Discourse, concepts, ideologies

Abstract

Two branches of discourse studies, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discourse theory (DT), could benefit through extending their critical focus and incorporating findings and methodologies of neighbouring disciplines. While indebted to the attentiveness of CDA to ordinary language, ideology studies have by contrast developed interpretative, non-judgmental analytical frameworks that explore the many-faceted features of ideology, power, and the political. In turn, the macro-focus of DT on binary distinctions, articulatory equivalences, and the construction of hegemony through empty signifiers, overlooks the complex internal conceptual morphology that produces multiple ideological vocabularies. Through a layered filtering of texts, utterances, and linguistic intensities, ideological micro-morphology reveals processes of semantic decontestation in order to defend, alter or criticize political thought-practices. It illuminates the complex interrelationship between word and concept and accepts fantasies as ineluctable and decodable features of communal life. By reaching out beyond their disciplinary confines, the interplay of these parallel approaches could enrich the scholarly understanding of the political.

Friends, enemies, and agonists: Politics, morality and media in the COVID-19 conjuncture

“…And she would appreciate Krzyżanowski’s (2020) recognition that the far-right’s ascent needs to be grasped as a by-product of neoliberal hegemony. However, she would also insist on the need for a political analysis of the current conjuncture that differs from the more explicitly moral and judgmental orientation of critical discourse analysis (see Freeden, 2021). This impulse shapes the methodological orientation of my analysis in two important respects.…”

“…I cite the point not to question Mouffe’s analysis of Austrian politics, but rather to note how it is not hard to hear the echo of a quintessentially liberal trope beloved of journalists in her argument, about how ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ for exposing dangerous political ideas (Peters, 2005) – a liberal journalistic credo that different authors have critiqued for its complicity with normalization processes (Mondon and Winter, 2020; Phillips, 2018). The point recalls, in turn, a criticism of the post-Marxist tradition voiced by Freeden (2021). It has not been great at grasping the significance of everyday forms of politics, in part because of its privileging of an ontological understanding of the political that – not without irony – deems some accounts of politics to be more ‘proper’ than others (Devenney, 2020).…”

Internet As A Factor Of Negative Political Identity Of Students

“…The authors decided to turn to the study of that level of group consciousness at which ideology is still in a latent and amorphous state (Freeden, 2021), in the form of unreflected ideologemes that are practically unrelated to each other to solve the problem described above. At this pre-reflective level of group political consciousness, ideologies are just beginning to form through the crystallization of "vague ideologemes" into ideological concepts (Lukichev et al, 2019).…”

The UK, the EU, and COVID-19: Media reporting, the recontextualisation of Eurosceptic discourse, and the fait accompli of Brexit

“…Brexit was reported as out of the equation and as a ‘neutral’ element of COVID-19 during the first phase, but re-entered the discursive field during the second phase of the analysis. In this regard, Brexit was intentionally mobilised by the media to fit with the logic of Euroscepticism, was considered instrumental for the success of the UK’s vaccination programme and, therefore, was the driver of new argumentation strategies justifying Brexit and calling into question those who oppose it ( Freeden, 2021 ). UK Eurosceptic discourse, having been nurtured during Brexit as a conflicting amalgam between ‘the real and the imaginary, as well as the past and the expected future’ ( Krzyżanowski, 2019 : 382; see also Maccaferri, 2019 ), finally finds in the pandemic a material terrain for pursuit.…”