Statistical language model-based analysis of the English-Chinese corpus and political discourse

The war unleashed by Russia in 2022 is widely presented in online versions of English-language newspapers; Ukraine is constantly in the epicentre of the world news. This study highlights political and ideological contexts of the war in Ukraine, the sociopolitical and cognitive aspects of news according to an interdisciplinary approach considering the language as a social practice. The article highlights the polarization in the presentation of the events and the main actors entitled in the discursive strategies, representing the dichotomy In- versus Out-group. The study is aimed at the investigation of the ideological structures and their manifesting linguistic devices in political discourse based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of discursive strategies for constructing the images of Ukraine and Russia in the British and American press. The integrated Critical Discourse Analysis was applied to the research of the news to study the media discourse and the language, where CDA focuses on social practice, social power and ideology. Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) is used to research the ideology of war images presented in the language of news reports. The relevance of this study determined by the aim is to show the main discursive strategies of polaeization in political media discourse. The research methods of the article combine three vectors of the analysis by Fairclough with explanatory tools (by van Dijk), and the elements of stylistic analysis and Critical Metaphor Analysis. The illustrative material was collected by information search and continuous sample from the open access newspapers and magazines issued in the US and Great Britain (The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others). Conclusion. This research argues that polarisation is being demonstrated in the media discourse on the war in Ukraine in 2022. The taxonomy of the identified discursive strategies of polarization deployed in the media political discourse includes labelling, evidentiality, number game, hyperbolism, victimization, personalization and analogy, that can either be used singly or intervened. The discursive strategy of evidentiality is applied to authorities, officials, witnesses that are accepted as trustworthy sources of data; the number game strategy combined with victimization are verbalized by metaphoric simile, metonymy, enumerating and magnifying the numbers with the modifying adverbs; the strategy of hyperbole conveys the positive impression of the in-group and negative acts magnification of the out-group verbalized by metaphor, metonymy, metaphtonymy; the personalization strategy is deployed with the purpose of foregrounding the positive actions of the in-group that implies negative out-group actions; the strategy of analogy is applied in the comparison of the war in Ukraine and the struggle of the Ukrainians for their independence with other historical events. Linguistic means used to realize the discursive strategies of polarization include the conceptual metaphor, metonymy, simile, idioms, metaphtonymy, intertextual allusion and personification.

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.

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.

Political discourse analysis is aimed at highlighting the emancipatory agendas of political actors who dialectically produce their discourses for the specific purpose of grasping “pro-ideologies” of masses without giving much room to their real interests. To a great extent the manipulation of language serves as a sturdy tool for political benefits and consequently it provides a strong base for the exploitations of the ideological assumptions of people on a large scale. A critical discourse analysis of Imran Khan’s point of view on Islamophobia suggested that a good speaker always overwhelms the masses and changes the way of thinking of the public. The researchers have accentuated that Imran Khan has affected the mindset of the people regarding Islamophobia. Also an analysis has been done by the researchers of discourses examples in the Imran Khan’s Speech. The researchers have explored various indicators of van Dijk in the Speech of Imran Khan.
 This paper aims to discuss the realization of the resistance of islamophobic ideology in Imran Khan Speech by means of language use in a political discourse, which is mainly grounded in Teun van Dijk‟s assumptions in critical discourse analysis. For this aim, the discursive strategies of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan during a press conference in the United Nation General Assembly held on 25th September 2019.The Speech will be examined within the context of his ideological, cultural and language background.
 . Keywords
 Political Discourse, Power, Ideology, Critical Discourse Analysis.

Language and Gender in Political Discourse (Mass Media Interviews)

During the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, political discourse was dominated by the language of war as the world’s political leaders saturated their speech with the terminology of war. This article examines some properties of the speech delivered by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the parliament on March 22, 2020. The general framework of the study is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which investigates how language is used in ideological and social contexts and how it relates to power. The material of the research requires to apply a more specialised tool, namely Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) that examines the relation between language and political agendas and ideology. The study considers the political and ideological contexts of the speech through the entire political process and decision making at the national level as well as the sociopolitical and cognitive aspects of the speech in the parliamentary setting. In particular, attention is paid to the war rhetoric that induces the public to conceptualise the virus as an enemy and thus to present the crisis as a threat to the nation. The article explores language means employed by the speaker to actuali s e rhetorical strategies aimed at justifying his government’s measures taken to manage the crisis. To do this, the research looks into historical, cultural and psychological contexts of the speech as well as its political implicatures. Keywords: political speech; war rhetoric; political discourse; critical discourse analysis; mental models

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.

We are grateful to Alan Finlayson, Colin Hay and Stephen Coleman for their challenging responses to Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) and we hope to give a satisfactory answer to their main arguments. Both Hay and Finlayson argue that, in focusing on argumentation and deliberation, we misunderstand the nature of the political. Second, Finlayson thinks that there is a discontinuity between critical discourse analysis (CDA), in its previous versions, and our present framework. Third, Finlayson claims that CDA's focus on representations should not be displaced by a focus on action, that conflict over representations is fundamental in politics, and a rhetorical (not dialectical) perspective is best suited to analysing political discourse. Fourth, Coleman argues that important features of political discourse cannot be addressed by our approach, which should be supplemented by ‘dramatistic’ methods.

Metaphor scholars have widely explored metaphor use in political discourse. Nevertheless, the current research does not account for the ‘gradable metaphoricity’ in political discourse analysis. This dissertation fills this gap by addressing this specific issue in two frameworks: (1) viewing political metaphor from a static and gradient perspective (Source-Target mapping; Conventional vs. Novel vs. Dead), and (2) viewing political metaphor from a gradable and dynamic perspective (a matter of salience and awareness of metaphoricity). A systematic literature review in chapter 2 points out that the static and dynamic perspectives differ significantly in underlying assumptions and organizing principles, although both are indistinctly referred to by metaphor scholars as constituting a ‘gradable’ view. The former takes metaphor as a static conceptual unit or lexical unit, but the latter tends to accord a central role of activation of metaphoricity to metaphorical expressions. To launch a theoretical advancement about the dynamic view in political discourse, chapter 3 offers a usage-based model of gradable and dynamic metaphors—the YinYang Dynamics of Metaphoricity (YYDM). In addition, this thesis investigates political metaphors from an interdisciplinary angle, incorporating theory from the field of International Relations. An empirical evaluation of political (discourse) studies in chapter 4 shows the large absence of transdisciplinary perspectives. Addressing the abovementioned gaps, this dissertation reports on two empirical analyses of trade metaphors in a big corpus that represents the official trade positions of the United States and China during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin (1993-1997) as well as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (2017-2021). Based on a codebook of a cross-linguistic metaphor identification procedure in chapter 5, the first empirical part contributes to the static and gradient perspective and includes two corpus-based studies of metaphorical framing about trade (chapters 6-7). The diachronic and cross-linguistic use of source domains from a socio-cognitive approach in chapter 6 reveals that source domains are semantic fields that vary with trade discourse contexts (interests, power, and power relations). Chapter 7 shows that the use of trade metaphors (source domains of Conventional and Novel metaphors) to construct and legitimize political ideologies correlates with differences between political genres. The second part contributes to the gradable and dynamic view by applying the transdisciplinary model of YinYang Dynamics of Metaphoricity in chapters 8-10. In chapter 8, an evaluation of the new model in the Clinton-Jiang trade discourse shows that the dynamic cognitive process (transformation of metaphoricity) and rhetorical process (argumentation and persuasion) mutually develop with the evolution of the socio-political process (trade perspectives and trade events). Chapter 9 investigates the transformation of metaphoricity in the Trump-Xi trade discourse and finds that cognitive processes (patterns of metaphoricity activation) and affective processes (emotions or sentiments) mutually develop with the evolution of socio-political processes (trade perspectives and trade events). Based on the findings in chapters 8-9, chapter 10 further shows several phenomena in the Clinton-Jiang and Trump-Xi trade discourses: the movement of metaphors on the metaphoricity spectrum, the bodily motivation of gradable and dynamic metaphoricity, and the interconnected political discourse systems. Drawing on all the theoretical and empirical insights revealed in the dissertation, the final section of the thesis outlines a future direction, i.e., moving towards a transdisciplinary and dynamic approach to metaphor in political discourse analysis.

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.

Children’s literature is recently regarded as an emergent vehicle for the expression of opposing political views (Simpson, 2020), becoming an up-and-coming part of contemporary political discourse. To examine the discursive properties of agendas and political discourse in fairy tales and their translation particulars, this study adopts the political and critical discourse analysis (Schäffner, 2004; Van Dijk, 2003) with the method of micro-textual lexis analysis and macro social-historical analysis. It is found that: 1) political discourse in children’s literature exhibits a marked discursive property of substantial adjective usage; 2) denotation expansion, trivialization, and contrast explicitation are three recurrent translation strategies under the strategic functions of dissimulation and delegitimization; 3) translation initiation manifests political awareness with local, ideological, and political implications. The study, with a specific focus on the Chinese context, foregrounds the empowerment of translation with local, ideological, and political implications, highlighting the delicate strategies adopted by translators in a likewise delicate genre of children’s literature.

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.

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.

The main subject of this study is a detailed literature review analysis of critical discourse researches made in the Turkish language. As a unique discipline, critical discourse analysis has played an important research tool role in social sciences. Critical discourse analysis, which emerged in the late 1980s, can be considered a relatively new research method in our country. This discipline has developed around the schools of three different academics. One of the leading figures in this field is Teun A. van Dijk (b. 1943). Van Dijk, the founder of the Socio-cognitive Approach, is one of the important names cited in the analysis of political and media discourses. Another name is Norman Fairclough (b.1941). Fairclough's 3-Dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis method also constitutes an important space in discourse studies. Another significant figure in the field of critical discourse analysis is Ruth Wodak (b. 1950). Wodak, the founder of the Discourse Historical approach, first developed this method to analyze the biased anti-Semitic language and imagery in Waldheim's electoral programs in the Austrian presidential election that was held in 1986. Since then, the methodology developed by Wodak has been useful for discourse analysis of cases with an important historical dimension. This study aims to explain the approaches of the discourse experts mentioned above and to compile critical discourse analysis and corpus analysis studies conducted in political and media texts in Turkish academia. As a result of this study, which was carried out within the scope of the qualitative research method, important insights into the basic features, possibilities, and limitations of critical discourse analysis research in Turkish academia have been obtained. Some of the insights obtained can be summarized as follows: It has been determined that the critical discourse analysis studies available in the Council of Higher Education online database include a total number of 54 master’s and doctoral theses published since 2003. Among these theses, the number of the theses prepared in Turkish is 23. As a result of the Google Scholar search, it has been found that the number of Turkish studies conducted since 2003 is more than 90. The most cited research among these studies is the article “Discourse Analysis” published in 2008. The main limitation of most of the critical discourse analysis studies made in the Turkish language is about the usage of the translations of the works authored by the above-mentioned experts who developed this discipline, and this usage limits the number of resources concerning the method because not every major work has been translated into Turkish. In the light of the findings, the ways to improve the discipline in Turkish academia shows the importance of this study.

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.