Search results for "Political rhetoric"

Contesting Category Salience: A study of the perceptions of the sides involved in the Persian Gulf War

2001

AbstractPrevious studies of political rhetoric in general, and the rhetoric surrounding the Gulf war in particular, have suggested that social categories are not defined by perceptual features of context, but rather rhetorically constructed and contested for the purposes of mass mobilisation. Thus western leaders portrayed the conflict as ‘Civilisation against Saddam Hussein’ in order to maximise the pro-war constituency, while leaders of the western anti-war movements portrayed it in terms of ‘Western leaders against ordinary (Iraqi) people’ in order to minimise the pro-war constituency. However these studies focus exclusively on leaders and fail to show whether ordinary people differ in t…

Redescribing the Nation : Anti-Semitism as a tool of nation-building in the Hungarian Numerus Clausus debates, 1920-1928

2018

Abstract Boosting national spirit through projection of otherness is not a new phenomenon, at least in authoritarian regimes. Yet the role of anti-Semitism in the Numerus Clausus debates in the Hungarian parliament in 1920 and 1928 is worth deeper analysis, as it bore a peculiar role in the Hungarian interwar counterrevolutionary nation-building. The Numerus Clausus law of 1920 set ethnic quotas to university enrolment; the explicit argument for this was countering the Jewish ‘over-representation’ in Hungarian society. However, in 1928 the law was amended, abolishing (in principle) the said quotas; this time the arguments favoured national consolidation, where segregation was to be moderate…

Positive self-evaluation versus negative other-evaluation in the political genre of pre-election debates.

2014

The present study explores the language of evaluation in a sub-genre of political discourse, pre-electoral debates, and its potential persuasive function for gaining voters via a contraposition of positive self-evaluation and negative evaluation of the other candidate. A further aim of this research is to check whether the candidate’s ideology has a bearing on the entities that get evaluated. After a brief examination of the characteristics of the sub-genre at hand, specifically in the Spanish context, we present the results of an evaluation analysis carried out in a corpus of 19,849 words, which is the extension of the most recent pre-electoral debate held in Spain between the candidates …

Video surveillance and security policy in France: From regulation to widespread acceptance

2011

This article presents a historical account of the introduction and use of video surveillance cameras in France. Specific reference is made of the introduction of regulatory and legislative arrangements and to political debates surrounding the provision of video surveillance cameras. A feature of the French context has been a desire by national government to install cameras more widely in public places and a resistance to do so by local regions (departments). This highlights a traditional tension between central and local government in France and the significance of political rhetoric to the ongoing installation and operation of video surveillance cameras.

Emotions and political rhetoric: Perception of danger, group conflict and the biopolitics of fear

2016

Abstract In the present article I shall argue that human emotion is multifaceted and has a cognitive dimension in virtue of its intricate connections with beliefs, memories, imagination, and other products of human rationality. Human emotion also has a social and political dimension. When we think about fear we cannot characterize it as a mere stimulus-response phenomenon: it is, due to its cognitive facet, more complex and related to our ideas about survival and well-being. This leaves fear exposed to political rhetoric, and thus to political manipulation. Fear can be aroused, guided and nourished amongst the population, giving rise to a biopolitics of fear. In this article, I will conside…

Representation, nation and time : the political rhetoric of the 1866 parliamentary reform in Sweden

2000

Paradigms for Political Action. A Draft for a Repertoire

2022

Whether politics is a separate sphere or an aspect of human action is a subject of academic controversy. I focus here on the political aspect of action, which is not exclusive of other aspects. There are no ‘naturally political’ issues nor is there anything completely devoid of a political aspect. I am now taking a step backwards to discuss the seemingly simple ‘political or not’ question, as compared to the ‘political in which sense’ question, which I have discussed elsewhere. In this article, I stay on the ideal–typical level, as I want to discuss alternative ways of marking the criteria for the political aspect, without discussing the views of other scholars in detail. I call the procedu…

"Toimikaa, älkää odottako" : Vihtori Kosolan puheiden muutokset 1929-1936

2015

The dissertation is concerned with the speeches of Vihtori Kosola (1884–1936), recruiter of jäger, strike breaker and activist. Kosola assumed the leadership of the Lapua Movement in 1929. His most significant speeches were delivered on the peasants’ march of 7 July 1930 and on the 15th anniversary of the war of independence on 16 May 1933. Kosola was a political speaker and the figurehead of the Patriotic people’s movement (IKL) founded in 1932. The Study focuses on Kosola’s speeches applying rhetorical-semantic concept analysis with regard to the changes occurring in the main concepts. Changes in the speeches are used to explore the concepts of democracy and application of the law in Finl…