Waiting for democracy: Political crisis and the discursive (re)invention of the ‘national enemy’ in times of ‘Grecovery’

Abstract

This article seeks to identify the polarising rhetoric adopted by Greek mainstream political parties during the era of ‘Grecovery’. The article focuses on the war of words between New Democracy, the leading party of the coalition government, and Syriza, the main opposition party on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the murder of a 15-year-old schoolboy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by a police officer and the subsequent riots of December 2008 and the authorities’ closure of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). It draws on the political statements of two political parties – New Democracy and Syriza – and emphasises direct reference to the Greek civil war (1946–1949) and parallelisms of the current political climate with the colonels’ dictatorship (1967–1974). In focusing on those obscure pages of Greek modern history, this article analyses the discursive construction of collective memories of two different political poles and examines how the Greek left and right wings legitimise and redefine their political identities through the prism of their divided past. Using the discursive strategies of the discourse historical approach (DHA), the article illustrates how the DHA can reveal silencing strategies that lead to the discursive construction of the distinction between ‘Us’ – ‘democratic patriots’ and ‘Them’ – ‘enemies of the Greek nation’. Finally, recontextualisation in political rhetoric is highlighted as one of the ways of (re)constructing the tension and dichotomy between leftists and rightists. A systematic and explicit discourse analytic methodology of political rhetoric, that is based on history and (re)shapes collective memories, leads to an interdisciplinary approach that brings together and connects political rhetoric, argumentation and critical discourse analysis.

Ideology as blocked mourning: Greek national identity in times of economic crisis and austerity

“…8 This paper contributes to our understanding of how this polarisation and instability of Greek political discourse came about and how it was sustained. In line with recent literature that foregrounds the role rhetoric and nationalist narratives play in such an account, 9 we show how references to patriotism and the nation, as well as references to themes from ancient and recent Greek history, emerged very quickly as key coordinates framing the crisis and its public perception. Much literature has focused on the nationalist tenor of left-wing and far right anti-austerity responses to the measures affirmed by successive promemorandum governments, 10 but in this article we show that the patriotic/nationalist framing was already present in the discourse of the 'centre' -the mainstream governments and press -eventually spreading to encompass virtually the entire Greek political-discursive landscape, the left SYRIZA party inclusive.…”

‘Greece will decide the future of Europe’: The recontextualisation of the Greek national elections in a British broadsheet newspaper

“…I also use SR compared to the more generic intertextuality, as this article focuses specifically on the representation of speech, namely words produced by figures directly or indirectly involved with the Greek general elections, which are then transferred to writing. I will still employ intertextuality as an overarching term that captures the dependence of texts/ talk upon other texts/talk, produced in different spatiotemporal contexts; this includes, as I explain below, not only the interrelation and constant interaction between texts/talk, but also between underlying discourses and/or embedded ideologies (see also Boukala, 2014).…”

The benefits of narratology in the analysis of multimodal legitimation: The case of New Democracy

“…Boukala and Dimitrakopoulou, 2016), political statements (e.g. Boukala, 2014) and discourses on the Greek mass media (e.g. Georgakopoulou, 2014; Lykou and Mitsikopoulou, 2017).…”