the question, that intrigues many researchers of international relations and political science – is it possible to build a grand theory explaining actions and behaviours of political, and international, entities? International relations are distinguished from other disciplines of science by its special character: they are polyarchic, plural, complex and impulsive. Th€is is why we find here, exceptional in contrary to other, more mature disciplines, diversity of opinions and answers to the question – in what way international relations shall be build? Searching for the right answer the researchers of international relations have to cross borders of many disciplines, also using research methods of sociologists, historians, economists, lawyers, psychologists and anthropologists. €There is a similar problem with political science, as the political matter is widely interpreted and, depending on the researcher and the analysed political system, its scope is wide as when using so called largo sense in the totalitarian states, where even the choice of school for a child has a political character or as when using so called strict sense in the democratic systems.

In Australia, Closing the Gap is a highly profiled federal government policy aimed at closing the gap of disadvantage between Australia’s First Peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. This policy comprises of a yearly report providing statistical data addressing the progress of the initiative. As a significant parliamentary contribution towards the ideology of reconciliation in Australia, political leaders present a national address that responds to the statistical data of the report. This thesis presents a com-bined discourse analysis of the speeches presented in 2017, by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten. Being a political discourse analy-sis, it focuses on the language features used by Australian political leaders to support their political ideology. Michele Koven (2002) presented a model that explained how political leaders align (or misalign) themselves with other social actors. This research will adapt that model to identify how these leaders position themselves ideologically through their Closing the Gap speeches. Then by using critical discourse analysis, it will also present a typology of discursive strategies used in such political discourses, when negotiating an ideological alignment with Australia’s First Peoples. These two approaches will be further justified with two more supporting analyses. This compara-tive analysis contributes to a clearer understanding of how political language is used in Australia. Additionally, it contributes to the surprisingly minimal literature related to Australian political discourse analysis surrounding Indigenous issues, reconciliation and the Closing the Gap policy itself. By analysing such political speeches, reflection, engagement and empowerment then have the capacity to influence institutionalised notions of racism, poverty and class-consciousness with the view to rectifying them.

У статті розглянуто комунікативні недоліки в політичному дискурсі, що виникають у безпосередніх комунікативних діях, які викликані дисбалансом політичної ситуації в суспільстві. Щоб уникнути комунікативних недоліків у політичному дискурсі, політики намагаються застосовувати відповідні стратегічно передбачувані комунікативні тактики. Проведено аналіз того, про що вони говорять, думають, у чому вони переконані та що ставлять за мету донести до відома суспільства, в чому переконати, користуючись сугестивними комунікаціями. Наведено перелік успішних комунікативних тактик у політичному дискурсі.

Political discourse analysis and the nature of politics

An overview of political discourse analysis (PDA) research is provided in this essay. We start by placing this work in the context of the linguistic and political shifts that occurred in the last half of the twentieth century in the social and human sciences. We next go over many opinions about what constitutes the political and relevant subjects of study for PDA. We examine the connection between PDA and critical discourse analysis (CDA), adopting an inclusive understanding of politics and discourse. We conclude by reviewing political discourse studies in terms of the theoretical and analytical frameworks they use, as well as the sociopolitical topics they tackle.