bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Living in therapeutic culture
Authors: Pawelczyk Joanna , Graf Eva-Maria
Published: March 2014

Self-reflexivity and self-identity have turned into core projects of modern times. As a result, women and men of different cultural backgrounds increasingly often seek support in therapy and counseling. However, talking through things, being open in relationships and seeking happiness as psychotherapeutic values and modes of talk also infiltrate everyday activities and professional tasks (Fairclough 1992; Cameron 2000a; McLeod & Wright 2003). Indeed members of late modern societies live in what is commonly referred to as ‘therapeutic culture’ (cf. Giddens 1991; Furedi 2004). In this paper we make a link between self-identity in modernity, the discourse of psychotherapy and coaching and symbolic feminine discourse to claim that the psychotherapeutic strategies and modes of constituting the self are in fact gendered, i.e. they rely on aspects of symbolic feminine discourse (cf. Lakoff 1975; Coates 1996; Holmes 1998). And since a successful modern communicator, both in private and professional settings, needs to rely on discourse norms as well as interactional and communicative strategies which are at the heart of various forms of ‘talking cure’, feminine discourse can function as an agent of emancipation and social/professional advancement. This is a particularly socially-charged issue since public sphere in most societies still predominately belongs to men.
Chapter 1. Humour in politics and the politics of humour
Authors: Tsakona Villy , Popa Diana Elena
Published: March 2014

In this chapter, the authors offer a working definition of political humour and summarise its main aspects as discussed in the relevant literature: the genres where political humour surfaces or dominates; the reasons why political criticism is so often encoded in humorous terms; and the (side-)effects of political humour. They also discuss the so-called “inherent ambiguity of humour”, thus explaining why political humour does not necessarily influence politics. Rather than provoking social and political change, political humour conveys criticism against the political status quo and recycles and reinforces dominant values and views on politics. The diverse sociopolitical conditions may influence who is allowed to participate in the creation and circulation of political humour and who may become its target.
Chapter 2. Fun in the German parliament?
Authors: Müller Ralph
Published: March 2014

Based on a large digital corpus of political speeches from the parliamentary proceedings of the German Bundestag (German House of Representatives), this study provides an overview of situations in which amusement and laughing have been recorded. After explaining the differentiation between Heiterkeit “amusement” and Lachen “laughing”, this study provides a typology of situations that trigger such responses. An analysis of corpus concordances shows that the category Lachen mostly indicates instances of scornful laughter, whereas amusement is generally less hostile. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates that most instances that provoked laughing do not display intentional humorous incongruity. Amusement, on the other hand, is typically motivated by some kind of intended humorous incongruity.
Chapter 3. Informal talk in formal settings
Authors: Archakis Argiris , Tsakona Villy
Published: March 2014

Rather than a one-to-one correspondence between varieties and contexts, hybridity is often observed in communicative settings due to the plurality of sociolinguistic resources speakers draw upon to shape the particular style of talk which will best serve their communicative intent. This seems to be the case with Greek parliamentary discourse: although the parliament constitutes a highly institutionalised, formal setting, where logical and legal argumentation is expected to prevail, Greek parliamentarians employ oral humorous narratives to persuade the voting audience and create and maintain bonds with them. The wider cultural and political context plays a significant role in determining parliamentarians’ stylistic choices: orality and respective practices are highly valued in Greek culture, where story-telling in particular is often used for argumentative purposes.
Chapter 4. “Stop caressing the ears of the hooded”
Authors: Georgalidou Marianthi
Published: March 2014

Based on data coming from media and parliamentary settings, the purpose of this study is to examine instances of humour in the discourse of politicians during a period of social turmoil in Greece. The analysis confirms the impact of humorous contributions, as well as other forms of linguistic creativity, in constructing, and resisting the construction of, damaging political identities in the discourse of political opponents. It also confirms the symbiotic relations among politics and media, via the formation of dialogical networks, which are shown to contribute to the blurring of ideological boundaries and identities in politics.
Chapter 5. Entertaining﻿ and enraging
Authors: Dynel Marta
Published: March 2014

This article advances a theoretical proposal on the pragmatics of verbal violence, which promotes humour in televised political debates. Its underlying objective is to contest the well-entrenched assumption that the viewer should be conceptualised as an overhearer, in favour of a new theoretical construct, namely the recipient. Interlocutors in a political debate talk not only with each other, but also, if not primarily, communicate meanings to the recipient. By employing verbal aggression, a politician may have a twofold communicative intention with regard to two different ratified hearers: s/he aims to disaffiliate from the conversationalist, thereby entertaining, and fostering solidarity with, recipients. The theses put forward are illustrated with examples from Polish pre-election debates televised in October 2007.
Chapter 7. Being Berlusconi
Authors: Watters Clare
Published: March 2014

The present study explores the function of satirical impersonation in contemporary Italian society through an examination of the work of satirist Sabina Guzzanti and her impersonation of the current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The movement of Guzzanti’s work away from television after the removal of the satirical show RaiOt from the airwaves allows for an assessment of political impersonation as a humour strategy on both stage and screen. The analysis reveals the role which impersonation has to play in redefining the image of Berlusconi, the restrictions which are placed on television satire in the Berlusconi era, and the development and politicisation of humour which stage appearances have encouraged in Guzzanti’s work.
Chapter 8. Mocking﻿ Fascism
Authors: Mascha Efharis
Published: March 2014

Political satire can be considered a significant part of popular culture, but has been systematically neglected by theorists of popular culture. This study discusses how popular culture and political satire reflect their counter-hegemonic project against the Fascist hegemony of Mussolini. All the necessary elements are put into practice in order to eliminate the Fascist power, overthrow the regime, and, most importantly, resist the Fascist standardisation of late modernity. The paper will start with an account of the role of popular culture and its relation to hegemony. Examples and illustrations will facilitate our understanding of political satire as a significant contributor to resistance, change, and the formation of political consciousness.
Chapter 9. Politics of taste in a post-Socialist state
Authors: Laineste Liisi
Published: March 2014

The link between jokes and social reality is visible in the way jokes adapt to different sociopolitical contexts by dealing with the most salient issues of such contexts. This chapter casts light on another facet of the relationship of jokes and their social context. Ideas about jokes are influenced by their social context, being continuously reformulated by social change or political manipulation. This case study analyses the official and unofficial media discourses that address the issues of taste and sense of humour, as emerging from a recent polemics about Estonian ethnic jokes. The different standpoints reflect ideas about the content and functions of the jokelore, characterising jokes either as an essentially racist or as a funny (i.e. harmless) genre.
Chapter 10. Humour and… Stalin in a National Theatre of Greece postmodern
production
Authors: Manteli Vicky
Published: March 2014

This study focuses on the function of humour in a postmodern performance which explored Stalinism as a paradigm of power politics and suggested that Stalinism is comparable to Modern Greek theatre. The performance suggests that non-conformist art can be denied acceptance and/or success and that both Stalinism and Modern Greek theatre are powerful enough to curb non-conformist artists. This analogy creates a special form of political humour which targets both Stalinism and the Greek theatre, and reveals the Stalinist practices followed in the latter. The study applies a semiotic approach to the analysis of performance and argues that humour, irony, and parody in the production are activated through the complex interaction of verbal, visual, musical, paralinguistic, and intersemiotic signs and codes.
Chapter 11. Postscript
Authors: Popa Diana Elena , Tsakona Villy
Published: March 2014

Political humour is employed to define the boundaries between opposing political groups and to express discontent against politicians and political acts. The sociopolitical context of its production and circulation not only influences its form, content, functions, and targets, but also determines whether it will be accepted, banned, or manipulated to serve the political agendas of certain groups. Hence, political humour becomes a ritual site where political identities are constantly constructed and (re)negotiated. Drawing on studies coming from different sociocultural communities, the authors underline the variety of humorous genres and communicative functions related to political humour, while they point out that humour research needs to look beyond the metapragmatic stereotype often surrounding the use of humour in politics.
Chapter 1. Collective memory and media genres
Authors: Šarić Ljiljana
Published: March 2014

This chapter analyzes Serbian media discourse related to Serbia’s Statehood Day (Dan državnosti) since its introduction, and how the discourse has shaped and reinforced collective memory. Statehood Day is celebrated on 15 February, the same day as a religious holiday and an army holiday. The analysis concerns how Statehood Day discourse relates to collective memory and to the two identity models observable in Serbian public discourse: the civic-democratic model and the national-liberation model. The material analyzed is primarily from well-known newspapers that are representative of the Serbian media landscape. Using Wertsch’s (2002) definition of “remembering” as a mediated action that entails the involvement of active agents and cultural tools, and applying the main categories of political discourse analysis (Chilton 2004), I examine how various genres employed in the media contribute to shaping and reinforcing collective memory, building patriotism, and constructing national identity.
Chapter 2. The quest for a proper Bulgarian national holiday
Authors: Hauge Kjetil Rå
Published: March 2014

When the former Bulgarian national holiday of 3 March was reinstated in 1990, opinion was divided as to whether 3 March was a good choice. This chapter examines the discussion that followed in Bulgarian media. The argumentation for the other candidates for national holiday status is shown to mostly concern the degree of active Bulgarian participation in the historical events that the days commemorate, and to a somewhat lesser degree also to concern how the days are celebrated.
Chapter 5. Croatia in search of a national day
Authors: Šarić Ljiljana
Published: March 2014

This chapter analyzes the identity-building force of and controversies associated with national days in Croatia by examining the front pages of three influential Croatian dailies (Vjesnik, Slobodna Dalmacija, and Novi list) from 1988 to 2005. Following a social semiotics approach (Kress and Leeuwen 1998; Leeuwen 2005), I look at several front-page elements (congratulatory items, the relationship of visual and verbal elements, keywords of headlines and leads), and I analyze their function in three periods. The analysis seeks to explain how the changes in featuring Statehood Day on front pages relate to opposing Statehood Day narratives in Croatian public discourse, and to explain what factors contribute to the unstable nature of Statehood Day as a state symbol. Applying discourse-analytic categories of legitimization and othering, I examine how the newspapers and various participants in public discourse have used the holidays to create positive self-images and negative other-images.
Chapter 6. Contested pasts, contested red-letter days
Authors: Pavlaković Vjeran
Published: March 2014

Commemorations (and counter-commemorations) of the World War Two antifascist resistance movement in Croatia continue to be a source of debates over both political and ethnic identities. This chapter examines the transformation of several red-letter days in Croatia during the post-communist transition, in particular focusing on the content of the speeches given at commemorations. The new official Antifascist Struggle Day (22 June) replaced the former Uprising Day (27 July) after 1990, essentially erasing the latter from Croatia’s commemorative culture because it was considered to be too “Serbian.” The debate over these World War II commemorations, and their significance in contemporary political and ethnic identity construction will be examined by analyzing the discourse of political speeches delivered at the commemorations, the polemics present in a broad spectrum of the Croatian press, and field research (including interviews) conducted at the actual sites of memory.
Chapter 7. Commemorating the Warsaw Uprising of 1 August 1944
Authors: Ensink Titus , Sauer Christoph
Published: March 2014

This chapter describes the way Poland repeatedly involved other parties, notably former enemies, in commemorations of the Warsaw Uprising of 1 August 1944, thus turning a national Red Letter Day into a transnational event. The Uprising is ambiguous: it led to defeat, yet Poland is proud of it since it stands for her heroism, and the Uprising was suppressed by the Germans, yet Poland feels that the USSR/Russia bears some responsibility for its failure since the Red Army did not support the Uprising. Following a model proposed by Assmann, it is shown that Poland’s repeated efforts to turn a commemorative occasion into a ritual in which both victims and culprits participate are successful: acknowledgement of responsibility leads to forgiveness and reconciliation. A discourse analysis of speeches by speakers from Poland, Germany, and Russia shows that the key to success is the victim’s willingness to forgive, and the culprit’s willingness to acknowledge guilt.
Chapter 8. Ilinden
Authors: Soldić Marko
Published: March 2014

In the period of transition since independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonian national identity has been highly contested. The discourse (r)evolving around the commemoration of the Macedonian national day, Ilinden, may be viewed as an arena where such challenges are addressed. By analyzing excerpts from the print media, this chapter aspires to show how challenges facing the Macedonian community and their identity are interpreted, and how solutions to them are negotiated through constructions of continuity between past, present, and future in the Ilinden discourse. The focus will be on periods during which potential disruptions of the continuity of the national identity have been especially strong. The notion of continuity with the Ilinden past has rendered understandable and acceptable the massive social, economic, and political changes that the Macedonian community has undergone. Although this Ilinden matrix appears to be fixed, primarily its resilience and flexibility have ensured its continuing importance.
Chapter 9. Slovak national identity as articulated in the homilies of a religious holiday
Authors: Bielicki Alexander
Published: March 2014

Religious and national identity can be linked in various ways. This chapter examines how religious elites in Slovakia shape the parameters of the nation through discourse during their celebration of a religious-themed, state holiday Sviatok Panny Márie Sedembolestnej (Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows Day). The scope of this piece deals primarily with one question: How do the bishops and archbishops presiding over these events talk the nation, or more specifically, how do they present national history and represent national solidarity and homogeneity in their discourse? By examining the homilies delivered at the Slovak national pilgrimage, the main religious event of the national holiday, this chapter sheds light on how the Slovak Catholic religious elite discursively constructs ideas of national identity and nationhood.
Chapter 10. The Czech and Czechoslovak 28 October
Authors: Gammelgaard Karen
Published: March 2014

Presidential addresses given about the most prominent Czech and Czechoslovak secular holiday, 28 October, contribute noticeably to articulating collective identity. In this chapter, four 28 October addresses are analyzed: one by Czechoslovakia’s last communist president, Gustáv Husák (1988); two by Czech president Václav Havel (1993, 1998); and one by Czech president Václav Klaus (2008). The addresses’ contexts are described and their “staging” is analyzed. The main analysis concerns the presidents’ selections of past events, their communication of their worldviews, and how their selected events and communicated worldviews tallied with how they categorized “us” and “them”: Husák excluded most Czechoslovak citizens from the “us” category. Havel broadened the “us” category so much that he almost failed to delimit his audience from other collectives. Klaus clearly delimited the Czechs as a national collective. Yet he also came close to depicting the Czech nation as being under threat.
Chapter 11. Disputes over national holidays
Authors: Mønnesland Svein
Published: March 2014

This chapter analyzes the discourse of leading politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the occasion of national holidays from 2000 to 2010. Fifteen years after the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina has no common law on national holidays at the state level. This lack is due to varying concepts of history and how the state should be organized, and reveals deep-rooted conflicts in a society consisting of Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. Each of the two administrative parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, referred to as entities, has its own holidays that are contested by the other entity. Within the Bosniak-Croat entity, there is a conflict between the two groups that constitute it. The discourse used to mark holidays is usually aimed at legitimizing one’s own holidays and delegitimizing others’ holidays. The analysis shows how the (de)legitimization strategies relate to time, space, and modality.
Chapter 12. What Europe means for Poland
Authors: Grimstad Knut Andreas
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines one of Poland’s most influential newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza, and its front-page coverage of what is arguably the country’s most popular national holiday, Independence Day. Specific attention is given to how Gazeta’s writers discursively constructed a Polishness compatible with European values, both before and after the country’s EU admission. Within the newspaper’s Euro-Polish identity project, they reinforced the idea of a common past, present, and future, while introducing a concept of European supranationalism that, however, did not replace but instead served to complement Polish nationalism. Insofar as Gazeta gives space to many different voices, including those of its Euro-skeptic adversaries, its predominant strategy is one of inclusion.
Speaking to Europe
Authors: Kjeldsen Jens E.
Published: March 2014

This article examines the rhetorical language and behaviour of Prime Minister Tony Blair in a complex communication situation in which he speaks not only to the physically present audience in the European Parliament, but simultaneously to different countries and groups in Europe. It argues that theoretically the fragmentation and complexity of contemporary society and communication require a triangular research approach. We need a study of political discourse that not only deals with speaker and text, but also with reception. Methodologically, such an approach is illustrated through a combination of a textual-contextual analysis with an investigation of the press coverage in five countries. Empirically, we learn that the press coverage focuses on both the narrative of the speaker and the response within the Parliament, but that it is framed differently in each country. We also learn that complex circumstances do not necessarily lead to complex language use.
Doing politics or doing media? A linguistic approach to European parliamentary debate
Authors: Norén Coco
Published: March 2014

The aim of this paper is to show that a linguistic method is necessary in order to understand whether political discourse is simply mediated or in fact mediatised (Strömbäck 2008). A large number of previous studies on political discourse have typically been carried out on televised programmes, which has lead to a number of generalisations, one of them being that the mediated sphere dominates the political sphere. I will argue that this is not the case for institutionalised political discourse. I will then proceed to illustrate how an analysis of verbal and paraverbal phenomena, such as terms of address, expressions referring to the addressee and abbreviations constitutes empirical evidence of the degree to which a particular political genre is mediatised.The study is based on C-Parleur. Corpus de discours du PARLement EURopéen which consists of all speeches during the debates delivered by the French and Swedish members of the European Parliament April 2006 – March 2008.
Quantitative approaches to political discourse
Authors: Mayaffre Damon M. , Poudat Céline
Published: March 2014

The present chapter proposes to build bridges between political discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. We intend to bring to light methodological benefits arising from the synergy of (political) discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, pointing to fruitful contribution from French text statistics. Taking the discourses of Nicolas Sarkozy as an example, we show how political discourse analysis can benefit from a reflection on corpora (their constitution, their role in the research process); on linguistic analysis and processing methods (particularly the computer-assisted methods of text statistics); and finally on the interpretative paths at a time of establishment of a numerical hermeneutics.
Voices and identities
Authors: Gjerstad Øyvind
Published: March 2014

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a notion of polyphony which is anchored both in linguistic instructions and in the mechanisms of discourse. Combining the ScaPoLine and praxematics, I propose an operational definition of discursive polyphony, centred on the communicative intention of the speaker. The analysis is systematised by adopting and adapting the modular approach to discourse analysis developed by the Geneva school of discourse analysis. To illustrate this theoretical and methodological framework, I analyse excerpts from speeches by Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Nicolas Sarkozy to the European Parliament. In the analysis I identify an interplay of voices which represents an important part of their rhetorical strategies and which reflects their standing in Europe.
Images and roles of the European Union in the climate change debate
Authors: Ly Annelise
Published: March 2014

The aim of this chapter is to understand how the ideas of unity and leadership are conveyed linguistically by the members of the European Parliament (MEP)’s interventions. Using the cognitive metaphor theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson I argue that the analysis of conceptual metaphors will show how MEPs perceive the EU and its role in the climate change discussions. The corpus used in this analysis is composed of two debates that took place at the European Parliament, respectively before and after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), in December 2009.
Chapter 1. Genres in political discourse
Authors: Gruber Helmut
Published: March 2014

The first part of this chapter provides an overview of the current state of genre theory in various fields of linguistics and discourse analysis. Based on this overview, a set of common features of genre definitions is presented that provides the theoretical basis for the empirical investigation. In the empirical part, the inaugural speeches of three Austrian chancellors (representing the two big Austrian political parties) during the last ten years are analyzed. After a short discussion of relevant contextual features (production process, audience design), lexical characteristics, generic and topical structures, and the co-articulation of topics are analyzed. Results show that, although delivered by politicians from two different political backgrounds, the speeches share many features in terms of lexis and generic structure. Differences become manifest at the topic structure and the co-articulation of topics. In conclusion, it is argued that a politically sensitive genre analysis must not only focus on generic features of political texts but also investigate registers and discourses which are realized in these texts.
Chapter 2. Political interviews in context
Authors: Fetzer Anita , Bull Peter
Published: March 2014

The genre of the broadcast political interview is examined from a compositional methodological approach, drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, sociopragmatics, social psychology and media studies. A distinction is proposed between the default and non-default political interview. In the prototypical (default) interview, there is the journalist as interviewer, who asks political questions, and the politician as interviewee, who answers political questions by giving political answers. In the non-default interview, this one-dimensional setting becomes blurred: in the employment of different semiotic codes and socio-cultural practices; in the inclusion of both public and private discourse identities; and in explicit accommodation to the audience’s needs. To capture the inherent dynamics of the genre, it proposed that political interviews be conceptualized as a hybrid genre, accommodating the constraints and requirements of both media communication and professional discourse.
Chapter 3. Policy, policy communication and discursive shifts
Authors: Krzyżanowski Michał
Published: March 2014

This chapter presents a closely related discursive and generic analysis of European Union policy on climate change. The analysis focuses on the years 2007–2011 when the EU climate change policy accelerated and underwent several significant shifts. At the discursive level, the analysis of the said shifts is framed by such concepts as “discursive change” and “discursive shifts” which help looking for both global/transnational frames and local, actor-specific appropriations/responses to social, political and economic transformations. At the level of genre analysis, the chapter scrutinizes the EU climate-change policy dynamics by examining discrepancies within/between the well-established field of “policy” and the relatively new field of “policy communication”. As the analysis shows, while appropriating different facets of discursive change in local discursive shifts, the policy itself is dynamic and responsive to developments within both the EU and its more or less distant social, political and economic context. However, at the same time, the policy-communication remains relatively unchanged in its focus throughout the period of investigation thus showing that, whereas the EU policies such as those on climate change do change over time, such a change is often not communicated to the general public despite the actual presence of policy-communication genres which, at least hypothetically, should facilitate that process.
Chapter 4. The television election night broadcast
Authors: Lauerbach Gerda Eva
Published: March 2014

Election night broadcasts are instances of a macro-genre which consists of a complex, ordered assembly of interlocking genres. The emergent character of the news, the liveness of the broadcast and its multi-focal character make for a number of typical genres and genre sequences. The chapter provides an overview of the area of research and a framework of analysis, drawing on DA, CA, systemic functional linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics and sociology. The genres studied are reports and comments (soft and hard news, audio-visual presentation of statistics) and Declaration sequences, comprising a running-up sequence (reports, interviews), and the Declaration of results at constituency level. The data are from the BBC election night on the 1997 UK parliamentary elections. The focus is on the discourse of journalists, not of politicians, and on the interplay of the verbal and visual channels.
Chapter 5. Analyzing meetings in political and business contexts
Authors: Wodak Ruth
Published: March 2014

This chapter compares various instances of everyday routine meetings in political institutions (such as the European Parliament and the European Commission) with meetings in business organizations, with the aim of, first describing similarities and differences in the genre (and subgenres) of meetings across organizations and social fields; and of secondly investigating the impact of organizational knowledge of the genre on presuppositions and context models of the participants related to the interaction and intended outcome of the meetings. I argue that the concept of a “prototype genre of meeting” is adequate for an integrated, interdisciplinary discourse-analytical and sociolinguistic theoretical framework which allows understanding and explaining the intricate dynamic of meetings in a systematic, in-depth, and context-dependent way. Moreover, I claim that organizational knowledge of the genre is part and parcel of successful interaction strategies; and that much miscommunication and problems could be avoided if manifest and latent genre conventions were sufficiently acknowledged. Drawing on transcribed data of 36 meetings in the European Parliament and European Commission, on the one hand, and of 6 meetings (2 away days, 4 regular) in one large business organization, on the other hand, I illustrate the salience of the genre characteristics in the interaction and its intended, expected, and actual outcome.
Chapter 6. Presenting politics
Authors: Moir James
Published: March 2014

The study of political persuasion has traditionally examined the components of communication in terms of the source, nature and recipients of messages. This approach is based on the assumption of communication as a psychological process involving a mental system that operates upon different political messages. However, another research tradition has examined performative aspects such as the use of metaphors, three-part lists, intonation of voice and so on. Bull (2007) argues that these two different approaches need not be incompatible and that they could be brought together to strengthen research across different genres of political communication. Whilst this would be a laudable attempt to build bridges between these two different approaches, it is argued that their underlying philosophical commitments cannot be glossed. These tensions are explored in terms of focusing on whether political communication should be considered as a matter of persuasion or as a matter of performance.
Chapter 7. Legitimizing the Iraq War through the genre of political speeches
Authors: Forchtner Bernhard
Published: March 2014

In Albert Camus’ novel The Fall, the main character Jean-Baptiste Clamance introduces himself as a judge-penitent, following the motto “[t]he more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you”. In this chapter, I operationalize such behavior in order to understand the strategy of persuasion used by Denmark’s then Prime-Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen when he legitimized the Iraq-invasion in 2003. In contrast to self-righteous myths, Rasmussen did so by self-critically addressing the policy of Danish collaboration with Nazi-Germany during World War Two. He thereby became able to claim, like Clamance, to have learnt the lessons from history, thus occupying the moral high ground from which he discursively constructed the opponents of the invasion as being morally inferior.
Chapter 9. Reframing the American Dream
Authors: Boyd Michael S.
Published: March 2014

Lakoff (2002) maintains that US political divisions are shaped by competing interpretations of the Nation as family conceptual metaphor, which create fundamentally different moral models for conservative and liberal politicians to articulate their values and worldviews. Such differences are realized through various underlying and surface linguistic means. Based on the 2008 presidential election debates between Barack Obama and John McCain, the work provides empirical evidence for the existence of two different morality models. From a theoretical perspective, the work argues that the family-based models are further consolidated through the strategic use of personal reference and pronouns. Moreover, it considers the importance of various recontextualization strategies used to frame the competing worldviews. Finally, the work posits that it is precisely the hybrid nature of the genre of the debate that favors the emergence of the two models, offering an innovative approach not only to conceptual metaphor theory but also to the study of the genre of political debates.
Chapter 10. The late-night TV talk show as a strategic genre in American political campaigning
Authors: Molek-Kozakowska Katarzyna
Published: March 2014

This chapter focuses on the functions and properties of the American late-night TV talk show as used during the 2008 presidential campaign. It analyses some interviews with presidential candidates (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain) broadcast on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, CNN’s Larry King Live and NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno in order to demonstrate the ways the talk show’s generic conventions tend to be recruited to suit politicians’ aims. This case study illustrates how the semi-institutional nature of the talk show allows candidates to implement such campaigning strategies as the performance of sociability, the management of impressions, the manufacture of authenticity, and the tactical maneuvering between institutional and personal discourse. The study identifies and critiques some discursive practices enabled by the talk show’s generic formula which can be used manipulatively by campaigners.
Chapter 11. Multimodal legitimation
Authors: Mackay Rowan
Published: March 2014

In this paper I look at legitimation in multimodal texts. By focusing first upon genre analysis from a social semiotic perspective, and highlighting the complications it presents for genre identification, I lay a conceptual framework for looking at the specific genre of political spot ads. Analyzing a small selection of such ads used in the 2008 American presidential campaign, I show how the legitimating features they contain, although recognizable from more traditional studies, have been strikingly and successfully adapted to a new context. Furthermore, I suggest that this reworking marks a shift in the hierarchy of legitimating tools: a shift away from the unquestioned primacy of text and talk.
Chapter 12. Blogging as the mediatization of politics and a new form of social interaction
Authors: Kopytowska Monika
Published: March 2014

The present chapter takes under scrutiny political blogs with a view to establishing their generic profile, both in terms of structure and functions. This relatively new genre in political communication is discussed in the context of “mediatization”, a meta-process transforming the relationship between media, society and politics through creating a common spatiotemporal, cognitive and axiological sphere of shared experience, and supplementing the social activities which previously took place only face-to-face with virtual interaction. The study demonstrates that what makes this process possible is the mechanism of “proximization”, allowing for the reduction of the temporal, spatial, axiological, cognitive and emotional distance between the blogger and his or her audience, and thus for the mediation of experience and the creation of a virtual community around the “networked public sphere.” On the theoretical level, the chapter offers a new integrated approach towards the discourse of the political blogosphere, combining pragmatic and cognitive linguistic perspectives with insights from social semiotics and media studies. Quantitative (e.g. keyword analysis, concordance analysis, semantic vectors) and qualitative methods are used to explore “proximization dynamics” in political blogs written by active party politicians: the corpus of Polish- and English-language data comprises the two most prominent political blogs in each country along with their readers’ comments from the left and right ends of the political spectrum.
Chapter 1. Strategy and creativity in dialogue
Authors: Sanders Robert E.
Published: March 2014

Bakhtin’s idea that any utterance has built into its meaning its connectedness to other utterances gives rise to his idea of the “anticipatoriness” of utterances – that utterances are made with the “expectation of a response” (Bakhtin 1986: 69). If so, then each utterance delimits the utterances that can meaningfully come next, that would be responsive. The upshot is that Bakhtin’s ideas about the meaningfulness and interrelatedness of utterances implicate that utterances have an inescapably consequence-oriented, strategic aspect. Yet the idea of speaking strategically seems monologic rather than dialogic, antithetical to the premise of co-construction. To reconcile what seem to be incompatible concerns, a dialogical account is developed of two key underpinnings of strategic speaking − that responses to utterances are somewhat predictable and not open-ended, and that speakers form and act on intentions about what their utterances will bring about.
Chapter 2. Conversational irony: Evaluating complaints
Authors: Christodoulidou Maria
Published: March 2014

This chapter is concerned with ironic assessments in spontaneous Cypriot-Greek conversations. The phenomenon is studied here by a close examination of ironic assessments in the specific context of naturally occurring complaint sequences where the speaker is complaining about a non-present party’s misbehaviour or reported words. The main focus is on the sequential and interactional role of the placement of ironic utterances in a structural place of the organisation of storytelling that is upon the culmination of a complaint, where usually an evaluation is expected from the recipient. Ironic evaluations are investigated by exploring the whole construction of the complaint and the relationships established among the participants up to the slot which is filled with the ironic element. This is why I draw from selected conversational fragments to show that in the data there is a pattern which is revealed by combining irony with an expression of evaluation. This type of evaluation is very effective in producing a stronger claim than the one reported and proffered with the punchline. This moves the topic to closure. Examples of ironic evaluations are effectively expressed through non-literal means, such as extreme case formulations, impossible descriptions, self-contradictory assessments, and rhetorical questions.
Chapter 3. Speaking through other voices
Authors: Priego-Valverde Béatrice
Published: March 2014

Conversational humour is a complex phenomenon for a number of reasons. It is ambivalent (both aggressive and benevolent), and it is contextualized and based on shared knowledge (hence difficult to grasp fully by someone outside the group). In this study I will explore another reason for this complexity, and that is humour as a polyphonic phenomenon, a heterogeneous discourse produced, of course, by the speaker her/himself but at the same time by many other voices (Ducrot 1984) which cross and converge with the speaker’s discourse. I will show that what makes conversational humour more complex is not only the fact that it is a polyphonic phenomenon but, rather, that the speaker plays hide-and-seek with the various voices s/he invokes.
Chapter 4. The self as other: Self words and pronominal reversals in language acquisition
Authors: Morgenstern Aliyah
Published: March 2014

The study of reversals may shed some light on the problems children encounter when they try to use the formal, linguistic marks to convey the distinction between the self and the non-self. In two longitudinal case studies of French speaking boys age 1;08 to 3;03, I investigate how they use self-reference. I first focus on a particular use of pronominal reversal in Léonard’s data: the little boy’s use of the third person to designate himself. In a second longitudinal case study, we investigate how Guillaume uses the form tu (‘you’) instead of the first person pronoun. They both speak of themselves with the others’ voices in contexts in which they have either done a misdeed (third person) or an exploit (second person). In those two typical developing children, pronominal reversals seem to occur when they begin to assimilate and internalize the representations the parents formulate regarding their child’s experiences.
Chapter 5. The function of formulations in polyphonic dialogues
Authors: Baraldi Claudio
Published: March 2014

Formulation can be defined as a specific type of action, in interaction, which has the function of summarising, commenting or developing the gist of previous turns. Furthermore, formulations can elicit a choice of interlocutors’ next turns, in a way that interlocutors provide their own perspectives on the meaning of the interaction, and promote polyphonic dialogues. This chapter concerns video-recorded data collected in intercultural educational communities in English Lingua Franca. It looks at the structured sequences of actions including formulations. Complementarily, it focuses on the ways in which different cultural presuppositions, giving form to expectations, contextualise formulations. In this sense, formulations may be distinguished as referring to different forms of expectations. This study looks at various consequences of these forms of expectations for polyphonic dialogue.
Chapter 6. Observing the paradox: Interrogative-negative questions as cues for a monophonic promotion of polyphony in educational practices
Authors: Farini Federico
Published: March 2014

Many pedagogical publications (Hengst & Zeiher 2005, Walsh 2011) offer prescriptive resources to empower children’s voices in educational practices, placing particular emphasis on children’s self-realization and agency. However, none of them discusses the results of the empirical application of their theoretical prescriptions. In this chapter, I analyze interactions taken from an educational project addressed to empower children’s skills in managing social contexts, particularly with respect to conflict management. I focus on a specific sequence of actions, “educators’ interrogative-negative questions/children’s answers.” This sequence is a contextualization cue working at various discourse levels, including intertextuality, for a specific culture of education. Specifically, it foregrounds the paradox of a monophonic promotion of polyphony where, besides promotional intentions, education selects meanings, criteria and values, binding children’s actions and choices to them.
Chapter 7. Co-construction of identity in the Spanish heritage language classroom
Authors: Showstack Rachel Elizabeth
Published: March 2014

This study examined classroom discourse in two Spanish language courses for Spanish-English bilingual students in Texas in order to investigate how students and instructors co-constructed students’ linguistic and cultural identities within different social practices in the classroom. Taking a view of identity as the outcome of cultural semiotics (Bucholtz & Hall 2004), and drawing from Bakhtin’s (1981) understanding of the multivocality of texts, the analysis focuses on the ways that students construct their identities as bilinguals in relation to socially constructed discourses on the value of different language varieties and socially constructed categories of different kinds of people. Results suggest that students construct these identities differently within different classroom practices, drawing from other dialogues in diverse ways within each practice.
Chapter 8. Polyphonic strategies used in polemical dialogue
Authors: Vlad Daciana
Published: March 2014

This study aims to describe polyphonic strategies used in polemical dialogue. The forms of polyphony that occur in polemics are presented, i.e. strong and conflicting polyphony, which are both forms of dialogic polyphony (Vlad 2010); these are followed by an analysis of the polyphonic strategies adopted by Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal in the debate for the French 2007 presidential election. Using strategies such as quotation, echo reply and manipulation, the debaters evoke their opponent’s arguments as a prelude to knocking them down. The author of the distorted discourse may also denounce such malicious discursive practices, situating polemics at the metacommunicative level.
Chapter 9. Metacommunication and intertextuality in British and Russian parliamentary answers
Authors: Sivenkova Maria
Published: March 2014

The chapter proposes a typology of metacommunicative criticisms occurring in answers to oral questions in the British and Russian parliaments. A range of communicative behaviours are criticised by the respondents while answering parliamentary questions: posing the same question more than once, misinterpreting the opponent’s comments, making inexplicable statements, breaching parliamentary rules of question asking, among others. It is argued that metacommunicative criticisms ensure intertextual connections in various oral and written parliamentary sub-genres, thus enhancing continuity and accountability in parliamentary discourse.
Chapter 10. The role of prosody in a Czech talk-show
Authors: Havlík Martin
Published: March 2014

Prosody plays an important role in all types of speech and in every conversation. One important function of prosody is its ability to contextualise what has been said (Auer & de Luzio 1992). With the help of prosody in conversation, speakers can also transfer previous utterances of their conversational partners into another context, especially if responding to them. By doing this, they can alter the meaning of what their partners have said; they can change serious speech into non-serious speech and/or into irony, mockery, and so on. One important way of achieving this is “stylized prosodic orientation.” As the author of this concept says, “[b]y prosodically stylizing a previous non-stylized item or action, participants introduce a new perspective on it.” (Szczepek Reed 2006: 147). By using such prosodic stylization, the new speaker (former recipient) brings a voice into the conversation which is not only new, but is literally unexpected, and hence strange and alienated. In this paper, I will show how one particular host of a popular Czech TV talk show uses prosody as a means of joking or making fun of guests, and I will also show which particular aspects of prosody he uses to place the answers of his guests into another context and genre.