American Political Discourse Research Articles

Teaching the January 6th Insurrection: Historical Perspectives on a Crisis in American Democracy

Abstract This article offers a framework for analyzing and teaching the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The crisis itself offers an opportunity to unpack and better understand American political discourses and institutions. I focus on four historical and contemporary currents that elucidate the January 6th crisis: 1) White supremacy and backlashes against Civil Rights; 2) conservative assaults on the New Deal order and the regulatory state; 3) organized labor’s decline, right-wing populism’s rise, and nativism; 4) political polarization, sectarianism, and minority rule. These themes enable students to assess both crucial challenges posed by January 6th and the vitality of American democracy.

Political self-praise in Clinton–Trump presidential debates

The speech act of political self-praise has received scant attention in East Asian contexts, unlike other speech acts. This study aims to explore the strategies of self-praise used by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The 2016 US presidential debates were analysed quantitatively to examine if there are any differences in using self-praise strategies. This was followed by a qualitative analysis to explore how these strategies are linguistically realised. Three main self-praise strategies were used: unmodified explicit self-praise, modified explicit self-praise and indirect self-praise. Within the third category, the data revealed a new self-praise strategy, which we called “criticism-based self-praise”. Moreover, the findings highlighted differences in using self-praise strategies in American political discourse. While Trump employed unmodified explicit self-praise more than his opponent, Clinton used modified explicit self-praise strategies far more than Trump. Trump, however, adopted implicit self-praise strategies more than Clinton. Differences could be attributed to gender stereotypes as well as the candidates’ experience and personality. The study may help East Asian people better understand American political discourse, presidential debates in particular.

Chinese American College Students’ Self-Meaning Making Through the Lens of Critical Whiteness Studies

Chinese Americans are historically perceived as perpetual foreigners and honorary whites in American political, cultural, and racial discourses. Utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies as a theoretical framework and Critical Race Hermeneutics as an analytic tool, this article examines how Chinese American young adults construct who they are against whiteness as the norm, the epistemology of ignorance, and white emotionality. Instead of passive victims, Chinese American college students actively challenge this hegemony, privilege, and oppression in unique ways.

Delegitimising Potential of the “Friend-Foe” Axiological Opposition (Exemplified by English-Language Political Internet Comments)

The article considers the axiological opposition “friend-foe” on the material of non-professional political discourse. English-language comments to the posts of Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City, and Sadiq Aman Khan, Mayor of London, published in 2016–2021 in social networks are analyzed in the linguapersonological aspect. The speech techniques of expressing the “friend-foe” binary used in discrediting the current government by users of social networks are revealed. The authors of the comments use various means of verbal aggression to undermine the legitimacy of the authorities. At the lexical level, invective and pejorative units are used. At the grammatical level, the users have recourses to imperative constructions and the superlative degree of adjectives with negative evaluation. Internet users’ comments to politicians’ posts in social networks are shown to form the image of a political actor on the basis of the dominants ‘deviant behaviour’, ‘bad manager’, ‘foe, not their own’, which are determinants in discrediting the authorities. Delegitimising characteristics-determinants used in American and British non-professional political discourse are revealed to be similar due to the general unification and globalization trends. When writing a negative response, the universal institutional characteristics of a politician come to the fore. The unique individual and personal characteristics of mayors are also found to be important in creating a more voluminous image of an illegitimate leader.

The Impact of Partisan Media on Minority Groups: Incivility and Polarization in American Political Discourse

The purpose of this research article is to examine the complex relationship between partisan media and its impact on minority groups, specifically African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, in American political discourse. Through a comprehensive analysis of news headlines from major cable news networks such as CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, the study examines how selective framing and biased coverage by media outlets influence the portrayal of this minority groups. By employing sentiment analysis techniques on a dataset extracted from LexisNexis, the study reveals the prevalence of negative tones in news headlines related to African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The findings shed light on the role of partisan media in shaping public perceptions, reinforcing biases, and contributing to political polarization. The implications of these findings underscore the importance of promoting informed and inclusive media practices to foster a more equitable and engaged society.

Do South Asian Politicians Use More Metaphors Than Western Politicians? A Corpus-Based Comparative Study Of Metaphor In Bangladesh, British, And American Political Discourse

Several studies have investigated the relationship between metaphor and politics; however, no research has specifically focused on the use of metaphors by Bangladeshi politicians. This study aims to address this gap by analyzing the use of conceptual metaphors by Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina Wazed, drawing from the three major source domains of CONFLICT, JOURNEY, and RELIGION. The findings are then compared to those from a study by Charteris-Black (2004), which examined variations in metaphor choice in the inaugural speeches of American Presidents and the party political manifestos of two British political parties from 1974-1997. Since there are no available corpora in the Bangladesh context, I compiled a corpus with 91 speeches from PM Hasina Wazed, containing a total of 101,490 words. Data was analyzed using AntConc software. As Bangladesh is a developing country where religion holds a significant influence, this paper sheds light on how economic development programs have impacted the use of metaphors, while surprisingly religion has not. Additionally, there are some shreds of evidence of family and personal elements appearing in the data.

Linguistic characteristics of false statements (based on the material of American political discourse)

Linguistic characteristics of false statements (based on the material of American political discourse)

The Concept of Alliance in the American Political Discourse: A Critical Study

The Concept of Alliance in the American Political Discourse: A Critical Study

Contemporary American Political Discourse: a Study of Content, Structure, and Formation Features

Contemporary American Political Discourse: a Study of Content, Structure, and Formation Features

Hate Speech in American Political Discourse: A Functional-Linguistic Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the concept of hatred is represented in American political discourse. The problem of intensified hate speech requires thorough linguistic investigation as political discourse is becoming more openly conflictual. The empirical material of this study comprises public speeches by American politicians, politically themed analytical articles in the press, and posts and statements of politicians in social networks. The main method used in the analysis is the functionallinguistic analysis of discourse. The author analyses confrontational communicative tactics, e.g. discrediting, scorn, insult, accusation, mockery, etc. The objects (or victims) of such rhetoric are political opponents of the subject of speech, who may have different points of view, religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds and social status. Hate speech, which is an extreme form of how the concept of hatred can be verbalized, may be directed against confessional and ethnical groups. The paper places a special emphasis on the communicative goals and intentions of discourse participants who resort to hate speech. Usually it is the desire of the subject of speech to publicly demonstrate disrespect, mock, belittle the authority of opponents and favourably represent oneself in the eyes of the audience. The rhetoric of hatred comprises such typical means as negative and offensive epithets and metaphors; hyperbolic, comparative, rhetorical and lexical constructions with the pragmatical meaning of irony. In situations when the subjects of speech emphasize the difference between them and their opponents (national, religious, social etc.), the functional fields of the concept of hatred and the “in-group/out-group” concept may overlap. In these cases, the communicative goal of the speaker is to alienate political opponents and emphasize their dissidence in a negative way.

A Critical Pragmatic Study of National Identity Representation in American Political Discourse

National identity is considered the main reason for displaying the national flag ,celebrating national holidays and even declaring solidarity with millions of people whom we do not meet. The study investigates how national identity can be defined along both ethno-cultural and civic lines. This study is a critical pragmatic study of national identity used in American political discourse. One political speech is selected to be the data.This speech belongs to Trump. The model adopted in the analysis is based on Grice’s Maxims Breaching (1975) and Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory (1987). A mixed method is used in analyzing and representing the results. This work tries to answer the following questions: What are the types of national identity that are represented in American political discourse? What is the most common type of maxims breaching and politeness strategies? Which one of these strategies that is highly used? This study aims at identifying the most frequent type of national identity, investigating the most frequent type of maxims breaching and politeness strategies in addition to identifying one of these strategies that is highly used. To answer the above questions, the study hypothesizes that: politicians present their ethnic national identity higher than the civic version, flouting quality maxim is extremely employed, positive politeness strategies score high frequency, and finally politeness strategies are the most dominant strategies used in the adopted model. The most important conclusions the study has come up with are:1) ethnic national identity is highly demonstrated within American political discourse more than the civic one. 2) Regarding maxims breaching, flouting quality maxim is the most commonly one used in the political speech under study. 3) Politicians make use of politeness strategies. Positive politeness strategies are the most dominant ones 4) According to the pragmatic strategies, it is shown that politeness strategies are highly utilized in presenting national identity.

Dynamics of American Political Discourse of the 20th – Early 21st Centuries

The article addresses dynamics of conceptual space and communicative organization of the American political discourse in the 20 th – early 21 st centuries. The research objective is to identify transformations in the content of universal and nationally-marked concepts, as well as verbal modification of communicative strategies and tactics in the American political discourse of the periods under study. The main research methods applied are discourse, conceptual, semantic, and contextual analysis. The sampling corpus incorporates 662 public speeches of American presidents. The speeches under analysis belong to the ritual, orientational, and agonal genres of the political discourse. The main discourse-forming and nationally-marked concepts, features of the communicative structure of the American political discourse are established. The analysis of the metaphorical system as a way of realizing the intention in the American political discourse is carried out. The main types of conceptual metaphor, representing the discourse-forming concepts of the American political discourse are considered. The American political discourse conceptual space is more prone to transformations than its communicative structure in the studied timeframe. The nationally-marked concepts tend to be more dynamic than the universal discourse-forming concepts. The conceptual dynamism of the nationally-marked concepts manifests itself in the prevalence of the dominant features and the lacunarity at different stages of the American linguo-cultural community existence. The nationally-marked concepts components related to the historical and socio-cultural aspects of the speaking community life are brought into the open in the speeches of American presidents as transmitters of the national cultural values and role-status configurations in the political discourse of the 20 th – early 21 st centuries.

Exploring Nuances in American Republican Discourse: A SFL-driven Basic Content Analysis of G. Bush and D. Trump as Case Studies

This exploratory study uses a Functional-Semantic approach to language with the aim to foreground the contrasting ideological, discursive, thematic and political discourse features that mark D. Trump and George Bush's nationalistic discourse. Using a Nvivo12-facilitated CDA-oriented Basic Content Analysis (BCA), I examine 5 purposively sampled public addresses delivered by George W. Bush and Donald Trump (5 for each case) during their respective presidencies. The key findings of this lexicometric analysis disclosed subtle variations and significant intertextual connections in these two nationalistic discourse genre chains. Both discourse makers deployed certain socio-cognitive elements consistent with their discursive purposes and addressee mental models. George Bush’s sample attests to a ‘conservative Jeffersonian internationalist discourse’ that is marked by a call for Americans to think of themselves as one people, whose members are equal, rather than being in conflict with an out-group America-internally. Indeed, Donald Trump's discourse subscribes to hardline Jacksonian stream, introducing an ideological and political nationalism, characterized by heightened polarization, conspiracy theories and group essentialization. This research has broader implications for political communication, informing discussions on how language shapes political ideologies and societies. The revealed intertextual links support previous research on the intertextuality and ideological encoding of nationalistic narratives in American political discourse.

Linguistic dynamics of populism: Interrogative sentences in contemporary American Populist Political discourse

Linguistic dynamics of populism: Interrogative sentences in contemporary American Populist Political discourse

The Arab American Polyphonic Novel and Its Indictment of the Post-9/11 Political Agenda

Following 9/11, the United States, led at the time by the George W. Bush administration, formulated and disseminated a political narrative replete with falsehoods and rigid binaries intended to justify changes to its domestic and foreign policy. That narrative was based on Orientalist tropes and American exceptionalism – ideas which have been part of American political discourse for more than a century. Two post-9/11 multi-narrator novels – Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land (2007) and Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans (2019) – respond to the dominant political narrative by deconstructing the binaries it is based on and by demonstrating its harmfulness to American society. Through close readings that analyze the ideological implications of the polyphonic novel form, this paper reveals that Halaby’s and Lalami’s novels implicate the narrative in the destructive political polarization of the 2000s and the 2010s while subverting persistent modes of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment. Mikhail Bakhtin’s notions of polyphony and dialogism, as well as Jody Byrd’s concept of cacophony, clarify the ways that narration is used in Once in a Promised Land and The Other Americans to enable the indictment of the post-9/11 narrative.

Comparative analysis of American and Russian political discourse: A discourse analysis study

This article provides an exhaustive analysis of American and Russian political discourse through the examination of the linguistic techniques employed by President Joe Biden and President Putin in their speeches. The aim of this research is to examine the linguistic approaches employed in referencing social and political traditions in the United States and Russia, investigate disparities in linguistic strategies within both political discourses, and assess variations in semantic outcomes. The analysis has been conducted to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the linguistic methods of referring to social and political traditions in America and Russia? (2) Do the linguistic strategies differ depending on the political discourse? (3) Is the semantic output different depending on the political discourse? The findings reveal marked differences between the two discourses, reflecting the social and political discrepancies between the political systems of the United States and Russia.

Dwa amerykańskie konserwatywne republikanizmy

TWO AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANISMS: THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE RIGHT During the founding period of the United States, the ideological foundations of American political discourse were formed. The constitutional debate and the first years of the young republic showed the fundamental differences between the Founding Fathers. Their different conceptions of the Union and its essence created different currents within American republicanism. In the article, the author analyzes two conservative republicanisms that arose in the North and South of the United States. In his opinion, the northern republicanism of Hamilton, Ames, Adams and Marshall, emphasizing the negative side of human nature, had to appeal to power, which alone can tame particularisms and unite the efforts of all in one direction. Southerners, on the other hand, took as the starting point of their argument the organic nature and primordiality of the basic social structures that determine the scope of power, primarily federal.

Language and Politics: Framing the Use of Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse

This article examines the intricate relationship between language and politics through the lens of conceptual metaphors utilized in contemporary political discourse. By analyzing the framing and use of conceptual metaphors in political communication, the study aims to elucidate how language shapes and influences political narratives and ideologies. In this study, a qualitative research approach was adopted, incorporating critical discourse analysis (CDA) to delve into the use of conceptual metaphors in the context of American political discourse, taking as a case study Barack Obama's 2009 Cairo speech and Donald Trump's 2017 Inaugural Address. Drawing upon insights from studies on cognitive linguistics, politics, and discourse analysis, the research investigates the ways in which political actors strategically employ metaphors to construct persuasive arguments, shape public opinion, and advance specific policy agendas. This research thus aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the relation existing between language and political persuasion.

Political framing of Covid-19

Abstract The present study is a corpus-based discourse analysis of the metaphorical framing of Covid-19 in American political discourse. Drawing on data from a corpus of the White House briefings and statements, the study investigates the corpus profile of war and virus and illustrates how the Coronavirus is primarily represented as an enemy to go to war with, rather than a public health crisis to control and mitigate. The study further situates the militaristic framing of Covid-19 within the theoretical framework of moral panic and examines the discursive features that ultimately bridge the metaphorical representation of the pandemic and the construction of moral panic. The study points to nuanced discourse strategies used in the White House press briefings that reconstruct the enemy and regroup the Coronavirus with other so-called enemies of the United States, such as the Communists, as well as the Islamic radicals and the Latin gangs and cartels.

DETERMINING THE STRATEGY FOR RENDERING IDEOLOGICALLY-BOUND UNITS IN SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

An ideologically-bound unit is a reference to a specific ideology that exists in the context of a particular epoch, and can be explored as an intrinsic element of the global vertical context. Undoubtedly, ideologemes represent a certain challenge for simultaneous interpreters who are not always able to adequately perceive the global vertical context of the source utterance and to properly convey the associative and connotative potential of these units. The present study is undertaken to pinpoint the peculiarities of the modern American political discourse, namely the public speeches of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and their simultaneous interpretation into Russian, carried out by media interpreters of “Voice of America”, an international multimedia news network of the USA. The research is aimed at identifying and comparing interpreting strategies employed to achieve the required level of rendition appropriateness and usability. The findings further reveal that the global vertical context of the source utterance and the communicative pragmatics of the interpreter-mediated event seem to impact the choice of an interpreting strategy that encompasses specific techniques. It is noteworthy that in order to render an ideologically-bound unit and its derivatives, an interpreter is expected to use corresponding equivalents in the target language, which do not distort the speaker’s intentions and voiced position, as well as convey the communicative effect of the source utterance and fit into the recipient’s ideological picture of the world.