Political Semiotics and the Study of the Political: Power, Governance, and Democracy

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors put forth a concrete conceptual framework for political semiotic analysis of the political, based on the framework developed in Chapter 5 through the semiotic model of communication of Roman Jakobson. The authors relate theories of power, governance, and democracy to the Jakobsonian model of communication that distinguishes six aspects of each communicative act: emotive aspect (orientation toward the addresser), phatic aspect (orientation toward contact), poetic aspect (orientation toward message), conative aspect (orientation toward the addressee), referential aspect (orientation toward context), and metalingual aspect (orientation toward code). In addition, these aspects can be positioned along the two fundamental tensions in each meaning-system or communication: the tendency toward metonymic articulation of meaning and the tendency toward metaphoric articulation. The authors relate the latter tendencies to the topics of problematization and de-problematization of policy issues. Consequently, political semiotic categories are outlined that could be used for empirical analyses of political phenomena.