Electoral Discourse Research Articles

Changing Character of Political Islam in Pakistan

Pakistan's confessional parties are re-inventing themselves. The Parties that are carrying a legacy from the time before partition are struggling to keep themselves relevant in mainstream political discourse. Pakistan's political landscape is changing because of the rise of Tehreek-i-Insaf, a progressive center-right political party that has altered the electioneering environment in Pakistan. Two main confessional parties Jamaat Islami (JI) and Jamiat Ulma e Islam Fazal Ur Rehman (JUI-F) are trying to develop an inclusive and pluralist political agenda. JI is a hierarchical Islamic party whereas JUI-F is a network Islamic party. Political Islam is in the process of shrinking in Pakistan because of the rise of political alternatives and outdatedness of the political and electoral discourse of confessional parties. Political Islam in Pakistan is changing by improving its ideological, political, and organizational structure in relation to its contemporary rivals. Changes in political Islam are not because of intellectual diversity and growth within confessional parties but to manage and compete for the rise of competing domestic political perspectives. Transnational connections with like-minded Islamist groups have scaled-down as the like-minded religio-ideological partners are termed as extremists and terrorists.

El avance de la extrema derecha en América Latina y Europa

El avance de la extrema derecha es un fenómeno global complejo, que se manifiesta en distintas regiones del mundo en distintos grados e intensidades. Un avance inquietante porque se interpreta como un debilitamiento de la democracia y la amenaza de un retroceso de las conquistas sociales alcanzadas durante largo tiempo. Una contestación reaccionaria al concepto de progreso que hasta ayer mismo parecía hegemónico.
 Dentro del contexto generalizado de este avance en Europa, América Latina y el mundo, nos topamos con las recientes sorpresas de los casos de Brasil y España. En Brasil el Partido Social Liberal (PSL), un partido hasta la fecha insignificante, gana las Elecciones Presidenciales en 2018 con un amplio apoyo electoral, con un discurso extremista, anticomunista y ultraconservador, ante la estupefacción de la comunidad internacional y la perplejidad de no pocos brasileños. En España, aún alcanzando muchos menos apoyos bajo las siglas de VOX, de la noche a la mañana y partiendo casi de la nada, consiguen tener presencia en 2019 en todo tipo de órganos de representación política; Congreso de los Diputados, Parlamento Europeo, Comunidades Autónomas, Ayuntamientos... siendo además su presencia necesaria para formar gobiernos. Y todo ello mediante un discurso electoral no menos provocativo que el de Jair Bolsonaro, y ante la incredulidad de muchos españoles. ¿Qué está ocurriendo para que los sufragios traigan estos vuelcos? ¿De dónde salen estos apoyos? ¿Hacia qué nuevos escenarios políticos y sociales nos encaminamos?
 El monográfico propuesto pretende dar respuesta a estos grandes interrogantes, desde las diversas perspectivas analíticas, con especial atención a los casos de España y de Brasil, pero sin perder de vista la perspectiva de sus enclaves geopolíticos, es decir, América Latina y la Unión Europea, por entender que estos casos particulares, con sus especificidades, están inmersos en procesos más generales que se están produciendo tanto en Europa como en Latinoamárica como en general en el mundo globalizado.

Those were the days: welfare nostalgia and the populist radical right in the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden

AbstractIn academia and beyond, it has become commonplace to regard populist parties – in particular, those on the radical right – as the archetypical embodiment of politics of nostalgia. Demand-side studies suggest that nostalgic sentiments motivate populist radical-right (PRR) voting and welfare chauvinist attitudes, yet systematic analyses of the nostalgic discourse that these parties promote have not been forthcoming. This paper seeks to fill that lacuna by analysing how the Freedom Party of Austria, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Sweden Democrats framed the historical fate of the welfare state in their electoral discourse between 2008 and 2018. It demonstrates that their commitment to welfare chauvinism finds expression in a common repertoire of “welfare nostalgia,” manifested in the different modes of “reaction,” “conservation” and “modernisation.” Giving substance to a widespread intuition about PRR nostalgia, the paper breaks ground for further research into nostalgic ideas about social policy.

Exclusionary Populism and Islamophobia: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Spain

Exclusionary populism is well known for twisting real grievances of the citizens, by problematizing the gap between “us” and “them”, capitalizing on identity lines, calling out as “others” those who do not share “pure people’s” identity and culture. Especially after 9/11, Muslims have become the ideal-type of “other”, making Islamophobia the primary populist anti-paradigm. This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on Islamophobic populism analyzing the presence of Islamophobia in the electoral discourse of Vox party in Spain and Lega in Italy. In addition, it makes a novel contribution by discussing and testing the existence of different models of Islamophobia, distinguishing between “banal Islamophobia” and “ontological Islamophobia”. Applying clause-based semantic text analysis—including qualitative and quantitative variables—to thirty speeches by the two party leaders, Santiago Abascal and Matteo Salvini, during the last three elections (General, Regional and European), the paper concludes that, despite the similarities, the two politician display two different models of Islamophobia. Whereas Abascal displays a clear “ontological Islamophobia”, depicting Muslims ontologically incompatible with Spanish civilization (defined precisely by its anti-Muslim history), the latter presents a mix of arguments that oscillate between “ontological” and “banal” Islamophobia.

Artificial Intelligence and the 2020 Municipal Elections in Brazil

The main purpose is to examine the possible role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the uncertain context of the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil. The central argument indicates that, regardless of when the elections are held, the COVID-19 pandemic opened spaces for candidates to build their political platforms on the initiatives to combat the disease, but also the opportunity for the dissemination of fake news and profiles regarding the spread of the new coronavirus and social distancing and quarantine measures with political purposes. The electoral discourse has increasingly used technologies and data such as voters’ concerns, preferences, and oppositions, collected on social networks through AI. New data-based technologies can give rise to an unreal, induced, forged public opinion, in the same way that they can bring greater possibilities of discernment to the voter. The situation requires a more robust regulation for AI, but there are still many unregulated aspects and obstacles for the implementation of an effective regulation of online activities in Brazil, such as the poor adaptation of the legal space to highly volatile phenomena.

Mapping Contentious Collective Emotions in a Populist Democracy: Duterte's Push for Philippine Federalism

This article analyzes collective emotions toward political change in a populist democracy. Taking the federalization of the Philippines led by President Rodrigo Duterte as an exemplar case, we extend prevailing scholarship which focuses on populist leaders' electoral discourse by examining the affective landscape of the populist public in a postelectoral context. Utilizing a sequential mixed‐methods design, we algorithmically classify the stance and sentiment valence of 18,535 Facebook comments about federalism, then we reflexively identify collective emotions based on major discursive storylines across each stance‐sentiment intersection. Our integrated analysis reveals collective feelings of (1) hope and euphoria and (2) vindictive contempt among supporters of Duterte's federalism, while detractors of the campaign express (3) derisive amusement and (4) fear and skepticism. Two of these public emotions may be idiosyncratic to Global South populisms: public fear and president‐invested salvific hope. We discuss the implications of our findings along themes of emotional polarization in a populist democracy, linking political affect with democratic participation through social media.

Political Communication and Popular Literature: An Analysis of Political Jingles in Nigerian Electoral Discourse

To win the support of the electorates, Nigerian politicians engage diverse resources during electoral campaigns. Some of these resources include political jingles. This study examines political discursive practices and their socio-cognitive functions in the political jingles of the 2015 general elections in Nigeria. This is to illuminate the politicians’ sociopolitical evaluations of the electorates. The data for this study comprise 50 political jingles of the presidential campaigns of the two major political parties in the country, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the main opposition party, the All Progressive Congress (APC). This study is anchored on linguistic and literary theoretical perspectives using Critical Discourse Analysis and Sociology of Literature, respectively, to reveal the inherent meanings in, and socio-cultural implications of, the discourse of the sampled political jingles. Data analysis identifies political jingles as face-saving, assertive and educative acts. It also notes that implicatures, names, lexemes, religious allusions, evidentiality and code-switching are ideologically employed in the political jingles to enhance the politicians’ personalities and acceptance among the electorates.

Pragmatic and stylistic peculiarities of electoral discourse (based on the material of presidential TV debates)

Recently, studies of various types of discourse have been carried out in the context of their actualization in a situation of speech interaction considering cognitive and communicative factors, therefore this work is focused on the analysis of the functional features of electoral discourse. In modern linguistic works, electoral discourse is defined as an interactive speech and mental activity, limited by the institutional framework of the political sphere and controlled by a global communicative intention – influencing voters to retain power through self-presentation and creating their own positive image, as well as discrediting the opponent’s image. Among the problems that were considered by researchers in the analysis of electoral discourse are its constitutive features, communicative orientation, issues of genre diversity, determination of communicative strategies and tactics etc. However, the problem of the pragmatic and stylistic specifics of this type of discourse has not yet received fundamental coverage in the relevant works, which justifies the urgency of the given study. The material for the analysis was 1578 contextological fragments of video recordings of the presidential election debates between D. Trump and H. Clinton and D. Trump and J. Biden. As a result of the study, it was found that speakers use various stylistic means to achieve a certain pragmatic goal – self-presentation or discrediting an opponent. Among the most common means of creating a positive self-image are positively colored vocabulary, epithets, parallel constructions and repetitions. The most frequent stylistic means of implementing the strategy of discrediting the opponent are negatively colored vocabulary, epithets, parallel constructions, repetitions and metaphors. In this regard, we can state a qualitative similarity in the means of implementing both strategies; while quantitative data allow us to assert that a greater number of stylistic means are used to discredit the opponent, which creates a special expressiveness of such speech.

Формирование электорального дискурса в контексте развития политической коммуникации (на примере президентской избирательной кампании в США 2016 года)

Формирование электорального дискурса в контексте развития политической коммуникации (на примере президентской избирательной кампании в США 2016 года)

Female candidate word. The limited gender impact on the electoral discourse in Twitter

Female candidate word. The limited gender impact on the electoral discourse in Twitter

DISCURSIVE CRITICISING TACTICS IN THE ELECTORAL DISCOURSE OF GERMANY AND UKRAINE (A CONTRASTIVE PERSPECTIVE)

The article deals with discursive criticising strategies in the electoral discourse of Germany and Ukraine from a contrastive perspective. The leading features of criticism in the political electoral discourse are appraisal, agonalism, aggressiveness and persuasiveness. The value of criticism in the pre-election period is because voters have the right and want to assess critically all the abilities of the potential winner in the races, even one they sympathize with and tune in to his liking. The agnostic nature of critical statements can be most clearly traced in the creation of the opposition WE:THEY, which serves to denote the boundary between friends and foes as the most prototypical for pre-electoral communication. Criticism of an opponent may by aggressive and manifest itself in discrediting the opponent in order to prove his/her professional and personal incapacity. Furthermore, criticism can be used as a means of persuasion in order to assert, persuade, induce, incline, or encourage the addressee to take a certain action in the election race. The article determines the types, forms and functions of criticism in electoral discourse as a type of political discourse, describes the in-depth structure of critical utterances and their semantic conditions, identifies four models of the addressee-targeted configuration of criticism, traces the expressions of constructive and destructive criticism in speeches of German-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking politicians in public electoral discourse. The strategy of destructive criticism is implemented by tactics of criticism-reproach, criticism-condemnation and criticism-defeat, which is perceived as by the addressee as adverse. In turn, the strategy of constructive criticism is implemented by the tactics of criticism-discussion, criticism-examination and criticism-analysis, which create a favorable impression on the addressee of the criticism.

LGBTI Rights and the 2017 German National Election

This article examines the 2017 German national election through the lens of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) interests. It depicts the ways in which sexual minorities articulated their policy preferences, the degree to which these positions were taken up in party platforms and electoral discourse, and the extent to which the resulting coalition agreement pledged to address queer citizens’ concerns. I argue that, as a result of what Sarah Childs and Mona Lena Krook call a critical actor, this election provided sexual minorities with a high degree of responsiveness on one core issue: marriage equality. Other issues of interest to LGBTI voters, however, remained largely invisible. The conclusions here are based on analysis of primary documents including interest group statements, party platforms, and coalition agreements, as well as on German-language news coverage of the election campaign.

Measuring populist discourse in the United States and beyond.

Many have argued that populism dominated the 2016 US presidential election. Textual analysis of electoral discourse in the United States, Greece and Venezuela suggests that the overall level of populism in the US election was in fact moderate. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump engaged in populist discourse, but Trump lacked consistency.

Лінгвістичні засоби втілення євроскептицизму в німецькомовному електоральному дискурсі

Лінгвістичні засоби втілення євроскептицизму в німецькомовному електоральному дискурсі

Речевые тактики убеждения в современном российском предвыборном дискурсе (на примере президентской кампании 2017–2018 годов)

Речевые тактики убеждения в современном российском предвыборном дискурсе (на примере президентской кампании 2017–2018 годов)

Sports metaphors and women’s empowerment in the 2014 European election campaign in Romania

AbstractThis paper examines sports metaphors as symbolic resources for electoral discourse, focusing on both their conventional nature and their strategic value in delivering the political message. It takes the form of a case study analyzing the multimodal realizations of the ‘EuroChampion’ sports metaphor in five posters used by the Romanian Liberal Party in the 2014 campaign for the European Parliament. We argue that the ‘EuroChampion’ metaphor and the richness of sports imagery are strategically used to enhance deeper doctrinal party positioning, such as promoting meritocracy and competitiveness, while, at the same time, empowering women candidates in the election.

Separated by a Common Language: on the Usage of Idioms in British and American Electoral Discourse

Separated by a Common Language: on the Usage of Idioms in British and American Electoral Discourse

Discurso do medo e as eleições presidenciais no Brasil em 2014

The objective of this study is to analyze the discourse of fear as an electoral campaign strategy and reflect on the conservative root of this speech and its appropriation by different political trends. For both aims, are used several concepts: source of fear (Mira & Lopes), secondary fear (Bauman), rationalization of fear (Hobbes; Ranciere; Adorno & Horkheimer), conservatism (Bobbio), culture of fear (Glassner) and spectacle (Debord). The main theoretical and methodological orientation of this work comes from the French Discourse Analysis, understanding political discourse (Charaudeau) as an expression of an era. It concludes that, in the current Brazilian electoral context the discourse of fear is used extensively by candidates and parties, regardless of ideological positioning. The use of fear in the electoral discourse, intensified by this culture of fear in the media, empties the political and electoral debate, spectacularizing the politics.

Lenkijos televizijos aktualijų laidų temizavimas per 2014 metų Europos Parlamento rinkimų kampaniją: autopoezės Lenkijos žiniasklaidos sistemoje

Šio mokslinio darbo tikslas – ištirti Lenkijos viešųjų debatų dėl Europos Parlamento rinkimų kokybę, kitaip tariant, kaip televizijos aktualijų laidos vidu­tiniam žiūrovui-rinkėjui bandė paaiškinti sudėtingus su Europos Sąjunga susijusius klausimus ir Europos Parlamento funkcionavimo esmę. Atliekant tyrimą taikyta kokybinės ir kiekybinės turinio analizės metodika. Moksliniame darbe daugiausia dėmesio skiriama temizavimo reiškiniui autoriaus apžvelgtose televizijos laidose. Diskutuojant žurnalistinėmis te­momis daug dėmesio kreipta į tokius klausimus kaip šios kampanijos procesas ir dinamika, jos pateikimas žiniasklaidoje, apklausų rezultatai. Tyrimo rezultatai patvirtino, kad rinkimų diskursas buvo smarkiai autopoeziškas (N. Luhmanno teorijos terminas) ir savireferencinis.

Las metáforas políticas en el discurso de dos líderes venezolanos: Hugo Chávez y Enrique Mendoza

El presente trabajo describe y analiza, dentro del marco de la semántica cognitiva, los esquemas conceptuales y las expresiones metafóricas: metáforas y macro metáforas, utilizadas por dos líderes de la política venezolana Hugo Chávez y Enrique Mendoza con motivo del cierre de la campaña electoral previa al Referéndum Revocatorio Presidencial, que se realizó en agosto del 2004. La investigación pone en evidencia cómo el discurso político venezolano actual, especialmente el electoral, apela de manera recurrente y profusa a la metáfora, en razón de la capacidad que tiene este tipo de estructura para transformar nociones complejas y abstractas en imágenes de fácil captación y de gran efectividad sobre el auditorio, para evitar referencias directas que pudieran resultar demasiado comprometedoras o reveladoras, así como para lograr mayores efectos cognitivos en los destinatarios, como son el establecimiento de determinadas relaciones de sentido, la producción de inferencias, o la comunicación de imágenes no convencionales.