Abstract
Discourse practice is in essence a kind of social practice (Fairclough, 2003) in which the context of multiple social realities or world views – either convergent or divergent – compete with each other. The heteroglossic nature of language communication is prominent in political discourse. Meaning is thus not only a dialogue between speaker (or writer) and addressee in that a response is expected, it is also a dialogue with previous texts to which a speaker responds. As is indicated on the back cover of this book, dialogue in politics exists ‘on a continuum – with one end where participants are able to contribute to the dialogic action freely and collaboratively, and the other where participants are restricted to participating in the dialogue in strictly pre-defined ways’.
The book is composed of three sections. The first is a chapter by the editors which mainly introduces the research background of dialogues in politics. The editors argue that politics is action which is essentially co-operative in the Gricean sense. As for political dialogue, the change from public discourse to media discourse requires ‘the accommodation of more subtle processes of communication accommodating further layers of analysis’ (p. 7). As a consequence, the expression of politics goes beyond text and talk, and focuses on the dynamic transmission of text and talk. For a better description of the operational mechanism of political dialogue, two perspectives, namely politics as interaction and politics as imposition, are further explained in the second and third sections.
In the second section, both the research data and the research methodology are diverse. Ensink analyzes discussion lists from three different websites and on different news stories, while Johansson also looks at online news and examines the use of video in digital news sources. In contrast to these, Bull discusses the interaction between journalists and politicians and how this contributes to good television. Minow analyzes mediatized politics and televised debates from the perspective of positioning theory. Dosev analyzes how Bulgarian politicians utilize marketing strategies to build their public images and to convey their messages. In the final chapter of this section, Anchimbe discusses a unique form of communication from Cameroon: ‘motions of support’, which are produced by ordinary citizens, not people with political power.
In the ‘Politics as Imposition’ part of the book, Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu first explores perspectivation techniques in a Romanian parliamentary debate. Berlin then analyzes speeches of Sarah Palin from the perspective of positioning theory in order to explain her appeal to Tea Party supporters and to show what she believes to be a lack of substance in her discourse. El-Hussari explores how Obama constructs the need for a ‘new beginning’ in relations between the US and the Muslim world and how he seeks to establish a constructive dialogue between the two. Gavriely-Nuri looks at how political and military figures use discursive strategies to gain the support of the public for wars. In the final chapter Sauer unpacks every aspect of a media event in Britain to commemorate the Holocaust, with the focus on how it affects the television audience.
The outstanding feature of this book is its discussion of the two interaction perspectives, politics as interaction and politics as imposition. According to Laclau and Mouffe (2001), articulationary practice is a kind of interaction in society through which identity or subjectivity is constructed, reconstructed or negotiated. This interactive process, in which discourse practice will dialectically constitute the social world, forms the platform on which different social realities interact, negotiate and even conflict with each other. In this sense, by focusing on interactivity in political fields, we may gain a deeper understanding of how politics operates and thus how politics influences and is influenced by social contexts. If we treat interaction as the surface feature of politics, imposition will be the final purpose of this interactivity. This highlights the manipulative nature of discourse (Van Dijk, 2009). Discourse in general, and political discourse in particular, do not merely reflect social reality; they construct and shape it through certain discourse strategies.
The individual chapters in the book highlight case studies from various perspectives. Owing to the interdisciplinary nature of political discourse, it is hard to examine text and talk in politics from one discipline, and thus case studies are more useful as a means of investigating how political discourse operates. Therefore this volume includes, but is not limited to, semiotics, (critical) discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, media and communication studies.
The difficulty in defining political discourse (whether it is an institutional discourse or a kind of media discourse as indicated in the introduction) as well as the dilemma of which analytical perspectives to choose (political institution, text and talk in politics and the audience of the political message) constitutes the predicament in choosing one consistent research method and theoretical foundation. In this sense, the case studies included in this book are more like pilot studies which need more experimental evidence to test their universality. Thus a great deal more work needs to be done before we can have a comprehensive understanding of this area of public communication. In general this book will be of great interest for researchers in political discourse studies.