CIRCULAR Nº AFP-102-2009

Once the contents or topics of the discourse being analysed were established, in line with the DHA analytical framework, the analysis turned to the discursive strategies. The discursive strategies are heuristically linked to the research questions listed at the end of Chapter 3, adapted from Reisigl & Wodak (2001:101). In the definition of “discursive strategy”, Wodak (2001) refers to it as the more or less intentional plan of discursive practices that is resorted to with the aim of achieving a certain social, psychological, political or linguistic aim.

In the analysis and discussion of the interviews that follow, I draw on the earlier studies of national identity by Wodak and her associates (De Celia et al., 2001; Wodak et al., 2009:33- 34) and adopt their use of macro strategies that contribute to construction, perpetuation or justification, transformation and demontage or dismantling of (national) identity in discourse. Although analytically these strategies are distinct from one another, they tend to occur simultaneously in a discursive act, and help speakers to construct their interests (Chilton, 2004:78). Macro-strategies can also serve to construct and manipulate positive self and negative other representation, which also correspond to identity construction in discourse.

The most comprehensive of these discursive strategies are constructive strategies that are used to establish a certain (national) identity by drawing on unification, identification and solidarity as well as differentiation (Wodak et al., 2009:33). Strategies of perpetuation tend to preserve, support and/or protect a (national) identity that is threatened. Strategies of justification are considered to be a sub-group of macro-strategies, which by drawing on national history, reinstate and support “a common national self-perception” (ibid.). Strategies of transformation, as the name suggests, aim to transform an already established national identity and its components into another identity, usually with the help of rhetorical persuasion. Particularly useful in the context of the present study are the strategies of presupposition/emphasis of sameness (strategies of assimilation) and the strategies of presupposition/ emphasis of difference (strategies of dissimilation). Linguistically, strategies

of assimilation attempt to create a temporal, spatial, interpersonal similarity and homogeneity between different social groups and may draw on either of the macro-functions (i.e., constructive, destructive, perpetuating or justifying). Strategies of dissimilation (cf. also Matouschek, Wodak & Januschek 1995; Matouschek & Wodak 1995; Wodak & Matouschek 1993) create a temporal, interpersonal or territorial difference and heterogeneity in reference to the social groups in question by drawing on the same macro-functions as the strategies of assimilation (shown above). These macro strategies are realised by a number of argumentation schemes (i.e., topoi) and their respective linguistic means of realisation detailed in Wodak et al., (2009: 36-42) and adapted for the analyses and discussion of political speeches, online institutional texts and interviews throughout the present study as shown in the table below:

Table 3 Discursive macro strategies for construction of social actors and their identity in discourse

Strategy Argumentation schemes (topoi)

Means of realisation

Strategy of Justification and Relativisation

(i.e., the main function of this strategy is to restore, maintain and defend a common “national perception”, which has been “tainted” in one way or another)

Shift of Blame and Responsibility

– strategy of emphasizing the difference between “us” and “them”/ strategy of isolation and/or singularisation

Downplaying/ Trivialisation

– strategy emphasising negative sameness or negative common features – balancing one thing against

another

– strategy of avoidance and strategy of euphemizing (in reference to linguistic representation of the responsible social actors and in reference to the representation of negative actions and events)

Constructive strategies

(i.e., linguistic acts that “create” a particular national identity; constitution of a “national ‘we- group’ ”;

referencing a wider national group by appealing (directly or indirectly) to national unity and solidarity)

– topos of ignorance – topos of comparison/ topos

of difference

– topos of comparison/ topos of similarity

– topos of comparison/ locus a

minore

– topoi of comparison: topos of similarity, locus a minore – topos of lovely, idyllic place

(locus amoenus)

– topos of comparison/topos of difference (including ‘they are inferior compared to us’)

– lexical units with semantic components creating difference/ singularisation, parallelisms

– lexical units with levelling semantic components – ‘yes-but’ figures, suggestive

icons (one-sided weighting of topics manifested as detailed presentation vs. brief reference)

– passive (agent deletion), of euphemising (in reference to the vague personal reference, linguistic representation of the nominalisation (agent responsible social actors and in deletion), referential transfer reference to the representation of resulting in abstraction, negative actions and events) depersonalisation,

anonymisation (metonymy)

– lexemes with levelling components

Assimilation, Inclusion and Continuation

– presupposition/emphasis on intra-national

sameness/similarity

including the strategy of ‘we are all in the same boat’

Singularisation

presupposition of/emphasis on national (positive) uniqueness

Dissimilation/Exclusion and Discontinuation

– presupposition/emphasis on (state- internal and state-external) inter- national differences – discontinuation/emphasis on a difference between then and now

Strategies of Perpetuation

used as an attempt to transform a well-established element of national identity into another

Positive Self-Presentation/ Strategy of Calming Down Portrayal in Black and White

(frequently in combination with positive self-presentation)

Strategies of

Transformation

Aim to transform a relatively well-established national identity and its components into another identity the contours of which the

– topos of comparison/topos of difference (including ‘they are inferior compared to us’) – topos of the lovely, idyllic

place (locus amoenus)

– contrasting topos of comparison: for example, locus

amoenus vs. locus terriblis

– topos of comparison/topos of difference: presupposition of “we are superior compared to them”

– topos of consequence: disaster topos or ‘sugar- coated world’ topos

– referential assimilation (levelling down): spatial and personal reference (anthroponyms (personal names), toponyms (place names), personal pronoun ‘we’), realisation as tropes (synecdoche, metonymy and personification)

– lexemes with semantic components, constructing singularity, individualization (‘unique’)

– lexemes with semantic components constructing difference

– referential dissimilation and exclusion through personal and spatial reference: demonstrative and personal pronouns (‘they’, ‘those’, ‘them’); synecdochical anthroponyms (‘the German/s’, ‘the foreigner/s’); or personified toponyms often used metonymically (‘Germany’, Switzerland’)

– implicit and explicit comparisons

– referential assimilation,

miranda and positive attributions

speaker has already conceptualised

(Possible) Positive Self- Presentation

(Including Presupposition of Inter-National Difference) – emphasis on Austria’s

(possible) model character for Eastern Europe and/or for the whole of Europe (“to set an example”)

Strategies of Demontage (or dismantling) and destruction

aim at dismantling or disparaging parts of an existing national identity construct but usually cannot provide any new model to replace the old one

Assimilation

– emphasis on inter-national sameness/similarity/ communality (also serving the purpose of negation of national uniqueness)

Dissimilation/Exclusion

– emphasis on intra-national differences

– Topos of comparison

– referential assimilation and dissimilation, antonyms,

miranda/ positive attributions and

antimiranda/ pejorative attributions, hyperboles – positively and negatively – connoted metaphors (‘the

hope that the winds from the East will blow and change the Western structures’) – aphorisms/sayings

– positively connotated personifications (‘let’s turn the future into our friend’) – house metaphor (“European

roof”)

– path or crossroads metaphors (‘on the way to a larger Europe’, ‘Austria has come to a crossroads’, ‘to switch the points’)

– lexical items with semantic components constructing levelling, assimilative attributions

– assimilative reference

– dissimilative reference and dissimilative and pejorative attributions labelling (‘enemy’, ‘Tito’s partisans’) – implicit and explicit

comparisons;

Apart from these macro discursive strategies, Reisigl & Wodak (2001:73) distinguish between five discursive strategies involved in self and other presentation in discourse, together with the systematic language (linguistic and rhetorical means and forms) used to realize them. Table 4 (below) shows the key discursive strategies together with their linguistic means and forms of

realisation, predominantly used by DHA scholars and that are systematically referred to in the analyses of political speeches and interview data in the present study, particularly when references to other social actors are made.

Table 4: A selection of discursive strategies (Source: Reisigl & Wodak, 2009:102; Wodak & Meyer, 2001:73)

Strategy Objective Devices

Referential or nomination

Predication

Argumentation

Perspectivation, framing or discourse representation

Intensification, mitigation

Discursive construction of social actors, objects/phenomena/ events and processes/ actions

discursive qualification of social actors, objects, phenomena, events/ processes and actions (more or less positively or negatively)

justification and questioning of claims of truth and normative rightness

positioning speaker’s or writer’s point of view and expressing involvement or distance

Modifying (intensifying or mitigating) the illocutionary force and thus the epistemic or deontic status of utterances

• membership categorisation devices, deictics, anthroponyms, etc. • tropes such as metaphors,

metonymies and synecdoches (pars

pro toto, totum pro pars)

• verbs and nouns used to denote processes and actions, etc.

• stereotypical, evaluative attributions of negative or positive traits (e.g., in the form of adjectives, appositions, prepositional phrases, relative clauses, conjunctional clauses, infinitive clauses and participial clauses or groups)

• explicit predicates or predicative nouns/ adjectives/pronouns; • collocations

• explicit comparisons, similes, metaphors and other rhetorical figures (including metonymies, hyperboles, litotes, euphemisms) • allusions, evocations,

presuppositions/implicatures, etc. • topoi (or more content-related) • fallacies

• deictics

• direct, indirect or free indirect speech • quotation marks, discourse markers/

particles • metaphors

• animating prosody, etc. • diminutives or augmentatives • (modal) particles, tag questions,

subjunctive, hesitations, vague expressions, etc.

• Hyperboles, litotes

• Indirect speech acts (e.g., question instead of assertion)

• Verbs of saying, feeling, thinking, etc.

First, referential or nomination strategies, whereby social actors are constructed and represented in discourse are realised with the help of membership categorisation devices (by drawing on Membership Categorisation Analysis in the work of Harvey Sacks, 1992), such as in-/out-group categorisation. This is usually achieved by either of the three rhetorical tropes: metonymy, synecdoche and/or metaphor.

In discourse of representation, in order to keep someone/something in the semantic background, metonymies are called upon, as they allow the user to replace the actual name/ word by another that is closely associated with it (e.g., “the White House” for “US President”) by drawing on the relationship between two adjacent conceptual fields. Metonymies involved in the linguistic representations of the social actors can be classified by its relation: place for person (e.g., The whole of Vienna celebrates); country for persons (e.g., All in all, Austria has never been so well off); persons for country (e.g., We are much too small to allow disharmony in vital areas of our country); institution for (responsible) representatives of the institution (Parliament rejected the motion) (Wodak et al., 2009:43).

Another trope, synecdoche is also resorted to in discourses involving generalising, stereotyping and essentialising of a group of persons. Synecdoche refers to transformation of the words originating from a similar semantic field and replacing them with words that are either semantically “wider” or “narrower” in meaning. Depending on the direction of representation, there are two types of synecdoches, “particularizing” and “generalizing” (Plett, 2001:92-94). Namely, particularizingsynecdoche is constituted by a representative relation, where a semantically narrower concept is drawn on to represent a semantically broader one (e.g., The Austrian [representing the Austrians as a nation] is a little bit slow – pars pro toto – the part stands for the whole). Another type, generalizing synecdoche is established by a semantically broader concept that represents a semantically narrower one (e.g., Austria is world

champion [this synecdoche is also a metonym] – totum pro parte – the whole stands for the part).

Another trope incorporated in DHA-informed analysis is metaphor. Because of its prominence in political texts and a range of discourses, metaphor has been recognised as an important rhetorical device since the times of Aristotle (1991). Within the scope of the present study, metaphor is regarded to be one of the “vehicle[-s] for understanding physical, social and inner worlds” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 159) by “mapping” conceptual structures from “source domain” onto the “target domain” (Lakoff, 1993: 208–209; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 156–160), whereby likening the more abstract concepts to familiar/recognisable experiences. Thus, in order to interpret the metaphorical meaning, one needs to draw on the semantic “mapping” from the “source” or the “target domain”, which may also carry with them evaluative and emotive elements. For instance, as Lakoff (1996:154) suggests, the FAMILY metaphor is used in conceptualizations of “the nation” in U.S. political discourse. The “basic mapping”, A NATION IS A FAMILY, provides a reference frame, which, encourages the construction of a nation by means of the characteristics normally ascribed to a “family”, such as intimacy of relationships, characterised by love and care as well as physical proximity (i.e., living in one HOUSE – one country). Another common and widely studied conceptual metaphor, EUROPE IS A HOUSE (see Musolff, 2000; 2004), draws on the representation of Europe also in terms of a “construction” and a physical entity that has “a roof”, “walls”, “doors”, etc., but also as one that bears socio-cognitive implications of living together with family, interacting with neighbours, in need of repair, fortress, and so forth.

Once the social actors (individuals or groups) are constructed via referential strategy, they are linguistically provided with predications (predication strategy), or evaluative ascription of positive/negative traits by means of implicit or explicit predicates that may be specific or vague. Therefore, as the outcome of this strategy, social actors, objects, events, actions as well as social

phenomena are appraised and labelled positively or negatively, approvingly or disapprovingly, with respect to quality, quantity, space, time or other evaluative categories. Predication strategy that draws on explicit denotational (literal meaning) and on implicit connotational (implied/ associative meaning) meanings is closely connected with referential strategy. Among other forms of reference, it is realised by a range of lexico-grammatical devices and rhetorical figures, such as: adjectives, appositions, prepositional phrases, relative clauses, conjunctional clauses, infinitive clauses and participial clauses or groups, predicates or predicative nouns/adjectives/pronouns, collocations, explicit comparisons, similes, metaphors and other rhetorical figures (including metonymies, hyperboles, litotes and euphemisms) and by more or less implicit allusions, evocations and presuppositions/implications (see Reisigl & Wodak, 2001: 45).

Next, argumentation strategies are resorted to in order to justify or argue for/against the attribution of positive and/or negative characteristics to social actors, objects, etc., and are realized by means of a range of topoi. That is, topoi or loci is the concept that literally translates from Greek as “places” or “seat of arguments” (Valt, 2003: 318) and can be traced back to the classical argumentation theory of Aristotle and Cicero. DHA makes use of topoi in order to refer to an essential element within argumentation theory, which is usually either explicitly mentioned or inferred in discourse (Wodak et al., 2009:34). Topoi are normally made explicit as “conditional” (i.e., if x, then y) or “causal” paraphrases (i.e., y, because x) (see Reisigl & Wodak 2001:69–80) and resemble “conclusion rules”, which connect an argument with the claim (Wodak, et al., 1999; Reisigl and Wodak 2001; Wodak 2009; Galasinska & Krzyzanowski, 2009). For the analysis of political speeches and the interview data, the following “List of topoi” in Table 5 (adapted from Wodak & Meyer, 2001:74-75) was regularly consulted. It offers “typical content related argument schemes” (ibid.) applicable to the analysis undertaken below.

Table 5 List of topoi adapted from Wodak & Meyer (2001:74-75) and Kwon,et al., (2009) Topoi Conditional structures

Usefulness, advantage

• Pro bono publico – to the advantage of all;

• Pro bono nobis – to the advantage of us;

• Pro bono eorum – to the advantage of them;

If an action under a specific relevant point of view will be useful, then one should perform it;

Uselessness, disadvantage If one can anticipate that the forecasted consequences of a decision will not occur, or if other political actions are more likely to lead to the declared aim, the decision has to be rejected; or

If existing rulings do not help to reach the declared aims, they have to be changed; Definition, name-interpretation If an action, a thing or a person (group of

persons) is named/ designated (as) X, the action, thing or person (group of persons) carries or should carry the qualities/traits/attributes contained in the (literal) meaning of X;

Danger and threat if a political action or decision bears specific dangerous, threatening consequences, one should not perform or do it;

or

if there are specific dangers and threats, one should do something against them;

Humanitarianism if a political action or decision does or does not conform with human rights or humanitarian convictions and values, one should or should not perform or take it;

Justice (`equal rights for all') if persons/actions/situations are equal in specific respects, they should be treated/dealt with in the same way;

Responsibility because a state or a group of persons is responsible for the emergence of specific problems, it or they should act in order to find solutions to these problems;

Burdening, weighing down (a topos of consequence)

if a person, an institution or a country is burdened by specific problems, one should act in order to diminish these burdens;

Finances (topos of consequence) if a specific situation or action costs too much money or causes a loss of revenue, one should

perform actions which diminish the costs or help to avoid the loss;

Reality because reality is as it is, a specific action/decision should be performed/made; Numbers if the numbers prove a specific topos, a specific

action should be performed or not be carried out;

Law and right if a law or an otherwise codified norm prescribes or forbids a specific politico- administrative action, the action has to be performed or omitted;

History because history teaches that specific actions have specific consequences, one should perform or omit a specific action in a specific situation (allegedly) comparable with the historical example referred to. A specific subtype of this argumentation scheme is the existing Ciceronian topos of historia magistra vitae, or `history teaching lessons' (see Wodak et al., 1999: 205-207);

Culture because the culture of a specific group of people is as it is, specific problems arise in specific situations;

Abuse if a right or an offer for help is abused, the right should be changed, or the help should be withdrawn, or measures against the abuse should be taken;

Wodak and her associates resort to this List of topoi particularly within the context of political discourse and identity construction (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; Wodak & Meyer, 2001; 2009; Wodak, 2009) but also when analysing the discourses of national/ European identity construction (Wodak et al., 1999; 2009; Wodak, 2009). Therefore, it appears also suitable to be used for reference in the course of the in-depth analysis in the present study.

Another discursive strategy of perspectivation, framing of discourse representation, allows the speaker to express their involvement and/or detachment as well as position their point of view, as they opt to report, narrate or quote other discourses within their own. In many respects, Reisigl & Wodak’s (2001) perspectivation strategy draws on Goffman’s “participation framework”, and particularly on the concepts of “frames” and “footing”

(discussed on p.66 above) (Goffman 1981, Goffman 1999, Schiffrin 1994; Knoblauch 1994). “Frames” has to do with the broader knowledge about specific situations and what one is allowed to say and construct via certain linguistic forms (see for example Titscher et al., 2000:155). The concept of “footing” refers predominantly to those instances in talk when “[the] participant’s alignment; or set; or stance, or posture, or projected self” is at stake (Goffman, 1981: 128), or the roles that a speaker may take on as s/he engages in discourse. Thus, for the present study, the concept of footing is particularly useful, as it can signal “speakers’ discursive identities” (Davies & Harré, 1990), as the discourse unfolds and the speakers “position” themselves and/ or others in certain ways (active, passive, belonging to one community/ distancing themselves from another, etc.).

Footing and framing (that are subsumed under perspectivation strategy) are closely linked with speakers’ involvement in discourse, indicative of the speaker’s attitudinal stance (see Tannen, 1989) and reflecting their inner states, or conversely, speaker’s discursive means for constructing “distance”/ detachment (see Georgakopoulou & Goutsos, 2004). Generic and subjective categories of sameness and difference, detachment and affiliation, distance and proximity (De Celia et al., 1999) are considered to be among the key markers of identity in discourse. Thus, one such marker is considered to be deixis, which is indexical (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006) and heavily relies on the context it is embedded in, as it may be indicative of

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