Pecularitiies

20. Political Discourse

JOHN WILSON

Subject Linguistics » Discourse Analysis

Key-Topics political

DOI: 10.1111/b.9780631205968.2003.00021.x

0 Introduction

The study of political discourse, like that of other areas of discourse analysis, covers a broad range of subject matter, and draws on a wide range of analytic methods. Perhaps more than with other areas of discourse, however, one needs at the outset to consider the reflexive and potentially ambiguous nature of the term political discourse. The term is suggestive of at least two possibilities: first, a discourse which is itself political; and second, an analysis of political discourse as simply an example discourse type, without explicit reference to political content or political context. But things may be even more confusing. Given that on some definitions almost all discourse may be considered political (Shapiro 1981), then all analyses of discourse are potentially political, and, therefore, on one level, all discourse analysis is political discourse.
This potentially confusing situation arises, in the main, from definitions of the political in terms of general issues such as power, conflict, control, or domination (see Fairclough 1992a, 1995; Giddens 1991; Bourdieu 1991; van Dijk 1993; Chilton and Schaffer 1997), since any of these concepts may be employed in almost any form of discourse. Recently, for example, in a study of a psychotherapeutic training institution, Diamond (1995) refers to her study of the discourse of staff meetings as “political,” simply because issues of power and control are being worked out. They are being worked out at different levels, however: at interpersonal, personal, institutional, and educational levels for example, and in different strategic ways (Chilton 1997). By treating all discourse as political, in its most general sense, we may be in danger of significantly overgeneralizing the concept of political discourse.
Perhaps we might avoid these

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