| Editorial: Political Speeches and Discourse Analysis |
Christina Schffner
Institute for the Study of Language and Society, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK |
| When we think of politics, we think of it mainly in terms of the struggle for power in order to secure specific ideas and interests and put them into practice. This process of manifesting a political will and transforming it into concrete social action is realised first of all between political parties. In this process, language plays an important role. In fact, any political action is prepared, accompanied, controlled and influenced by language. We could easily add other verbs to this list, such as guided, explained, justified, evaluated, criticised,... |
| The study of language has recently become more central to those academic disciplines concerned with politics. However, political scientists on the one hand, and linguists, or discourse analysts, on the other hand, focus on different aspects when they discuss the relationship between language and politics, and they also apply different theories and methods in doing so. Political scientists are mainly concerned with the consequences of political decisions and actions for (the history of) a society, and they may be interested in the political realities which are constructed in and through discourse. Linguists, on the other hand, have always been particularly interested in the linguistic structures used to get politically relevant messages across to the addressees in order to fulfil a specific function. But also a more narrow linguistic analysis of political discourse cannot ignore the broader societal and political framework in which such discourse is embedded. Van Dijk has recently argued, that 'despite some studies on "political language", discourse and conversation analysis has thus far had little to offer to political science', and he has called for discourse analysis to be a 'genuine social, political or cultural analysis' (van Dijk, 1994: 164). Such an interdisciplinary perspective should in all probability yield most promising results. |
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