Political Discourse Analysis

1
Political Discourse Analysis

• Language, Media, and Politics (with a special
  focus on the representation of Islam, in
  recognition of the University of Essexs Islamic
  Awareness Week, 18 22 February 2008)

2
Sociolinguistics LG232

• The last 5 weeks (Part 1) we have looked at
• Macro-level the ways language is politicised by
  different groups (language movements,
  governments) to achieve certain aims.
• Such as national unity, regional identity, as a
  basis to claim rights/resources for minority
  groups.
• The ways in which multilingualism is managed in
  societies.
• And that for power to exist, there must be
  resistance
• What we havent looked at resistance at the
  individual level in terms of use of language
  (weeks 23 25)
• Or actual language use

3
Critical Discourse Analysis

• Draws heavily on the work of Foucault.
• Discourse statements about things, which come to
  be considered true
• And which produce ideological positions
• Discourses on medicine, psychiatry even
  language
• Also draws on theorists such as Bourdieu
• Discourse can also be conversations, written
  material (such as newspapers, or political
  speeches)
• But even these discourses produce concepts and
  truths and limit what can and cannot be said
  about a subject in a particular context
• Critical Discourse Analysis looks at real
  natural language
• (as opposed to, e.g. syntacticians, who look at
  made-up examples)

4
Critical Discourse Analysis

• Sees words, utterances not in isolation
• But in relation to other utterances, etc.
• All discourse seen as TEXTS to be read
• In webs or networks of relations of power
• Context specific
• And the same language or concept can be used and
  interpreted in very different ways
• Particularly concerned with language used in
  political speeches and the media
• So not just context specific, but
  audience-specific
• Though it has implications for individual
  language use what words or phrases might we NOT
  use now that were acceptable 30 years ago?
• E.g. terms considered racially derogatory,
  homophobic

5
Critical Discourse Analysis

• Sees language and discourse as social practice
• And as productive of knowledge which maintains
  power
• Not just a top-down operation of power
• Power/Knowledge
• CDA enables resistance by understanding power
  relations and their manifestation in discourse

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Case Study 1 Sharia Law in Britain

• Sharia law Islamic / Muslim law which basically
  (depending on your interpretation) is a moral and
  criminal code
• Requires giving alms (aid) to the poor as a moral
  duty that money loaned should not be subject to
  interest that your savings at the end of the
  year (not income) should be taxed by 10 for the
  good of the community
• Northern Rock? Sub-prime credit crisis?
• Certain brands of Sharia provide for punishment
  for e.g. adultery
• The most potent symbol of Sharia in British
  society is states like Sudan, Saudi Arabia (often
  Western-backed, with the exception perhaps of
  Iran) which cut off the hands of thieves, stone
  adulterers to death.
• Though most scholars would agree that this is not
  the true intention of Sharia law, and is simply
  an authoritarian political system or state
  misusing the tenets of Sharia for social control
• And the Arabic proverb tabash fi elbeit
  elaumi, shauf (the weak sighted man in the
  house of the blind is he who sees best)
  emblematic of Foucaults riposte to the criticism
  that no-one is outside discourse allowing for
  power/resistance within the confines of
  structure/agency
• Makes the people accountable to Allah through
  the Government, rather than the Government
  accountable to the people. (Price, field notes
  2000)
• Claim it is based on the Koran but dont forget
  the Christian Old Testament is full of smiting
  and stoning eye for an eye, tooth for a
  tooth.
• And Tower of Babel punishment for
  monolingualism

7
What the Archbishop Said

• From the text of Archbishop Williams lecture
• Among the manifold anxieties that haunt the
  discussion of the place of Muslims in British
  society, one of the strongest, reinforced from
  time to time by the sensational reporting of
  opinion polls, is that Muslim communities in this
  country seek the freedom to live under sharia
  law.  And what most people think they know of
  sharia is that it is repressive towards women and
  wedded to archaic and brutal physical
  punishments
• This lecture will not attempt a detailed
  discussion of the nature of sharia, which would
  be far beyond my competence my aim is only, as I
  have said, to tease out some of the broader
  issues around the rights of religious groups
  within a secular state, with a few thought about
  what might be entailed in crafting a just and
  constructive relationship between Islamic law and
  the statutory law of the United Kingdom.
• In this sense, while (as I have said) we are not
  talking about two rival systems on the same
  level, there is some community of understanding
  between Islamic social thinking and the
  categories we might turn to in the non-Muslim
  world for the understanding of law in the most
  general context.  There is a recognition that our
  social identities are not constituted by one
  exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging
• Our social identities are not constituted by one
  exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging
  almost Foucauldian or post-structrualist in its
  construction.
• http//www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575

8
What the media said he said

• The Sun Williams had "handed al-Qaida a victory
• The Express he had "surrendered to fanatics"
• Interesting use of metaphor
• Victory Surrender metaphor of battle/war
  why?
• Implicitly Al Qaida adversary in the war on
  terror
• Muslim fanatics but British/US soldiers in Iraq
  Our Boys.
• The Daily Mail Ayatollah of Canterbury
  suggesting divided loyalties
• traitor?
• Archbishop Williams clearly did not propose the
  kind of dualism (duel-ism) which would form the
  basis of a battle

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(No Transcript)
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Anchoring using text with image Framing
distorting what was said in order to make it
unassailable
11

• Why was this picture NOT on the first page?
• Why is he described as being in his pomp?
• How can we read this choice of picture in terms
  of Archbishop Williams smiling, and in clearly
  religious dress?

12

• Use Sharia law on bike thieves, says MP Boris
• First it was Liverpudlians, then Papua New
  Guineans and then Jamie Oliver. Now Boris Johnson
  has a new target in his sights - bicycle thieves.
  Fed up with having his bike stolen and wheel nuts
  taken, the outspoken Tory MP and cycling
  enthusiast wants to get tough on bike thieves.
• "I think these people deserve punishment and I'm
  calling for Sharia law for bicycle thieves."
• In the past, Johnson has accused Liverpool
  residents of 'wallowing' in grief after the death
  of Iraq hostage Ken Bigley, linked Papua New
  Guineans to cannibalism and said he would "get
  rid of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver" if he ever
  ran the country.
• (Daily Mail - 16th March 2007)

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Case Study 2 Terrorists, Terrorism, and the War
on Terror

• the problem of extradition of terrorists has
  given us much anxiety. It has imposed constraints
  on the work of our Security Forces and courts in
  the United Kingdom
• There are thousands of these terrorists in more
  than 60 countries They will hand over the
  terrorists, or they will share in their fate.
  These terrorists kill not merely to end lives,
  but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every
  atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful,
  retreating from the world and forsaking our
  friends They stand against us, because we stand
  in their way ... We are not deceived by their
  pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind
  before. They are the heirs of all the murderous
  ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing
  human life to serve their radical visions -- by
  abandoning every value except the will to power
  -- they follow in the path of fascism, and
  Nazism, and totalitarianism.
• What we witnessed in London last Thursday week
  was not an aberrant act. It was not random. It
  was not a product of particular local
  circumstances in West Yorkshire What we are
  confronting here is an evil ideology. It is not a
  clash of civilisations - all civilised people,
  Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is
  a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas,
  hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside
  it
• Who are the terrorists here?
• Thatcher, 1978
• Bush, 2001
• Blair, 2005
• (And how do/can we read this slide as a text?)

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More stuff

• Bush after 9/11
• Bush and Steve Bridges

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Summary

• PDA / CDA
• Overtly political in terms of its aims (Kress,
  1990)
• About framing of specific issues within specific
  discourses
• Concerned with representation of people,
  concepts, ideas (Stuart Hall ref) in particular
  ways that maintain (or challenge) asymmetrical
  power relations in society
• Sees texts not just as individual words (and not
  even just words pictures and symbols too) but
  as whole bodies of information which have
  internal power relations, as well as power
  relations with external texts and discourses
• We can use CDA to identify the ways in which
  ideologies of hatred and prejudice are
  perpetuated
• Thus, as individuals, we can formulate strategies
  of resistance!