Appunti Inglese - modulo P

POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Types of political discourse

- Manifestos, posters and campaign statements

1. Materials mostly produced for elections

2. presenting the views of the party and/or of the candidate

◦ Non-scripted speeches

◦ Debates

◦ Press conferences

◦ Political talk shows

- Pre-scripted speeches

1. Prepared ahead of delivery (hence, consciously planned)

2. (possibly) closer to spoken language

3. First person pronoun used more frequently

4. Spontaneity markers (ex: you know)

5. Direct address (you…)

6. Contractions

7. Written to be read aloud

The inclusive technique (nationality, religion, race, vocation…)

- Achievements of one’s party

- “Fear” technique:

1. what will happen in their hands?

2. Producing some kind of potential threat to the public

3. and then solutions

- Avoid any positive attributes found in opponents and loudly decry their negative traits and

failings

- Deny any flaws or negative aspects in one’s own character or set of beliefs

- Common/national/universal values

- Justice vs. injustice / good vs. bad

Fear technique:

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make

no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's

armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force

may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections

of man and the limits of reason.”

Obama’s Nobel speech, December 9, 2009

Remember, in politics we use most of the rhetorical devices:

- metaphor and simile,

- metonymy + synecdoche,

- alliteration,

- listing (Rule of three),

- parallelism + antithesis,

- repetition,

- rhetorical questions.

Use of pronouns:

● 1st and 2nd person pronouns – bringing speaker and audience together

● 3rd person pronouns – creating distance

POLITICAL DEBATES

- TRUMP vs CLINTON

- BIDEN

POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL MEDIA - AOC = ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (NY-Dem)

- Her home-style politics—based on group identification, recognition, and support— has

contributed to the shaping of her political identity as the people’s representative

- AOC heavily leverages her identity to narrate a story of rapid ascent from a Puerto Rican

working-class background to Democratic national politics. It is a story that echoes the

American Dream, but it is also a story that deploys discursive strategies and imagery that

resonate with a populist identity.

- Her personal and cultural identity acts as a trait d’union between her political activism

(identity-politics) and her populist image (identity-populism)

- AOC’s use of social media platforms has facilitated coverage of her identity in the name of her

values and policies

- What are the most recurrent linguistic and visual semiotic features that AOC uses as

self-representation on her Twitter profile?

- In what way do these features embody expressions of AOC’s personal, cultural, and political

identity?

- Is it possible to detect the forms and styles of populist rhetoric that resonate with a populist

identity?

In the political arena, identity is a significant presence as it plays an essential role in people’s thinking

about, voting for and supporting political actors who are called to represent them in government

Populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies mostly owing to the

populist allure, which consists in the promise of standing up for the ordinary people whose voice has

been forgotten

Populism as:

- a discursive and performative construction of the people against the system, specifying that

this construction is done “in the performative dimension of naming” (Laclau 2005a, 103), and

is therefore grounded in discourse

- a “thin-centered ideology” (Mudde 2004, 544) whose core value depicts society as divided

into two antagonistic groups: ‘the people,’ deprived of their rights, values and identity, and

the usurping elite and dangerous ‘others’

- a communication style characterized by the use of identity, rhetoric, and media, allowing

political actors to project their persona in public, private and institutional spheres through a

variety of media channels (Moffitt 2016)

Features of populism:

- Good (common) people vs evil elite

- playing the proverbial underdog

- displaying a bullying attitude towards the establishment

The content of the message is a priority for AOC

multimodal features never take the place of language but are integrated to create a natural flow of the

discussion.

AOC’s Twitter communication is a verbal and visual testimony of her campaign style, set of beliefs,

policy-making proposals, personality traits, lifestyle sketches, that are not only closely related to her

personal and cultural identity, but also impossible to separate from her political persona (Hong 2013).

picture and text are always linked, together you can tell the picture is from instagram, an

instagram story. (This was back when twitter did not

allow different forms.)

she's lighting a candle for a religious celebration

(jewish religion- celebration) → because she is of

jewish descent (= she has the right to be part of the jewish community). this time photographed very

visibility -

rabi mia is the authority in this case , she's stepping back (photograph from the back, the side , you

see better the other person).

The quote “the light which sparks all others” is the most important in the picture. She's lighting a

candle , meaning that she is the light that sparks all the others.

also th choice of the fonts are important :

- the quote - in neon font (neon = luce) her + two other politicians , they

were elected together they

became known as “the squad”

(= because they’re very

aggressive left politicians).

she’s “shouting” it . she's smiling

and the other women are

laughing; she's also looking

straight ahead = non si sta

rivolgendo all’intervistatore, ma

chi guarda il video. gli altri

sguardo convergono (sembrano

angioletti sulle spalle che

guardano verso di lei, un po

sorprese e stupite ma in linea di

massima d’accordo)

JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE

THE LADDER OF PUBLICATION :

- BROADSHEETS (+ online version)

- TABLOIDS (+ online version)

- NICHE SPECIALIST → the economist is the same

- GENERAL COSTUMER PRESS → magazines mostly - women audience , huge circulation

- SPECIALIST CONSUMER PRESS → riviste specializzate (giardinaggio oggi - national

geographic …)

- BUSINESS PRESS

- REGIONAL PAPERS → l’arena per verona

- FREE PRESS → organi di stampa liberi, nel senso che non sono ufficiali riconosciuti

QUALITY PAPERS (BROADSHEETS)

- the Times

- daily Telegraph

- Independent

- The Guardian

- The Observer

- the Financial Times

- the New York Times

- CNN

TABLOIDS

- the Sun

- daily Mirror

- daily Express

- daily Star

- morning Star

daily meals → sta cercando di passare ai quality papers ma non ci riesce, perché il taglio editoriale è

diverso. ma è nel mezzo perché è un tabloid con un minimo di criterio

there are 3 types of news paper articles (che si contaminano a vicenda)

1. NEWS REPORT→ notizie che noi chiamiamo di cronaca ( nel senso che fa la cronaca

dell'attualità = notizie del giorno, novità all’esterno , finanziaria culturale , anche il gossip) -

reporting a fact not an opinion, reporting a factual evidence based story.

FEATURES

- info must be reliable (sources, data, numbers)

- use of past forms (si ricorda un fatto), temporal sequences, time adverbials, historical

present.

- the first 20/25 words are the introduction also known as LEDE (lid) → all the relevant,

precise and fundamental details have to be there.

- The intro is followed by details that you don’t want in the intro, sometimes these

details are called LOCK-IN → normally the second and third paragraph. - more

details but a bit less important.

TEASE → DELAY DROP - aspettate a buttare dentro le informazioni

2. FEATURE - a feature might :

- educacate

- analyze

- entretrain

- expand on a news story

- keep in touch with existing readers

important TO ASK YOURSELF WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THIS FEATURE

- INTRO → get the reader in, you want to signpost your focus (readership, publication, section

of the publication; it draws the readers into the story and needs to retain their interest.)

◦ Create a bit of atmosphere

◦ Add a hook

◦ Show your angle (encapsulate your story in one sentence, that is the angle of the story, at

some stage near the top you have to bring it into the story).

- BODY → keep the reader interested

◦ think of every paragraph as a point

◦ the points have to back up your angle

- OUT-RO → leave the reader with something (an anecdote, introduce another story).

◦ The conclusion has to be grabbing

◦ It generally goes back to the beginning.

3. COMMENTARY

- moving from fact to opinion

- balanced argumentation vs unbalanced argumentation

- linguistic features

- connoted vs denoted words

- parallel structures

- rhetorical questions

- modality

◦ Reports, features and commentaries are GETTING BLURRED!!

EXAMPLES :

“ - A year after the election it doesn't make sense. It's not relevant to their lives. Everyone agrees January 6 was ugly. But was it really a greater

threat to America than, say, inflation? Than opening the southern border and admitting two million people whose identities we can't confirm? Yeah,

they tell us January 6 was scary. Reporters were very afraid. But was it as scary as what's going on right now tonight in say, upscale shopping

malls in Atlanta, where people are being shot to death in the parking lot? It was a crime, OK? Was it a greater crime in the manufactured drug

epidemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans, mostly young people, in the last year? Probably not. And yet protesters who walked

through the Capitol that day are still in jail tonight a year later. The Sackler family, the group that destroyed rural America with OxyContin, got off

with a fine. They’re still billionaires and so on and so on. So it's a tough sell, telling normal people that this is a world-historic event. So why are

they still saying that? There are reasons actually and we're going to do our best to explain what those reasons are and what actually happened? - “

- the strategy here = rhetorical list , list of alternative threats that he is saying (very serious

happening within the us) .

- his accusation exag