Investigating an institutionalised genre: e.g. PM’s Question Time, the language of election campaigns and referenda, political interviews on TV/radio, newspaper
editorials, party political websites.

Order Description
The subject is actually “Language and Politics”, a bit about language and linguistic on political activities instead of only analysing political behaviours. The
subject area is more on the role of liguistic (ie. use of metaphor/specific language) across a chosen institutionalised genre.

You have to help me to choose ONE SPECIFIC phenomenon among these: newspaper editorials, PM’s Question Time, the language of election campaigns and referenda,
political interviews on TV/radio, party political websites.

After choosing ONE specific topic, investigate the linguistic phenomenon and investigate its role across a range of political texts regarding:
e.g. use of metaphor,
the role of pronouns or other deictic items,
the role of grammatical construction in the foregrounding/backgrounding of different social actors,
devices of depersonalisation,
uses of moralising vocabulary or fear-evoking vocabulary,
uses of modal verbs and other modal expressions to signal certainty, uncertainty etc.

Available material: texts from books, print media (newspapers/magazines, journals) internet, transcripts of video clips, posters, pamphlets, cartoons.

Focus on one main topic, illustrated by an exemplary selection of relevant examples.

Overall Structure:
1. Short introduction of topic, why interesting? Context
2. Characterization of main the theoretical/ methodological angle of your research (with references and in-text cite to research literature)
3. Analysis of examples
4. Conclusion (Your own!)
5. Complete List of References and sources used in your essay
6. Appendix: full text examples of main examples analyzed in the text

To provide you more details on this essay, the Structure of the module:
1. Basics of Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, Logos and their linguistic manifestations – relationship to modern theories of meaning and of language use
2. The role of political vocabulary and terminology
3. Framing in Political discourse: topic-setting, agency, epistemic presentation (assertion, question …)
4. The role of figurative langue in political discourse
5. The role of Argumentation in political discourse
6. Political discourse and ideology
7. Critical synthesis, presentation and essay briefing
8. Political discourse and the “truth”: Critical discourse analysis