Presidential Discourse Research Articles

Мовний менеджмент як механізм реалізації державної мовної політики

В Україні прийнято закон «Про забезпечення функціонування української мови як державної», який потребує механізму його виконання. Закон поширюється на всі галузі публічного життя, у той же час він був неоднозначно прийнятий суспільством. Напруження на мовному ґрунті залишається, особливо у сферах обслуговування, освіті. Через це є потреба у мовному менеджменті державної мовної політики для її успішної реалізації та запобігання мовним конфліктам у суспільстві.
 Поняття мовного менеджменту в дискурсі державного управління відносно нове, кількість наукових публікацій, присвячених цій темі, незначна, теоретична база дослідження мовного менеджменту, в основному, представлена зарубіжними авторами.
 Мета статті – дослідити наукові підходи до визначення поняття «мовний менеджмент», сформулювати дефініцію мовного менеджменту як складника механізму державної мовної політики, розглянути суб’єктів мовного менеджменту в Україні.
 Наукова новизна. У статті було розглянуто наукові підходи до визначення поняття «мовний менеджмент», його співвідношення з мовним плануванням, сформульовано дефініцію «мовний менеджмент» як складник механізму реалізації державної мовної політики. Окрему увагу приділено вивченню учасників мовного менеджменту та визначено систему суб’єктів мовного менеджменту в Україні.
 Висновки. Запропоновано визначення мовного менеджменту як виду управлінської діяльності, який включає планування, організацію, приведення в дію державної мовної політики та контроль за цими процесами з метою координації інституційних, правових, інформаційних, людських, економічних та інших ресурсів, необхідних для її ефективної реалізації.
 Суб’єктами мовного менеджменту в Україні виступають Верховна Рада України, Конституційний Суд України та суди загальної юрисдикції, Кабінет Міністрів України, Національна комісія зі стандартів державної мови, Уповноважений із захисту державної мови, районні державні адміністрації, органи місцевого самоврядування, громадськість в особі громадських об’єднань, рухів, мовних активістів.
 З метою уникнення правової невизначеності та дотримання законодавства України необхідно уточнити правовий статус таких органів, як Національна комісія зі стандартів державної мови, Уповноважений із захисту державної мови.

ЛЕКСИКО-СЕМАНТИЧНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦІЇ ЕТНІЧНОЇ ТОЛЕРАНТНОСТІ У СУЧАСНОМУ АМЕРИКАНСЬКОМУ ПРЕЗИДЕНТСЬКОМУ ДИСКУРСІ

The paper focuses on the investigation of lexical-semantic features of ethnic tolerance representation in modern American presidential discourse. Linguistic studios interpret tolerance as a universal category that forms communication, affects its mechanisms and results. In this paper ethnic tolerance in American presidential discourse is defined as a compliance of the addresser and addressee of the presidential discourse with the ethical model of interethnic relations and popularization of this model that aims at society consolidation. Ethnic tolerance is manifested through an unbiased assessment, acceptance of different worldviews, faiths and cultures, awareness of equal rights and respect for democratic freedoms. The set of semantic components of the concept of tolerance in the English language is distinguished and four lexico-semantic groups representing ethnic tolerance in American presidential discourse: “culture of the alien”, “cooperation”, “attitude to the alien”, “right to independence” are identified. These groups are singled out given the dominance of semantic components of tolerance which denote the object of tolerance, the form of relations with the object of tolerance, the attitude to the object of tolerance and the right of the object of tolerance. The verbal representation of ethnic tolerance in American presidential discourse is characterized by non-categoricity, the use of plural first person pronouns and vocabulary with positive and negative connotation to emphasize positive intentions towards other states and nations. Taking into account the functional and stylistic components, the language means of ethnic tolerance are represented by political, legal and diplomatic terminology. The analysis of the lexico-semantic means that represent ethnic tolerance in modern American presidential discourse makes it possible to identify the basic value of this type of discourse and clarify the main features of the implementation of the ethnic tolerant behaviour.

Improved Access and Participation for Persons with Disabilities in Local Governance

The disability agenda has only gained adequate attention in the public administration discourse after the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of PWDs (CRPD) was enacted on 13 December 2006, followed by the launching of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 which included Goal No. 3 on Good Health and Well Being, and Goal No. 10 on Reduced Inequalities. In the Philippines, Republic Act 7277 known as the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons and Republic Act 10070 which provided for the creation of Persons with Disabilities Affairs Office (PDAO) in local government units are among the laws currently governing disability affairs matters. This paper looks into the status of the implementation of RA 10070 in the Provincial Government of Camarines Norte, Philippines. The researcher used qualitative methodology including key informants’ interview, focus group discussion case analysis and documentary analysis. The paper ends by the establishment of a framework, the Disability-Inclusive Theory or ACCESS Theory, that discusses the conditions and elements affecting the formulation of policies and enactment of local laws that provide access and other means to eventually empower PWDs and enable them to become more active participants in their respective communities.

Presidential discourse analysis: Irony and sarcasm in pre-election debates

This paper proposes a simple exercise of discourse analysis. It focuses on presidential discourse, namely the speeches of the finalists in the most recent elections in the US (2016) and France (2017) during the final pre-election debates. Passages have been selected and submitted to an analysis that highlights the humorous aspects of language use, namely irony and sarcasm. The analysis is based on the principle of contrastiveness. The selected utterances will be looked at from two points of view: the original version containing the humorous component and an imaginary version discharged of the component. The aim of this approach is to observe the differences engendered by the humorous (ironic, sarcastic) aspects of speech in interaction, as opposed to neutral language use.

A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF WORLD LEADERS’ DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE COVID-19 CONTEXT: AUTHENTICITY AND EMOTIONAL TONE

This study aims to examine authentic discourses of eight country leaders, in two different periods of the COVID-19 context, in order to analyze how their authenticity traits and emotional tone might have changed between February and April of 2020 and according to the updated pandemic numbers of each country. Countries and their leaders were selected based on the West and East representation of the North Hemisphere and with no ethnicity concepts attached. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC 2015, v. 1.6.0. 2019) instrument was administered to establish the segmentation and codification of 16 international discourses. The texts were coded considering the linguistic dimensions and psychological categories. After the dataset of 39 073 words concluded, the correlation was computed to link linguistic samples with low/high emotional properties (and taking into account the linguistic style of the Presidents). For this specific paper, the data focused the emotional tone and the perceptual processes. The word count will not be addressed attending to the lexicon frequency, the grammar organization and syntax properties of the eight languages. The samples revealed psycholinguistic controversy registered in the two sessions of presidential discourses. Results for authenticity have shown that the Presidents from US, UK and France were more authentic, contrary to Russian and Chinese leaders? discourses. The emotional tone was negative (above

Realizacja konceptu „wolność” i „sprawiedliwość” w oficjalnych wystąpieniach prezydenta W.W. Putina (na materiale orędzi do Zgromadzenia Federalnego)

The article presents an analysis of the verbalization of two concepts important for different genres of political discourse: the concepts of “freedom” and “justice”. The study was prepared on the basis of a relatively new genre for Russian presidential discourse, which is the Presidential address to the Federal Assembly. The lexical material was taken from all the addresses delivered by President W.W. Putin (2000–2007, 2012–2016, 2018–2020). The descriptive method and the contextual method were used during the analysis. The analysis showed that the verbalizations of these concepts are not numerous; they are also quite general. The main emphasis in the case of the concept of “freedom” was placed on the economy, and in the case of the concept of “justice” on the social sphere.

Ethnoculturally Marked Genres of the American and British Academic Administrative Discourse

Ethnoculturally Marked Genres of the American and British Academic Administrative Discourse

“We Don’t Harm the Environment”: Defensive Regimes of the Humanities in the Administrative Discourse of Academia

For the last decade, the humanities are globally pronounced as stranded in a crisis or at least touched by it. In the times of crisis the apologetic discourse is more important and visible than in the times of relative peace and prosperity. Comparing to the Anglo-Saxon humanities, the rhetoric of crisis is not very popular among the representatives of Lithuanian humanities. The article reconstructs the main arguments and defensive regimes used by scholars during experimental discussions on the value of the humanities in Lithuania. The empirical data consists of four discussions (conducted in 2017–2018). The aim of the article is to analyse this argumentation and to compare it to the global discourse on the value of the humanities.

Acclaims, attacks, defenses: Critical discourse analysis of Ma Ying-jeou’s 2012 Taiwan presidential debates discourse

Taiwan, under both domestic socio-political pressures and exogenous diplomatic shocks, underwent a democratization process since the 80s in the last century. Presidential debates became a part of the election benefiting from Taiwan’s media liberalization, and are closely related to the Taiwan’s democratization process. Ma Ying-jeou’s landslide victory in the 2008 Taiwan Presidential Election marked Taiwan’s second democratic transfer of power (with the first one taking place in 2000) and started a new era in cross-strait relations. Due to the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s performance falling short of the people’s expectations during Ma’s governance, however, Ma encountered a neck-and-neck challenge in his second term presidential election. This article adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective to investigate Ma Ying-jeou’s deliberate manipulation of linguistic strategies including selective modality choices to formulate his acclaims, attacks and defenses in the 2012 Taiwan televised presidential debates. This analysis reveals his employment of negative and positive linguistic choices in addressing his opponents’ arguments and casting doubt on his key opponent as well as depicting his leadership and character traits and conveying his high degree of commitment to gain the support of the electorate to offer him an opportunity to continue his stewardship of the country. It examines also how us-you, in addition to us-them polarization, was used as a discursive tool of attack during the debates; and identifies the impact of his discourse on the election outcome in 2012. The investigation of Ma’s engagement in televised presidential debates thus offers a snapshot into Taiwan’s democratization process.

Disentangling conceptual antecedence for indigenous paradigm

Background: This is the first in a series of articles seeking to provide an African perspective on the public administration discourse, especially regarding its development as a discipline. Theories and concepts utilised in the discipline within the African context to inform practice were largely borrowed. This field has gained from Western administrative thought, and the principles and culture of the West are applied in the development of the discipline. Aim: This article explores the opportunities the Indigenous afford African Public Administration (IAPA) by critiquing the Western philosophical orientation of public administration to underscore Africa’s influence on the development of the discipline. Setting: The premise of this article is Africa, with public administration acting as a leverage for discussion. Method: In gathering data for this article, the secondary source of data collection was explored, triangulation, Afrocentric perspective, and social constructivism were utilised. For the analysis, both narrative and theme analysis were employed. Results: A key finding in this article is that scholarship in the community IAPA is both lacking and to some extent non-existent in the public administration discourse. The lack of understanding and documentation of Africa’s institutions and administrative thoughts is prominent, thereby, creating a vacuum or knowledge gap in Africa’s governance lexicon. Conclusion: The essence of the indigenous public administration is to acknowledge the principles of indigenous African knowledge towards the growth and development of public administration as a discipline and be able to incorporate African principles like Ubuntu in the furtherance of public administration in praxis.

Dominant discourses of workplace curriculum in Iranian organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the dominant discourses of the workplace curriculum in Iranian organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe research data were collected through in-depth interviews with 30 professionals working in the field of workplace curriculum in three groups of consultants, managers and experts who were selected purposefully and with a theoretical sampling strategy. To analyze the data, thematic analysis method was used. The themes are extracted and categorized into three phases, namely, descriptive coding, interpretive coding and determination of overarching theme. To validate the data, collaborative research technique, member checking and researcher review and, to make sure of findings’ reliability, reliability index between two coders were used.FindingsBased on the findings, the kind of planner’s look at the workplace curriculum commonplaces will shape the nature of the curriculum and in terms of this look define and redefine the workplace curriculum discourses. Therefore, based on perceptions and attitudes in these areas, 11 different discourses are recognizable from the workplace curriculum. These include suppression discourse, justification discourse, ceremonial/ formality discourse, administrative discourse, engineering discourse, economical discourse, psychological discourse, partnership discourse, research discourse, developmental discourse and, finally, multi-cultural discourse.Practical implicationsThe common goal of all learning professionals in the workplace is to play the role of a strategic partner, or at least be a good partner for the organization. One of the main challenges of learning and development professionals in the workplace is increase in integration and alignment between learning programs and developmental opportunities with business organization strategies. Achieving this important goal is possible when we have a proper understanding of the current situation and condition. Various situations and conditions are identified and described in the form of 11 discourses. If the authors do not look at the context and proper understanding of the main concepts – The main concepts of each discourse are put into a quill – in which any discourse that was created, the authors will not be able to make the appropriate strategies. A good doctor will hear and understand well before the first thing.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that offer a variety of discourses for the workplace curriculum.

ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ МЕСТОИМЕНИЙ ПЕРВОГО ЛИЦА В ПРЕЗИДЕНТСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ КАК СРЕДСТВО РЕЧЕВОГО ВОВЛЕЧЕНИЯ

The article deals with the use of first-person pronouns as a way of speech involvement that is significant for presidential discourse. The effect of involvement is considered as a consequence of using the pronouns “I” and “we”, their indirect forms and correspondding syntactic constructions. The verbal meanings of the pronouns “I” and “we” in presidential discourse are identified: the pronoun “I” conveys the meaning of authenticity, allows a speaker to voice an opinion and to create his positive image; the pronoun “we” serves to express the unity of a speaker and the audience and the assertion of common interests and goals. In particular, it is noted that the pronoun “we” in the Russian president’s speech expresses five contextual meanings representing the guideline to involve both “near” and “far” addressees.

Migrationsverwaltungsrecht zwischen Beschleunigung und Effizienz

Migration law between acceleration and efficiency Efficiency and speed of decision making have been a recurrent theme of German administrative law reform since the 1970 s. Although migration law has long been the subject of acceleration efforts, this occurred largely outside the general efficiency discourse. In an effort to connect these two strands, this article first retraces the trends that the administrative efficiency discourse has undergone since the 1970 s and points out how the sectors of law driving it – environmental law, emission control, and economic regulation – as well as an economic paradigm have promoted an truncated understanding of efficiency as mere acceleration. In a second step, it shows that while the devaluation of procedure in the interest of speed does align with a German focus on subsequent judicial review, it neither does justice to the relevance of the procedure to the realization of fundamental rights, not to its specific performances: the development of substantive requirements, transparency, participation, legitimacy. Asylum law in particular has experienced a surge of acceleration measures since 2015, pushed by the consulting firm McKinsey. But its existential relevance for protection seekers and the particular dependency of the right to asylum on the asylum procedure require an especially rigorous examination. An efficiency concept geared merely toward acceleration cannot do justice to these specific challenges, as the McKinsey measures have demonstrated; the burden has simply been shifted on the courts. In its last part, this article therefore proposes a qualitative efficiency concept that bears in mind the entirety of the functions of the administrative procedure, takes into account the different requirements of the procedure in different sectors of law, and does not lose sight of the reciprocity between administrative and judicial procedure. Meanwhile, pilot studies from the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany show that a qualitatively efficient asylum procedure is not necessarily a slower or more costly procedure.

Os paradoxos da “gestão escolar" e o movimento de despolitização na escola brasileira: uma leitura aos periódicos nacionais da área de educação nos anos de 1990 a 2000

Este estudo versa pela revisão bibliográfica dos artigos que tenham socializado produções acadêmicas da área da Educação, cujo núcleo conceitual tenha sido “gestão educacional”/“gestão escolar”/“gestão democrática na escola” e, enquanto método tenha por proposta de análise a abordagem materialista histórico-crítica e dialética. Partimos das categorias marxianas para refletir o paradoxo existente em qualquer modelo que sustente o discurso da administração científica para a construção de uma rotina político-pedagógica pautada na lógica revolucionária. Destacamos os indicadores filosóficos “Totalidade” e “Mais-Valor” para confrontar os estudos. Para verificar o fenômeno na produção científica em Educação, nos apoiamos na pesquisa do tipo “Estudo da Arte”, enquanto um interessante dispositivo metodológico de atualização acadêmica (revisão bibliográfica), porquanto anuncia as tendências que sustentam a evolução do pensamento científico de determinada comunidade científica acerca de um determinado objeto e/ou fenômeno social. Os artigos para a análise constam de periódicos acadêmicos nacionais disponíveis na base de dados Scielo, no período entre 1990 a 2000. Para a seleção, pautamos a descrição dos títulos “Gestão Escolar” / “Gestão Educacional” e/ou “Gestão Democrática na escola”, resultando em 22 artigos coletados e 5 artigos analisados, uma vez que cumpriam todas as variáveis assinaladas. Ao fim, consideramos a existência do paradoxo constituído pelos autores que fundamentam seus estudos no método materialista histórico-crítico e dialético, atento à natureza das categorias específicas da economia e da formação social para desvelar a realidade, porém, incorporando as categorias da Administração Científica, principalmente na argumentação “gerencialista” naturalizando-as na racionalização de uma rotina escolar de pretensão contra hegemônica.

Prospects of Public Participation in the Planning and Management of Urban Green Spaces in Lahore: A Discourse Analysis

Green spaces in cities are under pressure from increasing population, urbanization, and development, making governance of these common pool resources a complex and multi-dimensional process. Governance of urban green spaces can be improved by participatory approaches. However, many developing countries do not have the institutional structures and policies that promote the participation of a range of non-state actors, and green spaces are often removed from public access by regulatory slippage or elite capture for parks and gardens. This paper uses discourse analysis to explore the perspectives of the key stakeholders for public participation in the planning and management of green spaces in Lahore. The study employs Q-methodology to reveal four discourses: ‘Efficient Management’, ‘Anti/Pro-Administrative’, ‘Leadership and Capacity building’, and ‘Decentralization or Elite capture’. The most significant and dominant discourse of ‘Efficient Management’ shows stakeholders’ preferences towards developing new institutional arrangements at the local level through engaging citizens. The two discourses ‘Leadership and Capacity building’ and ‘decentralization or elite capture’ are also in favor of changing the power dynamics in the system at certain levels by using different strategies. However, the status quo-oriented administrative discourse serves as a barrier, resisting change at any level. The results of this study suggest a need for policy reforms to develop a conducive environment in which all the stakeholders can be engaged through different collaborative and co-management schemes, in order to achieve economically efficient, ecologically sustainable and socially equitable, urban green spaces in Lahore.

Evolution of U.S. Presidential Discourse over 230 Years: A Psycholinguistic Perspective

Much of recent research on U.S presidential discourse has focused on the nexus between language forms and their underlying social processes and psychological states. However, little work has been done to shed light on how these latent characteristics have evolved over time. This study investigated the evolution of three psychological states (authenticity, affect, and time orientation) underlying U.S. presidential discourse over approximately 230 years (1789–2016). Based on one of the most comprehensive corpora of presidential speech transcripts, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2015, a text analysis software, was utilized to explore these psychological states. To see the overall trend of these states across U.S. presidential history as a whole, initial analysis was based on LIWC indices, which showed that, 1) overall, authenticity level is on a steady increase in U.S. presidential discourse; 2) in the presidents’ speeches, positive emotions invariably outweigh negative emotions, and both types of emotion remain relatively constant in the long run; 3) the discourse of “focus on present” consistently outweighs the discourse of “focus on future”, which outweighs the discourse of “focus on past”. To see whether the general trend holds across different parties, a series of independent samples t-tests were first performed to check for significant difference. The results indicated that in all the three psychological states, there was no significant difference between the Democratic presidents and the Republican presidents, and that the trend in different parties is in agreement with the overall trend. Subsequent visualization of the LIWC indices according to party generally corroborated these results, with only one exception: authenticity levels are on a steady increase in the discourse of the Democratic presidents, but in the Republican presidents, there was a sharp increase in recent years.

Neoliberal Metaphors in Presidential Discourse from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump

Neoliberalism is a complex and ambiguous concept that has been consistently referred to by critics of an economic policy based, at least rhetorically, on free market and free trade in the last few decades. These two major tenets of neoliberalism have dominated the discourse of American presidents since the beginning of the 1980s. The same period has also been characterized by an increased tendency to tie these economic policies to freedom, a core value of American identity that came to be defined primarily in economic terms. Starting with Ronald Reagan, economic freedom rather than political liberty became the measure of virtue, as the “free world” admitted more authoritarian regimes in its ranks in the name of anti-communism (Numberg 2003). The collapse of the Soviet bloc only served to bolster the vision that free market and free trade alone could bring prosperity and political freedom. This would become the dominant worldview at international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF and would be solidified in the rhetoric of Republican and Democratic presidents alike (McNaught 2009). Drawing on the rhetorical and cognitive approaches developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1981), Chilton (2004) and Charteris-Black (2011), this paper analyses how conceptual metaphors in presidential discourse have contributed to creating a mythical vision of free trade and free market since the 1980s. The metaphors of movement, journey, nature, machine and sport resonate with the way Americans understand and experience their national identity, at the center of which are the values of freedom, competition and progress. They have turned an abstract economic philosophy into a comprehensible and sacred story at the heart of the American model. This model has been one of expansion of free markets and free trade. It has also been pervasive even in the domestic sphere, in the way a divisive issue like health care was framed through a positive market narrative. Despite policies that may have occasionally seemed to contradict the faith in the market, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial and economic meltdown, presidential discourse remained focused on free trade and free markets. This economic crisis may have triggered the first cracks in the mostly consensual view of free trade and free market in political rhetoric across the board. This article argues that much as there was a neoliberal consensus for 35 years, President Trump has been the great disrupter of neoliberal rhetoric by rejecting free trade agreements and by ignoring altogether the virtue of free market, a notion almost entirely absent from his discourse. He has replaced the neoliberal doxa with a discourse centered on the trade deficit and on short-term accumulation of national wealth and power. He has embraced the virtue of national sovereignty while rejecting what he called “globalism”. He has offered an antagonistic vision of a world in which international trade is conceived as a zero-sum game. This new vision is reflected in the metaphors used by a president who has challenged the norms of presidential rhetoric at many levels.

Children Diplomacy During the Late Cold War: Samantha Smith's Visit of the ‘Evil Empire’

AbstractSamantha Smith came to fame by writing a letter to the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, in December 1982, expressing her fears about a potential nuclear war between the two superpowers. Her letter was quoted in the main Soviet newspaper Pravda in April 1983 and the Smith family was subsequently invited to visit the Soviet Union during the summer. Samantha's trip captured the attention of the world media on both sides of the ideological divide. However, her trip has usually been dismissed as a quirky footnote in Cold War history. Scholarly interest has only just begun, sparked by the growing research into the significance of citizen diplomacy, which saw a real explosion in the late Cold War. This article will demonstrate that Samantha Smith's trip was a pivotal moment in this broader process because it provided a very public challenge to the strong political discourse of the early Reagan administration, which promoted conflict. Based on an analysis of Soviet and American media reporting, and using hitherto unused archival evidence, as well as oral history interviews, this article examines why and how Samantha Smith became an icon of citizen diplomacy in the early 1980s. Analysing the receptions, representations and legacies of her trip on both sides of the ideological divide, it will shed fresh light on the role of children as soft power during the Cold War and highlight Samantha Smith's role as a precursor of a rapidly expanding citizen diplomacy that played a largely ignored part in bringing the conflict to an end.

Partisan Patriotism in the American Presidency: American Exceptionalism, Issue Ownership, and the Age of Trump

This study employs issue ownership theory to examine the partisan dynamics surrounding the idea of American exceptionalism in presidential discourse. We conducted a content analysis of invocations of American exceptionalism in all major U.S. presidential addresses—domestic and foreign—from the end of World War II through Trump’s 1st year in office. We find that even though Republicans have traditionally claimed ownership of American exceptionalism, patterns in presidential discourse tell a very different story. Specifically, our results show (a) in domestic contexts, Republican and Democratic presidents were very similar in their invocations of American exceptionalism during the Cold War but that Democrats have held a substantial advantage over Republicans throughout the post–Cold War era, including on issue areas that Republicans are perceived to “own” (e.g. national security); (b) in foreign contexts, Democrats have been much more outspoken in their embrace of American exceptionalism throughout both the Cold War and post–Cold War; and (c) President Trump has diverged significantly, both in substance and frequency, from his Democratic and Republican predecessors in his invocation of American exceptionalism. We reflect on the implications of these findings on our broader understanding of issue—and trait—ownership, presidential discourse, and American exceptionalism in American politics.

Discourse in the Balance: American Presidential Discourse About Climate Change

According to NASA (2018), 17 of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. In an effort to better understand the political communication of American leaders surrounding this environmental exigency, I systematically examined invocations of climate change in the spoken communications of presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. I identified three discursive approaches that were likely to appear in these communications: a general environmental emphasis, foregrounding, and sidestepping. Results from a content analysis showed these presidents were most likely to employ foregrounding, with a focus on the economy. Democrats were more likely to employ a general environmental emphasis, while the Republicans were more likely to sidestep the issue of climate change. In addition, presidents were more likely to emphasize national security as time passed. Implications are discussed for public understanding about climate change and future policy when presidents focus on economic matters and national security.