VALORES ARQUITECTÓNICOS

Discourse analysis originated in linguistics, but has since expanded to a variety of disciplines including anthropology, sociology, communication, and political science. It is primarily concerned with how people use language to communicate. Fairclough defines discourse as a particular way of representing aspects of the world (2003: 124). Like constructivists, discourse analysts assert that the social world is constructed, often through language, thus the world cannot be understood without analyzing discourse (Phillips and Hardy 2002). Discourse analysts

believe that language plays an essential role in the construction of social identities and in creating and maintaining power structures. According to Gee, discourse analysis is concerned with how language is “used ‘on site’ to ‘pull off’ specific social activities and social identities (‘memberships’ in various social groups, cultures, and institutions” and he asserts “language-in- use is everywhere and always political.” (1999: 1)

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is specifically interested in the relationship between language and power. It examines how relationships of dominance and discrimination are

manifested in language. Often discourse is perceived as an instrument used by those in power to maintain their dominant position (Wodak and Meyer 2001; Van Leeuwen 1993). For example, Habermas claims “language is a medium of domination and social force. It serves to legitimize relations of organized power” (quoted in Wodak and Meyer 2001: 2). However, it is important to recognize that texts are not just vehicles of domination, but also avenues through which competing discourses struggle for domination (Wodak and Meyer 2001: 11). While far-right

parties are typically not the dominant political actors in the societies in which they are

embedded, the discourse used by the far-right is a reflection of the power dynamics within the nationalist subculture. This study intends to explore the ways in which discourse contributes to or undermines the success of far-right parties.

While recognizing the utility of CDA’s assertion that there is a relationship between language and power structures, this study will rely primarily on the methodology of content analysis, rather than CDA. Content analysis is more systematic than CDA, asks more concrete questions, making it better suited for systematically testing hypotheses. Content analysis is a “research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context” (Krippendorff 1989: 403). It involves a quantification of the “what” messages communicate (Laswell 1948). Content analysis involves an analysis of a large body of “real life” language use which is referred to as a corpus (McEnery and Wilson 1996: 1). Quantitative analysis of a corpus involves identifying certain properties, like the frequency with which certain words or word pairs are used, and making inferences based on these properties (Biber et al. 1998; Baker 2006). It also requires a systematic method of extracting the most frequent recurrent strings from a large corpus, for example by specifying a cut-off frequency. Through word frequency lists and keyword analysis, I can identify discursive patterns within a pattern and the network in its entirety. This will provide an opportunity to test the theory that a party’s ideological position relative to the broader network can shape its sustainability. Content analysis is the most

applicable method for the theory I intend to test, namely that a party’s ideological position relative to the broader networks can shape its sustainability.

With the emergence and diffusion of new technology, there has been increased scholarly interest in computer-mediated communication and the creation of online discursive communities

(Acquisti and Gross 2006, Cherny 1999). Computer-mediated discourse is defined as the communication produced when human beings interact with one another by transmitting messages via networked computers…distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer networked environments and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to address that focus (Herring 2015: 127).

Some studies of computer-mediated discourse focus on the medium itself-for example how people communicate differently via Facebook, email, or Twitter. However, this study will be more discourse-centered than medium-centered, with a specific focus on the patterns of communication of the far-right online.

The literature on the discourse of far-right parties is relatively sparse, with the majority of emphasis having been placed on institutional or sociocultural factors that explain far-right

success. However, as the structure of European party systems is changing and conventional party loyalties are weakening, scholars have become increasingly concerned with the ways in which parties market themselves (Norris 2004, Lin 2004). Scholars of political marketing have increasingly turned to discourse analysis, which is used in the marketing literature to understand identity and power relations, and explain how the success of the extreme right can be interpreted in terms of making discursive connections with voters (Moufahim et al. 2010: 541). For

example, Patrick de Vos (2002) argues that the upsurge in popularity of the anti-immigrant party the Vlaams Blok (Flemish Blok, VB) can be explained by the party’s ability to blend the

discourse of xenophobic populism with separatist nationalism. Anastasakis suggests that far- right parties have been successful, in part, because of their highly opportunistic use of discourse. He notes that while all the far-right parties have a common ideological core of xenophobia, ultra-nationalism, and hatred of immigrants, the most successful parties, like the Freedom Party in Austria, have moderated their discourse, embracing a catchall ideology in order to reach as broad an audience as possible (2000:18). However, it is difficult to make

generalizations about far-right discourse solely on the basis of analyses of individual parties. My goal is to provide a comparative and systematic analysis of far-right discourse in order to reveal discursive patterns across countries and determine whether there is a relationship between the discursive structure of the nationalist subculture and far-right success.