Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice (review)

In the preface, Paul Chilton situates this text primarily within critical theory and cognitive linguistics, specifically addressing the question ‘what does the use of language in contexts we call “political” tell us about humans in general?’ (xi). The author notes that this question is particularly important for an increasingly global yet fragmented world, and his stated goal is to encourage other scholars to continue exploring the cognitive link between language and politics.

To that end, the book is divided into four sections that expand the discussion of language and politics from individuals to domestic and then global arenas before concluding with a theoretical summation. Part 1, ‘Political animals as articulate animals’, contains four chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Politics and language’, asserts that politics is essentially performed through language, and thus C suggests that we must explore how the ‘complexities, fluidities and rigidities’ of language work to enact political discourse. In Ch. 2, ‘Language and politics’, the author distinguishes between ‘language as speech’ and ‘language in use’, carefully equating the later as ‘discourse’. Language is important for cognition as well as social and political practices. In Ch. 3, ‘Interaction’, C summarizes and compares H. Paul Grice’s cooperative principle with Jürgen Habermas’s validity claims. He then relates these to the strategic functions of coercion, legitimization vs. delegitimization, and representation vs. misrepresentation. Ch. 4, ‘Representation’, focuses on how ‘meaning’ is conveyed between speakers and hearers. Initially, C distinguishes semantics as a way to view or understand meaning as ‘separate from context’, while pragmatics addresses meaning as a ‘function of context’ (48). C sides firmly with the pragmatic sense of meaning. Critical to his view are the dimensions of deixis, with three axes (space, time, and modality) that intersect to create a deictic center.

Chs. 5, 6, and 7 comprise Part 2, ‘The domestic arena’. In each of these chapters, C applies his critical construct of space, time, and modality as a way of investigating how politics is performed through language. In Ch. 5, C looks closely at how media, the BBC in particular, establish discourse topics through critical discussion of presumptions that underlie social practices and values. Chs. 6 and 7 extend the explication of how politics is performed through language, looking at parliamentary and foreign language in use, respectively.

Having looked at how language is used politically in a national context, C broadens his perspective to a global context in Part 3: Chs. 8, 9, and 10 look at how language is used in international politics to conceptualize policy in terms of time, space, and modality. Ch. 8, ‘Distant places’, focuses on how former President Bill Clinton created deictic justification for taking action in Kosovo in 1999. In Ch. 9, ‘Worlds apart’, C examines and compares the deictic positioning and purposive justification in speeches given by President George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. The author asserts that there is a ‘striking parallel’ between the two speeches in terms of polemic polarization along cultural, political, and moral conceptualizations. Religion, and more significantly how religion influences personal and cultural identities, is assessed in Ch. 10, and C concludes that religion, at least at some level, defines modality.

In his concluding chapter, C posits twelve hypotheses of political discourse that he hopes will be addressed by others. Each of these hypotheses addresses the interaction, representation, and ‘meaning-making’ concepts of political discourse.