Contemporary Political Discourse Research Articles

ON SATIRICAL COMMENTS: POLITICAL HUMOR OF INDONESIANS DEPICTED IN INSTAGRAM POSTS

This study explores the phenomenon of political humor within Indonesian society, focusing specifically on the expression of satirical comments through Instagram posts. Employing critical discourse analysis as the methodological framework, the study examines how Indonesian users utilize humor to comment on political events, figures, and ideologies in the digital realm. By analyzing a selected sample of Instagram posts, the study aims to shed light on the linguistic and discursive strategies employed by users to construct satirical commentary and investigate the underlying socio-political implications of such discourse. The study findings highlight the significance of satirical comments in shaping public opinion and fostering political dialogue within Indonesian society. It uncovers Instagram users' diverse strategies to express their discontent, promote alternative perspectives, and foster critical thinking through humor. The study identifies recurring themes, targets, and stylistic patterns in satirical comments, offering valuable insights into contemporary Indonesia's political discourse and collective sentiment. This study contributes to the existing literature on critical discourse analysis. It provides an in-depth analysis of the unique ways Indonesians engage in political satire through Instagram, elucidating the intricate relationship between language, humor, and political critique.

,Konsens‘ und ,Kompromiss‘ in der Schweiz

Abstract In Swiss media, one can easily find statements that evaluate consensus and compromise positively and present them as typical of Switzerland. At first glance, these statements seem to fit perfectly with the assessments of numerous political scientists, according to whom Switzerland is a prime example of a consensus democracy. This article explores the characteristics of contemporary political discourses on consensus and compromise in Switzerland and identifies the underlying political concepts of ‘consensus’ and ‘compromise’ by use of methods from discourse analysis and conceptual history. These methods are applied to dictionaries and digital corpora covering media, parliamentary, and government language usage in Switzerland. Whenever possible, corresponding German data are also analyzed for comparison. The analysis shows that Swiss political discourses on consensus and compromise are characterized by linguistic patterns that cannot be found in corresponding German discourses to the same extent. These results strongly suggest a connection between the political discourses on consensus and compromise, the respective concepts, and the elements of consensus democracy in the Swiss political system, a finding which has various potential applications.

“The Sorriest Prime Minister”

In contemporary political discourse, political apologies have emerged as a critical linguistic tool allowing politicians to sway and manipulate public perception. Especially the act of historical apology has been on the rise. This article examines the apology strategies of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and how Trudeau modifies his apologies when apologizing for personal offenses versus historical transgressions. Drawing on politeness theory, the article suggests that Trudeau apologizes differently when apologizing for personal offenses than for historical transgressions. The article asserts that Trudeau’s personal apologies are marked by non-apology and face-saving strategies, whereas his historical apologies are more performative. This contrast underlines a strategic approach to apologizing, suggesting that Trudeau strategically leverages historical apologies to bolster his image as a progressive politician and minority ally. The article claims that, through these linguistic tactics, historical apologies, particularly historical apologies, serve as powerful means for shaping and perpetuating a desired political identity.

Fighting the “Terrible Poison” of Terrorism: Marine Le Pen's Rhetoric of Ethnicism and Islamophobia

Abstract This essay outlines the rhetorical elements and discursive strategies used to perpetuate cultural racism, or ethnicism, in contemporary political discourse. Using Marine Le Pen's Islamophobic discourse as a case study, this essay demonstrates how Le Pen deploys ethno-nationalist rhetoric to highlight the dangers that she believes Muslim terrorists pose to French national identity. She portrays Muslim terrorists as rootless wanderers capable of causing irreparable damage to France, which enables her to craft herself as a protector of the French home using populist reasoning. In doing so, Le Pen's discourse stokes fears of clandestine terrorists hiding among the French Muslim and migrant populace, which constitutes the Muslim terrorist—and by extension, all Muslims—as major security and cultural threats to the nation. Consequently, Le Pen portrays French national identity as incompatible with all forms of Islam.

Ризома как механизм манипуляции в немецкоязычном журналистском тексте

The research focuses on the pressing issue of contemporary political discourse – the technologies of manipulation in the media space, specifically the linguistic mechanisms for transmitting pragmatic attitudes and value orientations in journalistic texts. These processes directly correlate with the phenomenon of increasing entropy in the text and, as the study has shown, largely arise from the rhizome - the nonlinear nature of organizing integrity. The research aim is to identify the linguistic mechanisms underlying the rhizomatic structure of media text. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time, using a specific info-cause as an example, the rhizome is examined as a mechanism for implementing manipulative strategies in the modern German-speaking media space; the conditioned technologies of modeling pragmatic attitudes by the rhizome are revealed; the explicit and implicit mechanisms of implementing this process are described. The obtained results have shown that in journalistic texts, the rhizome manifests itself as multi-vectorial and the contradictory transmission of information, greatly enhancing the possibilities of interpretations inherent in the language structure, becoming a significant mechanism for implementing manipulative strategies.

‘Sovereignty is still the name of the game’: Indigenous theorising and strategic entanglement in Māori political discourses

Abstract In recent decades, sovereignty has come under increased academic scrutiny for being a Eurocentric notion antithetical to emancipatory politics, leading critical theory scholars to call for an overcoming or even abandonment of the concept. Paradoxical as it may seem, it nonetheless remains an appealing ideal for many colonised peoples. Indigenous activists and scholars have actively re-appropriated the language of sovereignty to encapsulate and advance Indigenous political aspirations. This paper discusses how Māori, Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Indigenous people, navigate their relations to the concept in their contemporary political discourses pursuing self-governance. Building on interviews with Māori leaders, scholars, and activists, it offers empirical insights into Indigenous political thought’s engagement with the idea of sovereignty. It highlights an ambivalence oscillating between rejection and rearticulation present both in Indigenous theorising and Māori politics. From an analysis of Māori contemporary conceptual strategies, this paper suggests that Yarimar Bonilla’s notion of ‘strategic entanglement’ offers a productive account to comprehend the approached Māori actors’ deployment of the sovereignty concept, and possibly that of Indigenous peoples beyond Aotearoa. This paper thus highlights the continued relevance of the sovereignty framework, both analytically and politically, to meaningfully engage with contemporary Indigenous politics.

Paternalism in Australian parliamentary debate: the case of drug testing social security recipients

Abstract Across the globe, welfare conditionality and sanctioning increasingly permeate social welfare programs. Paternalism is one of the key normative rationales invoked when both scholars and politicians debate the legitimacy of this reform. With a view to bringing the scholarly and political debates into closer conversation with each other, this paper examines how paternalism manifests in political debate. We systematically analyse the paternalist arguments made by Australian federal parliamentarians in favour of the virtually identical 2017 and 2018 policy proposals to drug test welfare recipients, both of which resulted in a stalemate. We find that paternalistic arguments primarily employed soft, weak, and welfare paternalism, with heavy emphasis on the purported benefits of the intervention, limited emphasis on the issue of personal liberty, and noticeable silence about autonomy and consent. These findings shed light on the scholarly features of paternalism that are obscured in contemporary political discourse. This analysis can direct political philosophers to features of paternalism that need more attention as well as suggest ways that drug and welfare policy advocates may engage more effectively with paternalist arguments.

The decoupling practice of “Democraticwashing”: the case of Israel

ABSTRACT This study introduces and elaborates on the decoupling practice of “democraticwashing” within contemporary political discourse, where anti-democratic actions are concealed behind democratic rhetoric. The primary aim is to unravel the multifaceted nature of democraticwashing, which extends beyond mere language manipulation for legitimization. It explores instances where democratic values and the legitimation attached to them in the present day are internalized to the extent that contradictions between rhetoric and reality are adamantly denied. By analysing the relation between democratic discourse and anti-democratic actions in the Israeli case since 2009, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of how democraticwashing contributes to the erosion of democratic elements in states usually considered as democracies in the global arena. This research advances our comprehension of the contemporary challenges facing democratic governance worldwide while proposing a new analysis tool for the erosion of democracy in the contemporary era.

The Art of Insults: A Linguistic Analysis of Trump’s Verbal Attacks During Campaigns

This study aims to investigate the linguistic features and strategies used by Donald Trump in his verbal attacks during his presidential campaign. The study aims to investigate the quotes, either directly or indirectly. The objective is to determine the persuasive level of verbal abuse as a rhetorical device in contemporary political discourse. A comprehensive linguistic analysis of his speeches during his campaign trail is used to examine the effect of verbal attacks on the delivery of his campaign speech in the presidential campaign and how this kind of political action affects the field of politics or politicians, which remains the main area of interest.

Creative Use of Metaphor in Nigerian Political Discourse

The paper investigated use of metaphor in contemporary Nigerian political discourse with the aim of revealing the multi-faceted patterns of metaphoric language in order to examine the creativity in political communication. The data were derived from a variety of illustrative texts sourced from Nigerian newspapers and magazines that are circulated nationwide. The study employed the cognitive linguistics approach originated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson to discuss the two significant metaphor themes of war and journey in the corpus data. The findings showed that metaphors are used as persuasive strategy and manipulative tool by politicians. The metaphors of war revealed that politics is typically conceived of as warfare with the primary aim of winning elections at all costs and the metaphors of journey depicted a nation in search of solutions to socio-economic problems and moving towards nationhood. The study concluded that the use of metaphor in political discourse is not just an ornamental device but a necessary feature of political communication. This research will extend the existing perspective on the rhetorical imperative in the deployment of metaphor in Nigerian 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

Analysis of the Characteristics of Narrative Types in Contemporary Chinese Political Discourses: Taking Xi Jinping’s Discourses on the History of the CPC as an Example

Based on the different contents, topics, and characteristics of the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping’s important discourses on the history of the CPC integrate three narrative types: philosophical narrative, historical narrative, and literary narrative. The integration of the three typical narrative types enables the important discourses on the history of the CPC to contain profound philosophical speculation, heavy historical connotation, and aesthetic and literary conception. The value and significance of exploring the narrative types of Xi Jinping’s important discourses on the history of the CPC lie in continuously strengthening the study of Marxist classic works and promoting the Sinicization of Marxism, improving the Party history narrators’ theoretical attainment and excellent traditional Chinese cultural literacy, actively participating in various forms of social practice activities, accumulating socialized discourse materials through close contact with people from different social classes, and enriching the “corpus” of discourses of the history of the CPC, thus making the narratives deeper and more concrete.

The People and Their Animal Other: Representation, Mimicry and Domestication

Animal stereotypes are used to describe, circumscribe and label people. They also serve to negotiate what counts as familiar and what is expelled as foreign. This article explores the composition of animal stereotypes and examines why they continue to influence the way humans understand themselves. Referring to dehumanising language in contemporary political discourse, anthropological theories of mimicry and representation as well as ethnological observations of human–animal relations, this article argues that if animals are regarded as intelligent and compassionate rather than irrational or violent, the debasing intent of animal stereotypes fails. While a deeper understanding of the mutual dependence of humans, non-humans and their environment is of academic and social interest alike, the projection of images of oneself onto animal others only highlights certain features, whilst leaving others in the dark.

Recepcja Historii rzymskiej Kasjusza Diona w rozdziale Epitome Jana Ksyfi linosa poświęconym Pompejuszowi

Xiphilinos’ Epitome constitutes one of the most understudied Byzantine sources despite its great importance and role as a transmitter of the unpreserved parts of Cassius Dio’s Roman History. Until recently it was mainly perceived as an unoriginal product whose author was only a passive and often incompetent copyist. For scholars of Ancient Rome Epitome was seen only as a substitute for Dio, while Byzantinists deemed Xiphilinos as an uninteresting author. Analysis of Epitome’s first chapter devoted to Pompey shows that in fact, he was an author who actively shaped his work according to his own literary tastes and trends functioning in eleventh-century Byzantine historiography. Epitome, a didactic work dedicated to the emperor Michael VII Doukas, was an intellectual product of an era where the ancient roots of Byzantium started to play an increasingly important role in contemporary political discourse. It was also the first work of Byzantine historiography which devoted as much space to Roman history before the establishment of imperial monarchy.

Метафорическое моделирование образа президента США Джо Байдена в англоязычном политическом медиадискурсе

This paper dwells on the metaphorical representation of the image of the current US president, Joe Biden, in contemporary English-language political media discourse. The study aimed to describe and systematize the metaphorical models of Biden’s current media image as well as explicate its perception reflected in the national worldview of the native speakers of English. The article considers conceptual metaphor as one of the main image-creating tools in media texts having considerable pragmatic potential. A variety of scientific methods were used in the research: continuous sampling to select texts published from Biden’s inauguration to the present day; cognitive discursive interpretation of metaphorical models to describe their frame structure; component analysis to identify the source domain of the metaphorical expansion of some concepts and their contents (pragmatic meanings); classification method to systematize the models and their representations. The research results show a dominance of the metaphorical models that engender a negative image of the 46th US president in contemporary English-language media. These models actualize the negative signs of being too old, aggressive and unfit for ruling, as well as intellectual decay and some other negative traits of his image, which demonstrates a clear dislike of Biden in the English-language political media discourse and can indirectly cause corresponding reactions and attitudes towards him in society. The comparison of the subspheres of metaphorical expansion showed that the source domain Society has the highest productivity and a slight positive potential. This domain’s representations demonstrate an attempt at a positive conceptualization of Biden’s personality in American discourse. Furthermore, comparing the subspheres of metaphorization contributes to a better understanding of conceptual metaphor functions and common tendencies towards metaphorical representation of a political figure in mass media discourse.

Memory in action: Reflections on multidirectionality’s possibilities in the classroom

Our essay examines the use of multidirectional memory in three different classrooms and institutions. It reflects on the possibilities and challenges of a multidirectional framework for Europeanists seeking to teach students how to identify and/or commemorate historical linkages between minoritized groups, encourage students to develop bonds of solidarity among themselves, and diversify and globalize their syllabi. Reading authors such as W.E.B Du Bois, Amié Césaire, and William Gardener Smith through a multidirectional lens helped students place events such as the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Algerian Revolution in conversation with one another while staying attuned to the spaces between particularist and universalist readings of the past. Discussing media sources such as films La Haine and Battle of Algiers within this larger multidirectional context give students a frame with which to imagine alternative trajectories of memory and solidarity in Europe. Finally, by applying their understanding of multidirectional memory to a real-life scenario in a commemorative proposal, students attempt to grasp the never-finished complexities of creating liberatory, solidarity-based historical commemorations. We argue that the concept of multidirectional memory helps students to develop a stronger sense of investment in learning about the complex historical legacies of persecution of violence and to engage more critically with the competitive memory frameworks that remain dominant in contemporary political discourse about antisemitism and racism.

Echoes of T. S. Eliot’s Political Ideas in Contemporary Political Thought

As a distinguished poet, essayist, and literary critic, T. S. Eliot’s works delve into intricate societal quandaries, cultural decline, and the trials of modern civilization. This research paper endeavours to identify and analyse the core political concepts and philosophical perspectives expounded by Eliot throughout his poetry, essays, and other literary compositions on contemporary political thought. Key areas of investigation encompasses Eliot’s notion of tradition and its impact on individual character and how it resonates with political institutions and governance, influencing stability and continuity; his critical examination of modern society, rapid industrialization, and urbanization, and its alignment or divergence from other political thinkers of his time; the intersection of Eliot’s religious beliefs, particularly his conversion to Anglicanism, with his political views, moral principles, and notions of governance; his perspectives on authority, power structures, and the role of government, exploring the responsibilities vested in those in positions of power; his scepticism towards democratic governance and preference for an elite ruling class, relevant to contemporary debates on democracy and meritocracy; his writings on nationalism and cosmopolitanism, unveiling his views on balancing national identity and global cooperation; his conservative inclinations and cautious approach towards societal change, with implications for present-day political movements and debates on progress. The study reveals profound insights into tradition, religion, authority, and governance, providing valuable perspectives for contemporary political discourse. Eliot’s works continue to resonate as a thought-provoking and influential force in shaping the understanding of politics in the present day.

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.

THE USE OF EUPHEMISMS IN MODERN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

The article presents the results of research aimed at defining the concept of "euphemism" and its role in modern political discourse. The study of euphemism is an urgent linguistic issue today, however, particular attention is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of euphemization in political discourse. Political euphemisms strongly influence public opinion by highlighting events and actions in a specific light. Official political speeches, as a means of communication between politicians and people, are especially important now during the period of Russian aggression against Ukraine. That is why the study was based on the speeches of three world leaders: U.S. President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It is revealed that in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, political leaders used euphemisms to downplay or mitigate the seriousness of certain actions or events. The peculiarities of euphemism functioning in contemporary political discourse remain relatively unexplored and require further study and detailed analysis.

White candidate support continues amidst explicit and implicit white identity cues

ABSTRACT To what extent are appeals to pro-white sentiment effective in American politics? Does it matter if such appeals are implicit or explicit? We investigate the degree to which white Americans are less likely to vote for candidates that use explicit appeals to white identity than they are to those who use more implicit appeals to white identity or to out-group animus. In doing so, we provide a crucial supplement to recent work on this topic, which finds that the implicit/explicit model is becoming less relevant for whites, as well as to research on the increased relevance of white in-group attitudes for white voter behavior. To examine the effect of such white identity appeals, we conduct a survey experiment with a national sample of 2746 white Americans. We find that respondents accept both explicit and implicit white identity appeals at the same rate as out-group appeal. Additionally, we see evidence that those who identify strongly as white are more likely to support candidates who engage in racial messaging. Our findings have broad implications for our evolving understanding of racial appeals in American politics, as well as the role of white identity in contemporary political discourse.