Constructing the “self” and the “other” in Bush’s political discourse before and after the Iraq war (2002–2008)

Abstract

The article investigates the construction of the “self” and the “other” in George W. Bush’s political discourse before and after the Iraq war. Van Dijk’s ideological square theory is used to examine the group polarization of Us versus Them dichotomy. Halliday’s systemic functional grammar is utilised to analyse the speeches and to designate the strategies that Bush utilises to differentiate between the protagonist (America) and the antagonist (Iraq). Furthermore, the diachrony in Bush’s discourse regarding Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam Hussein is also examined. The results of the study indicated that before the invasion, Iraq was an active entity in upgrading its WMDs’ program and supporting terrorism. However, after the invasion, Iraq is now perceived as a beacon of hope in the Middle East, thus, justifying America’s illegitimate act of invading Iraq.

Functional and Linguistic Characteristics of Donald Trump’s Victory and Inaugural Speeches

“…One thing that should be taken into consideration at this point is the use of personal pronouns as Wilson (1990) states, pronominal choices can reveal crucial information about the speaker and his/her attitude to the listener. The fact is that pronouns can contribute to expressing the opposition 'we' -'they', which forms the basis of perceiving the world in categories (Abid & Manan, 2017) and is typical of political discourse in general (Levenkova, 2011, p. 115). Within such an opposition the former component is usually marked as positive whereas the latter one is negatively coloured (Ma, 2012).…”

Constructing the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy through the notion of responsibility: An integrated framework

“…The dimension of blaming others for wrongdoing and/or faults in the topos of responsibility (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001) is consistent with the second aspect of the ideological square, that is, expressing/emphasizing information that is negative about 'them' (van Dijk, 1998). Previous research has extensively studied the application of this aspect in constructing and normalizing the 'us' and 'them' division, such as othering the im/migrant(s) from the European Union by blaming them as threats to the security and well-being of the UK in British right-wing newspapers (Tong and Zuo, 2019), othering Iraq by blaming it as a threat to the national security of the US in George W. Bush's public speeches (Abid and Manan, 2016), othering the Ahmadiyya sect (a self-defined sect of Islam) by blaming it as the hijacker, traitor, and enemy of Islam in the texts by the Indonesian Islamic Defender Front (Irawan, 2017), and othering Trump's America by blaming the US' protectionism and anti-globalization in China's state-run English newspaper China Daily (CD) (Pan et al, 2020).…”

“…Portraying ‘us’ as responsible, instead of accountable, actors emphasize the positive side of ‘us’, coinciding with the first aspect of the ideological square (van Dijk, 1998). This discursive strategy was also extensively uncovered in politics-related discourses, for example, highlighting the initiatives of the US in providing humanistic care and advancing democracy in the world through the words ‘committed’, ‘determined’, and ‘willing’ in Bush’s speeches on America’s military actions in Iraq (Abid and Manan, 2016), and emphasizing the proactive stance and measures taken by the central government of China in dealing with China’s air pollution issues in CD (Liu and Li, 2017) and the HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment in Xinhua News Agency (XH) (Wu, 2006). Interestingly, in responding to the thesis of ‘responsible great power’, China’s policymakers tried to gain an upper hand by interpreting the idea of responsibility as China’s self-acknowledged commitment to international security, trade, humanity, and other issues, but to avoid admitting international duties merely as a response to other countries’ exhortations (Yeophantong, 2013).…”

Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research

“…Major topics often associated with discursive and framing analyses are ideology or identity construction (see. Wang, 2017; Wodak and Boukala, 2015), populism and racism (Mayaffre and Scholz, 2017), or peace and war issues (Abid and Shakila, 2016; Anchimbe, 2008). Other studies concentrate to a large extent on specific linguistic characteristics of the discourses, such as Wang and Liu’s (2018) analysis of Trump discourses, or Roitman’s (2014) study of the use of pronouns by French presidential candidates.…”