Contemporary Political Discourse Research Articles

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.

The fight metaphor in translation: From patriotism to pragmatism

Abstract The fight metaphors discussed in this article are linguistic expressions of physical conflict, a revolutionary legacy that still lingers in contemporary Chinese political discourse. This article takes a critical cognitive-linguistic approach to fight metaphors in translation, analysing a dataset comprising the Chinese governmental and Communist Party of China’s congressional reports and their official English-language translations from 2004 to 2020. The discussion highlights conceptual metaphor’s representational role and its ideological potential in discourse, and operationalises the English-based metaphor identification procedure (Steen et al. 2010) for Mandarin texts. Drawing on corpus-based evidence, the article argues that fight metaphors in the source texts (STs) legitimise and consolidate Beijing’s dominance of domestic power by generating positive representations and reproducing patriotic ideology. The translations of those metaphors transform Beijing’s image, assertive in the STs, into a non-aggressive one for the international readership. The target texts (TTs) also reproduce favourable representations from the STs to justify China’s unique political system and to satisfy a pragmatic need – that of constructing positive images for the Chinese authority and China internationally.

Balancing the digital universe: Power and patterns in the new public sphere

From the viewpoint of Political Theory, digital technology presents both risks and opportunities for the democratic public sphere. Public discourse is now more complex and fragmented than ever before. Against this background, this paper uses the metaphor of a “communicative universe” to analyze the latest structural change of the public sphere. It emphasizes the significance of achieving a balance between different actors and powers in contemporary political discourse. Patterns in media communication can not only be identified but also influenced and constructed in ways that support the democratic functionality of political discourses.

AI literacy in geographic education and research: Capabilities, caveats, and criticality

AbstractConcerns about runaway artificial intelligence (AI) – including large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT – are at the forefront of contemporary political, social, and scientific discourse. This commentary provides a first look at ChatGPT's capabilities and limitations in supporting geographic research, critical thinking, learning, and curriculum development. We assessed ChatGPT's geographic knowledge, synthesising abilities, and potential for extrapolation. ChatGPT was employed for writing assistance, research evaluation, curriculum material creation, and content generation. Despite achieving scores of 47% to 55% on an actual exam paper, ChatGPT exhibited shortcomings including the generation of false references. Ethical concerns regarding academic misconduct, model bias, robustness, and toxic output were also identified. We assert that AI and LLMs like ChatGPT have transformative potential in Geography education and knowledge production but demand critical usage. Accordingly, we urge geographers to enhance AI literacy to enable responsible and effective use of these assistive technologies in our academic practice.

Fuming Mad and Jumping with Joy: Emotional Responses to Uncivil and Post-Truth Communication by Populist and Non-Populist Politicians on Facebook During the COVID-19 Crisis

ABSTRACT Social networking sites offer politicians an opportunity to mobilize followers through carefully crafted messages appealing to their emotions. We examine the effects of uncivil and post-truth communication of populist and non-populist party leaders on the emotional emoji reactions of social media users during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Conveying a disrespectful tone toward the participants and topics of the debate, lying accusations, and incivility have become prominent aspects of contemporary political discourse in many European countries. We combine research on emotional cues in online political communication and the effects of political elites’ messages on social media. We apply manual content analysis (N = 2,549 posts) to study the political communication of Czech political party leaders on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 to February 2021), which generated a higher sense of threat and uncertainty in the public. We show that uncivil and post-truth message elements, affiliation with a populist party, and pandemic influenced the volume of emotional interactions with political posts. The article has important implications for the study of how incivility and attacks on truthfulness can influence opinion exchange in public debate or increase societal polarization.

Procesos de secularización de símbolos religiosos en el discurso político contemporáneo: Aproximaciones desde la antropología política

The State-church relationship involves processes that go beyond political theory or power relations; it is also present in language and is used in political discourse, which is especially related to the ideology of a certain segment of society. Political anthropology seeks the resources and tools necessary to explain the processes that occur within language and political symbology. This article attempts to describe the processes of secularization of religious symbols in contemporary political discourse. Based on a methodology of phenomenological and empirical analysis framed with a documentary-bibliographic design; from the review of specialized texts on the subject referred to above, texts were collected to identify the processes of secularization in contemporary political discourse. It is concluded that the secularization of religious symbols in contemporary political discourse refers to the elimination or reduction of the role of religion in politics and society, in order to promote religiosity in the private sphere and encourage religious tolerance and cultural diversity, based on discourses whose axes of interest revolve around globalization, human rights and democracy.

Lived Experience: Defined and Critiqued

ABSTRACT From social media to the halls of academia all the way to the White House, everyone is talking about “lived experience”. Yet, there is considerable confusion about what, precisely, the term means. Part of this confusion results from the lack of awareness about the origin of the term and the philosophical need that it was introduced to address. Accordingly, the first aim of this essay is to elucidate the meaning of “lived experience” by teasing out and enumerating its various features as found in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, who first developed and popularized it as a philosophical concept. The second goal is to critique the use of “lived experience” in contemporary academic and political discourse. Lived experience is simultaneously denigrated by those who regard it as merely subjective and exalted by those who regard it as epistemically authoritative. A return to Dilthey’s original formulation reveals that both of these attitudes are predicated on misunderstandings of the nature of lived experience.

The Steel Shutter Revisited: The Importance of Encounter

The author provides a personal perspective on the legacy of the Troubles and relevance of the Steel Shutter project, a community-based initiative aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation. Drawing on their experience as a peacemaker and psychotherapist, the author emphasizes the transformative power of human encounter and highlights unique cross-community initiatives, which have brought people from different communities together. The author argues that such initiatives have played an important role in building bridges between divided communities and promoting empathy, understanding, and healing. The author also notes the challenges posed by the language of polarization, dehumanization, and othering in contemporary political discourse, emphasizing the need to protect and promote human encounter in the face of such challenges.

Gender Peculiarities of Modern English-Language Political Discourse

The paper examines the gender orientation of political discourse from a stylistic viewpoint. Gender markers contemporary English political discourse and the colloquial clichés that these markers form are analyzed. As politicians appear on the political stage, the verbalization of their political ideas is a new and promising oratorical experience. Therefore, the ways and means of analyzing the linguistic characteristics of politicians in terms of tenderness and benevolence seem to be a relevant and promising aspect of the study, given the linguistic and psychological features of intercultural communication.

Approaches to the Analysis of Metadiscourse Features in Political Discourse

Metadiscourse features play a decisive role in the attainment of persuasion in different discourse domains and genres. Political genres, generally linked to the formal expression of viewpoints by national and international leaders, displays a vast amount of metadiscourse features aimed at persuading large audiences. This article offers a critical review of some important approaches to the study of metadiscourse traits in political discourse. The paper is organized as follows: (1) an introduction to the concept of metadiscourse and its potential as an analytical framework for the study of persuasion; (2) a description of contemporary political discourse, highlighting some current characteristics of political genres; (3) a discussion of the main approaches to the examination of political genres from a metadiscoursal perspective; and (4) conclusions on the strengths and shortcomings of the abovementioned approaches as regards the exploration of persuasive aspects in contemporary political talk.

Inclusive education for all: Principles of a shared inclusive ethos

AbstractThis article discusses paradoxes that, in theory and in practice, hinder the deployment of inclusive education. The first type of paradox is related to the confrontation between the humanist ideals conveyed by inclusive approaches and contemporary political discourses. These difficulties are linked to (1) the very concept of inclusion; in which the universal, particular, and singular dimensions are dialectically articulated. The paradox is also linked to (2) the orientation of contemporary political discourses in Europe; notably, deinstitutionalisation, intentions to stop specialised care and support, and the deployment of standardised software to assist assessment and learning at schools. The second type of paradox confronts the situational approach to special education needs with the contemporary trend towards homogenisation of nomenclatures and reference categorisations. Extremely vague definitions of guiding concepts lead to the devaluation of pedagogical approaches. This in turn contributes to the maintenance, or even domination, of biotechnical approaches. This comes at the cost of less attention to cooperative multidisciplinary approaches which have proven their effectiveness. These paradoxes can and should be addressed both (1) at the level of the individual ethical responsibility of professionals in the field and (2) in the context of teaching and learning practices. The article formulates four principles to enable teachers, as interpreters of diversity, to move towards an ethic that does not deny the unpredictability and uncertainty inherent in the infinite variety of forms of learning and education, but which on the contrary makes it a genuine source of innovation and pedagogical creation.

Poe in Cyberspace: The Pleasure Principle Revisited

Poe in Cyberspace: The Pleasure Principle Revisited

Phantoms of colonialism: Polish–Haitian connections in today’s media and culture

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the question of Polish engagement in modern colonial projects and how contemporary Polish political discourse denies this uncomfortable legacy. Poland’s colonial aspirations first arose in the aftermath of World War I. Even though colonialism was never directly supported by the interwar Polish government, the influence of the Maritime and Colonial League – an organization advocating colonial expansion – grew gradually until 1939, when it had around a million members. The author argues that colonialism in interwar Poland functioned as a marker of modernity, and that the failure to acquire colonies overseas defined the state as insufficiently modern. The author claims that, in political discourse today, the Polish–Haitian connection – a curious legacy of Napoleonic times – is often used as a smokescreen to cover the fact that Poland once actively sought opportunities to acquire colonies overseas. The myth of heroic Polish participation in the Haitian Revolution now serves to rebut accusations of racist prejudice in Poland or to resist political recognition of social diversity persistent in Polish politics. Additionally, the article discusses how contemporary media and art represent Haiti and Haitian Poles and how some works set an example of ethical engagement with postcolonial studies in the Polish context.

Ways of Creating the Gender Identity of a Woman-Politician in Contemporary Political Discourse (by the Example of the Name the iron lady/die eiserne Lady and its Modifications in German).

The article is devoted to the study of the features of the construction of the gender identity of a female politician in modern political discourse on the material of the nickname the iron lady (German: die eiserne Lady) - the iron lady and its modifications in German, which were selected from various sources: popular online publications of the German presses; German-language Internet sites dedicated to the nicknames of famous contemporary politicians. The study was carried out in line with gender linguistics, which studies the totality of social, cultural and psychological aspects of “female” in comparison with “male”. In the article, the components of the gender identity structure are considered as a manipulative tool in political discourse, gender construction strategies are identified that contribute to the creation of a positive socio-personal portrait of a woman politician. As a result of the study, it was proved that a positive image of a political leader correlates with the sphere of masculinity, however, women politicians tend to compile the features of male and female communication styles in their political activities.

LANGUAGE MEANS OF EXPRESSING IMPLICIT EVALUATION IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL DISCOURSE: PRAGMATIC ASPECT

This article deals with role of politics and politicians in modern world, the linguistic tendencies of study of contemporary political discourse and the category of evaluation in general, and language means of expressing implicit evaluation in particular, which is considered to be a semantic and pragmatic category and one of the most powerful means of influence on the audience. The pragmatic aim of contemporary political discourse texts lays in the interpretation of event, conveying a variety of indirect or direct, supportive or opposing evaluating attitudes toward it. This study focuses on different evaluative language means used by politicians in their political speeches on different occasions within the appraisal theory framework, under which in this paper we understand a variety of meaning-making language means used by the speakers to express their evaluative involvement in communication.

“For whom the bell tolls”? A ‘vulnerability-responsibility’ model based on democratic and ‘dignified’ transactions”

The welfare state, once seen as the best institutional response to people in need, has steadily come under pressure, as much from shrinking state capacities as from neo-liberal advocates of individual responsibility. Still, despite decline of the post-war consensus on the efficacy of the welfare state, social ‘vulnerability’ still remains the key focus of public policy. However, though much in use in contemporary political discourse, the logical and practical implications of social vulnerability remain unclear. Its essential subjectivity – it is the ‘feeling of vulnerability’ which makes one vulnerable – turns the concept into a catch-all variable, impeding rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis. I respond to this problem with a ‘vulnerability-responsibility’, model. Its parameters include a ‘responsive’ state, an active civil society and a participatory political environment, bolstered by the assertion of agency of the vulnerable. With India as an empirical exemplar, the essay shows how ‘nested’ vulnerability – a community of pro-active citizens in need of urgent and vital assistance - in the backdrop of a responsive state and competitive, robust and resilient political participation, can generate a sustainable, context-relevant process to cope with the problem of social vulnerability. The model, currently aimed at vulnerable citizens in a democratic state, has the potential of being extended to non-democracies as well as vulnerable non-citizens into its domain.

Bordering seafarers at sea and onshore.

This study uses a historically informed lens of coloniality, bordering, and intersectionality to analyze maritime bordering discourses and practices that target seafarers recruited from the Global South who embody the border in their everyday lives. In seeking to explain the current context exemplified by the sacking of P&O Ferry workers and the recruitment of "foreign agency" crews in March 2022, the study foregrounds 19th- and 20th-century maritime bordering legislation on ships and onshore, focusing on public-/private-bordering partnerships between governments, shipping companies, and unions. Archival research on British Indian seafarers employed by P&O a century ago and analysis of contemporary media and political discourses relating to "foreign agency crews" are drawn on to consider the implications of earlier bordering discourses and practices for 21st-century British citizenship and belonging. Attending to imperial bordering regulations that created the racialized and class-defined labor category of lascars explains the "common sense" designations of seafarers recruited in the Global South and their families as potential "illegal migrants," and in doing so, it constitutes the long history of the public/private partnerships that constitute the UK's "hostile environment" immigration policies.

Translating Agendas in Children’s Literature: Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales in China

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.

How is the Rani of Jhansi Memorised in the History of the Nineteenth-Century India? Selection of Historical Accounts

The article examines the visual sources and historical first-hand accounts depicting Rani Lakshmi Bai, the queen of the princely state of Jhansi, who became a symbol of Indian resistance against British rule during the 1857–1858 struggle for freedom. The study covers the colonial period of Indian history. The paper’s main argument is that there are differences in the representation of Rani by British and Indian authors. Within their narratives, Indian writers favourably present the queen, while the British tend to show her less flattering portrayal. Concentrating on visual sources, the study analyses Rani’s figure by looking at two stages of her life: the youth and the time of the revolt. The article also focuses on the queen’s image in the contemporary political discourse. The paper is based on a qualitative approach emphasising historical perspective. Therefore, it analyses the printed materials, including archival primary sources. Based on a postcolonial literature review, the use of British and Indian sources is comparative.

Personal Deixis in Political Discourse

Deixis is manifested especially as the pronouns I, you and he. It is possible to appoint the person producing the discourse and the participant in it. Deixis may be received, accompanied by gestures, to express a specific purpose and help the addressee communicate the meaning of what is referred to. When using a pronoun, you refer to one of the parties to the discourse and determine their place in it, especially if the speaker has political authority. The mechanism used by deixis to direct the discourse and the success of the communication process is important to clarifying the speaker's intention in a contemporary political discourse. An example of this is the discourse of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit and his use of deixis to understand, persuade and influence, as well as his statement on the nature of the relationship between the speaker and his addressees. This study clarifies the nature of deixis in general and personal deixis in particular. It explores their types and presents the study model for analysis according to the pragmatic approach to explain the status of the counselors and their importance in the analysis of political discourse.