Election Speeches Research Articles

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Youtube News Coverage of South African Discourses on Xenophobia in Democratic South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper considers news coverage of South Africa as it relates to the continuous occurrence of xenophobia in the country. Through purposely selected news videos uploaded on Youtube, the paper adopts a qualitative content analysis research method guided by the key words ‘South African leaders, election speech, xenophobia’. Thirteen videos were purposively selected and transcribed from a list of 18 videos drawn from the first two pages of the keyword search on https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=South+African+leaders+election+speech+xenophobia. Using Van Dijk’s Ideological Square, the qualitative data generated indicate narratives that speak to ideologies binding South Africans together as a ‘we’ against the migrant ‘them’. The binding ‘we’ factors include the historical Black struggle for liberation, the country’s Constitution as well as the Rule of Law. Qualities for ‘them’ (which the narratives suggest spark xenophobia) include various perceived acts of immigrant criminality; the result of which is economic instability and negative influences on the South African people.

Other People’s Money: CSR Goes to the Movies

We review the film Other People’s Money as a teaching tool for introducing concepts of corporate social responsibility and board governance. The film’s climactic shareholder meeting contains two vivid examples of stakeholder theory and shareholder primacy illustrated through the competing election speeches made by the lead characters. Our article provides step-by-step instructions for how to use the film to explore these concepts and discusses ways to enhance student competency in this area.

VERBAL AND PARAVERBAL CRITICISM: A DISCURSIVE STUDY OF GERMAN AND UKRAINIAN ELECTORAL SPEECHES

AbstractThe article examines the role of verbal and paraverbal means in conveying critical evaluation, based upon electoralspeeches of German and Ukrainian politicians. The paper contains an overview of the types, forms and functionsof criticism in political discourse. The study highlights the linguistic and, in a narrower context, discursive contrastsdetectable in German and Ukrainian political criticism. Furthermore, the kinetic means of highlighting criticalstatements in the electoral debates under analysis are specified.RésuméThe article represents a discursive study of verbal and paraverbal means of conveying criticalassessment based on electoral speeches of German and Ukrainian politicians. The paper containsan overview of the types, forms and functions of criticism in political discourse. The study highlightsthe linguistic and, in a narrower context, discursive contrasts detectable in German and Ukrainianpolitical criticism. Furthermore, the kinetic means of highlighting critical statements in the electoraldebates under analysis are specified. The study corpus includes overall 10 hours of the videofeaturing electoral speeches in German (A. Merkel and M. Schulz) and Ukrainian (V. Zelenskyi andP. Poroshenko). Through the identification experiment, 500 critical discourse fragments were singledout in German and Ukrainian, containing 340 relevant co-speech gestures supporting critical utterancesin the two languages; they were analyzed in terms of the types of co-speech gesture, hand shape, palmorientation, movement direction, and movement trajectory. The study reveals that the Ukrainianpoliticians are more emotional in electoral debates and support their critical assessments with impulsiveco-speech gestures using one or both hands, nods, body movements and pointing the index fingerdirectly at their opponent. At the same time, the German politicians display a calmer paraverbalbehaviour, attaching more importance to the verbal component of the critical assessment. Suchdifferences can be explained by the cultural traditions of political criticism in Germany and Ukraine:they depend on the mental and cultural characteristics of politicians, their motivational guidelinesfor critical rhetoric as well as on the personal rhetorical competence of the speaker, the degreeof eloquence of his/her speech, etc.

Framing populism in France through the 2017 presidential election speeches by the leading candidates

Populism has become a defining feature of European and world politics. During the last decade, major drastic changes in the political landscape have occurred, with France appearing as a singular example: none of the two candidates who made it to the second round of the presidential elections were from the traditionally dominant center-left and center-right parties. This paper analyzes the presence of populism in the political narratives by the main political contenders in the French presidential elections held in 2017. It does so through a discourse analysis of some of their most widely seen political speeches around the campaign, providing an overview of the different framing techniques used by each candidate and their degree and type of populism.

Identity-Based Electoral Speech and Its Place in a Constitutional Democracy

India’s ‘Representation of the People Act, 1951’ (RPA), includes two provisions that restrict certain categories of electoral speech. The first such provision is Section 123 (3) of the RPA which restricts electoral appeals made by political representatives on ethnic or religious grounds while the second is Section 123 (3A) of the RPA which prohibits the promotion of enmity or hatred by political representatives between different classes of citizens. This paper examines the impact of these restrictions on political representation in India and its effects on competing democratic constitutional values. Our examination finds that the restrictions on identity-based appeals fail to optimally balance competing democratic values, and this adversely affects Indian democracy. The paper finally makes a case for redrawing the contours of the restrictions placed by Sections 123 (3) and 123 (3A) on Indian electoral speech so as to best strengthen Indian democracy.

A discourse analytic investigation into politicians’ use of rhetorical and persuasive strategies: The case of US election speeches

The current study investigated the ways in which two major U.S. political arena social actors, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, presented themselves to capture the audience’s attention in the 2012 ele...

Синонімія економічної термінології в американському політичному дискурсі (на матеріалі промов кандидатів у президенти США Х. Клінтон та Д. Трампа)

The paper is devoted to the issue of synonymy in English economical terminology used within American political discourse. The research has been conducted on the basis of presidential election speeches of H. Clinton and D. Trump in 2016. Although, the notion of synonymy is not desirable in professional communication, real communicative situations prove its inevitability. Despite the fact that these units bear some specific status in linguistic sphere, they still derive from the natural language stratum and, thus, share the same features and follow the same language rules. That is why the synonymy is present in the sphere of terminological system. However, it should also be noted that the level of synonymy varies depending on the knowledge sphere this terminology serves. Thus, the domain of social science is more inclined to terminological synonymy that the sphere of exact science. The conducted analysis has shown that the use of economical terminology in presidential election speeches performs basic communicative role – informing voters about candidates’ economic agenda. The observed in these cases synonyms have demonstrated the absolute level of interchangeability. Their semantic meanings do not change or change slightly having no effect on the referred item and, subsequently, on the delivered message. Some of the registered synonyms of economic terms denote quite different notions in the realm of economics but have been used with no significant difference in transmitted messages within the same context. Such usage of synonyms shows that as far as these economic terms play pure communicative role, the addresser cares little about the shades in meanings. Those terms are mostly used as a background for other candidates’ intentions like proving its competence in sphere of economics. However, in some cases the difference in variants of terms’ meaning has been deliberately used by both politicians to achieve their political objectives. This effect has been achieved through metaphorization of denoting elements of some terms leading to unclear and vague term meaning, therefore providing the denoted item with some level of assessment and positive or negative connotation. Such features of economic terminology has been caused by the pragmatic nature of political discourse itself, where every element serves the overall purpose – to gain political dividends through manipulation of addressee’s mind.

Прагматические маркеры в англоязычном предвыборном дискурсе (на примере выступлений кандидатов на пост лидера Консервативной партии Великобритании)

The study of the pragmatic functions of such discourse elements as pragmatic markers, which are used in one of the genres of English-language political discourse - the pre-election speeches of candidates are presented in the article. The attention is paid in the article to the correlation of the concepts of “political discourse” and “pre-election discourse”, the features, functions and pragmatic settings of the genre of pre-election speeches are described, the terms pragmatic marker and discursive marker are defined. The material for the study was the video of the election speeches of candidates for the post of leader of the Conservative Party of Great Britain B. Johnson and J. Hunt, published on the YouTube online platform in June-July 2019. The classification of pragmatic markers by B. Fraser was chosen as the methodological basis of the study. As a result of the study, an inventory of pragmatic markers was compiled, used by candidates in several rounds of election campaigns, and the functions that pragmatic markers of various types perform in the genre of political discourse under study are described. The results of a comparative analysis of the use of pragmatic markers by each candidate in their pre-election speeches are presented. Conclusions are drawn about how, due to pragmatic markers, the arsenal of manipulative and influencing language means of election discourse is increasing.

Предвыборное обращение к нации: риторические каноны или их отсутствие?

The article deals with election addresses, pronounced by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the election campaign for Presidency in the USA in 2016. The author studies the structural aspect of election speeches of the candidates, the composition of addresses (if it follows rhetoric canons) and the content of each part of the address. Thus, the author of the article combines rhetoric and linguistic approaches. The topicality of the study is determined by the fact that Russian linguists, rhetoric and communication scientists have not covered the subject of American election-campaign speeches structure widely enough. To prove the theoretical statements, the author provides extracts from Donald Trump's Presidential Announcement Speech and 2016 Presidential Policy Agenda of Hillary Clinton. In the conclusion, the author conveys that it is hard to structure D. Trump’s agenda, the address of H. Clinton follows classical five-part model of a public speech. But, as far as it became evident in the 2016 Presidency campaign, H. Clinton’s commitment to rhetoric canons lost out to D. Trump’s appeal to feelings and emotions of the audience.

Nationalism and human rights: A replication and extension.

A recent article has found nationalism to be negatively associated with government respect for several human rights. In this article, I replicate the original study’s findings, I demonstrate that these findings are robust to an alternate model specification, and I then extend the analysis to additional human rights not examined by the original author. Ultimately, I find that in comparison to when the chief executive is not nationalist, when the chief executive is highly nationalist, that state is less likely to be associated with high government respect for six ‘empowerment’ rights (i.e. the freedoms of assembly and association, electoral self-determination, speech, foreign movement, religion, and worker’s rights), and more likely to be associated with low government respect for these six empowerment rights. This study suggests that nationalism’s influence on human rights is greater than previous thought.

Moral policy and current affair issues factors in the 2012 US Presidential election speeches

Moral policy and current affair issues factors in the 2012 US Presidential election speeches

How Turkey’s repetitive elections affected the populist tone in the discourses of the Justice and Development Party Leaders

Perceived uncertainty and anger lead people to investigate with respect to the establishment, and politicians who are seen as reckless within society. In this sense, populist discourse paved a way to respond by glorifying one group of people and scapegoating others that emerge as group differentiation. Critical moments especially illustrate mutual constructive identification through the discourse of political actors. This article explores a contextual change in the populist discourse of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) leaders by observing the successive elections that occurred in 2015. It argues that the leaders mainly expressed an “us–them distinction,” “in-group superiority,” and “the people” populist themes; as well as these themes, the electoral speeches made for the second election presented scapegoating and exclusionary statements even more.

ДИСКУРС-АНАЛИЗ КОММУНИКАТИВНОГО ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЯ ПРЕДВЫБОРНОЙ РЕЧИ Д. ТРАМПА

Currently, due to the highly politically loaded situation in the modern world in general and in particular in Russia, a lot of research is devoted to political discourse, in which emotions are actively represented. There are many ways to induce a person to a certain action, among them verbal and non-verbal means aimed at the awakening of certain emotions - the basis of human behavior. In this article an attempt is made to analyze D. Trump’s election speech from the point of view of its communicative impact on the audience.

Самопрезентация в предвыборном дискурсе: корпусное исследование (на материале предвыборных речей Б. Сандерса и Х. Клинтон)

The paper is devoted to the peculiarities of the implementation of self-presentation strategy in the American campaign discourse. The material included the election speeches of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, which politicians made during the election campaign from April 2015 to July 2016. The article focuses on the corpus analysis of election speeches. The results of comparative analysis of lexical features of candidates’ pre-election speeches are presented. In addition, the paper proposes a classification of communicative tactics, with the help of which the strategy of self-presentation is implemented (the tactics of self-praise, appeals to former merits, reducing the distance from voters and the tactics of political promises). The analysis allows the authors to make a conclusion about the more aggressive self-presentation of H. Clinton and the important role of personal self-presentation in her speeches. It is shown that B. Sanders focuses on identifying himself with his voters. The analysis of the collocations with components I and we confirms these conclusions. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that for the analysis of the material from the point of view of pragmatics, the authors use both methods of pragmalinguistic analysis and corpus methods, which makes it possible to present a comprehensive description of the material under study.

Application of Interpersonal Meaning in Hillary’s and Trump’s Election Speeches

Presidential election speeches, as one significant part of western political life, deserve people’s attention. This paper focuses on the use of interpersonal meaning in political speeches. The nine texts selected from the Internet are analyzed from the perspectives of mood, modality, personal pronoun and tense system based on the theory of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. It aims to study the way how interpersonal meaning is realized through language by making the contrastive analysis of the speeches given by Hillary and Trump. After making a minute analysis, the paper comes to the following conclusions: (1) As for mood, Trump and Hillary mainly employ the declarative to deliver messages and make statements, and imperative is used to motivate the audiences and narrow the gap between the candidates and the audiences, and interrogative is to make the audiences concentrate on the content of the speeches. (2) With respect to the modality system, the median modal operator holds the dominant position in both Trump’s and Hillary’s speeches to make the speeches less aggressive. In this aspect, Trump does better than Hillary. (3) In regard to personal pronoun, the plural form of first personal pronoun is mainly employed by the two candidates to close the relationship with audiences. (4) Regards to tense system, simple present tense are mostly used to establish the intimacy of the audiences and the candidates. Then two influential factors are discussed. One is their personal background and the other is their language levels. This paper is helpful for people to deeply understand the two candidates’ language differences.

Trump's electoral speeches and his appeal to the American white working class.

This paper contributes to the study of social change by considering boundary work as a dimension of cultural change. Drawing on the computer-assisted qualitative analysis of 73 formal speeches made by Donald Trump during the 2016 electoral campaign, we argue that his political rhetoric, which led to his presidential victory, addressed the white working class's concern with their declining position in the national pecking order. He addressed this group's concern by raising their moral status, that is, by (1) emphatically describing them as hard-working Americans who are victims of globalization; (2) voicing their concerns about 'people above' (professionals, the rich, and politicians); (3) drawing strong moral boundaries toward undocumented immigrants, refugees, and Muslims; (4) presenting African Americans and (legal) Hispanic Americans as workers who also deserve jobs; (5) stressing the role of working-class men as protectors of women and LGBTQ people. This particular case study of the role of boundary work in political rhetoric provides a novel, distinctively sociological approach for capturing dynamics of social change.

The Pragmatics of Deception in American Presidential Electoral Speeches

Language is used for influencing people. Various means, whether honest or dishonest, are appealed to for achieving this purpose. This means that people fulfill their goals either through telling their interlocutors the truth or through deceiving and misleading them. In this regard, deception is a key aspect of many strategic interactions including bargaining, military operations, and politics. However, in spite of the importance of this topic, it has not been pragmatically given enough research attention particularly in politics. Thus, this study sets itself the task of dealing with this issue in this genre from a pragmatic perspective. Precisely, the current work attempts to answer the following question: What is the pragmatics of deception in American presidential electoral speeches? Pragmatics, here, involves the speech acts used to issue deceptive utterances, deceptive strategies resulting in the violation of Grice's maxims, as well as cognitive strategies.In other words, this study aims at finding out the answer to the question raised above. In accordance with this aim, it is hypothesized that American presidential candidates use certain deceptive/misleading strategies to achieve their goals. In this regard, they utilize certain strategies which violate Grice's maxims such as ostensible promise, equivocation, fabrication, and dissociation. Moreover, they make use of certain cognitive strategies like: metaphor, presupposition, and positive self-representation/ negative other representation.In order to achieve the aim of the study and verify or reject its hypothesis, a model is developed for the analysis of the data under examination. Besides, a statistical means represented by the percentage equation is used to calculate the results. The most important finding arrived at by this study is that American presidential candidates most often resort to the strategies of giving an ostensible promise, equivocation, presupposition, and positive self/negative other representation to fulfill their goals.

Variaciones pragmáticas del discurso electoral: El caso del “HOPE” de Barack Obama

Resumen: En este artículo nos proponemos examinar el cartel “HOPE” de Barack Obama, entendido como un discurso electoral icónico-verbal y artístico a la luz de la Teoría de la Relevancia de Sperber & Wilson (1986, 1995, 1998, 2002; Wilson & Sperber 2002; Sperber & Wilson, 2012) considerada como una de las más fructíferas para estudiar la transmisión de mensajes comunicativos multimodales. Para su descripción, análisis e interpretación recurriremos al concurso de otras disciplinas y, fi nalmente, trataremos de establecer un diálogo ecoico-orquestal con otras representaciones mentales de naturaleza política y propagandística no afín como réplicas culturales del original. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine the Poster HOPE of Barack Obama’s election campaign in the light of Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986, 1995, 1998, 2002; Wilson & Sperber 2002; Sperber &Wilson 2012) considered a helpful methodology in order to study the transference of multimodal communicative messages. The poster HOPE merges a set of graphic and symbolic components together with the text so that it makes up an electoral speech. We count on the contributions of other disciplines that describe, and interpret the poster in a relevant way. We then compare it with other cultural echo-representations of electoral products and negative political propaganda, as replicas of the original.

Changes in the style and content of Australian election campaign speeches from 1901 to 2016: A computational linguistic analysis

Abstract There have been significant social and political changes in Australian society since federation in 1901. The issues that are considered politically salient have also changed significantly. The purpose of this article is to examine changes in the style and content of election campaign speeches over the period 1901-2016. The corpus consists of 88 election campaign speeches delivered by the Prime Minister and Opposition leader for the 45 elections from 1901 to 2016. I use natural language processing to extract from the speeches a number of linguistic variables which serve as independent variables and use the year of delivery as the dependent variable. I then use machine learning to develop a regression model which explains 77 per cent of the variance in the dependent variable. Examination of the salient independent variables shows that there have been significant linguistic changes in the style and content of election speeches over the study period. In particular speeches have become less linguistically complex, less introspective, more focused on work and the home, and contain more visual and social references. I discuss these changes in the context of changes in Australian society over the study period.

ГОЛОФРАСТИЧЕСКИЕ КОНСТРУКЦИИ В АМЕРИКАНСКОМ ПРЕДВЫБОРНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

The article focuses on such language phenomenon as holophrasis. Election discourse may be considered as one of the most productive types of discourse for implementing different kinds of manipulation. Although there are plenty of scientific works related to the language manipulation in the election discourse, holophrasis has never been viewed under this aspect. In spite of the fact, a holophrastic construction comprises several words, they are to be regarded as one. As a result, it accumulates different meanings in its body which results in various interpretations of a holophrastic construction. The article reveals the classification of the main functions of holophrasis in the American election discourse. The context has also been taken into consideration. Due to this, the main objectives of the usage of such constructions have been detected. As it turned out, all holophrastic constructions tend to be multifunctional. There are three main functions of holophrasis which have to do with time saving, enlivening communication to be more emotional and engaging, and eliminating straight speaking to make the utterance sound ambiguous. Some holophrastic constructions were attributed to the means of humour in speech. However, they are quite rare in this type of discourse. The number of holophrastic constructions was calculated in speech of different candidates. The conducted research shows that although holophrasis cannot be found in every election speech or be a characteristic of every speaker in the American election discourse, holophrastic constructions can fulfill the latent intentions of speechmakers.