Název: Euphemisms and political discourse in the British regional press
Zdrojový dokument: Brno studies in English. 2014, roč. 40, č. 1, s. [5]-26
Rozsah
[5]-26
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Trvalý odkaz (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2014-1-1
Trvalý odkaz (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/131480
Type: Článek
Jazyk
Licence: Neurčená licence
Upozornění: Tyto citace jsou generovány automaticky. Nemusí být zcela správně podle citačních pravidel.
Abstrakt(y)
Politicians resort to euphemism as a "safe" way to deal with unpleasant subjects and criticize their opponents without giving a negative impression to their audiences. In this regard, it is my purpose to gain an insight into the way euphemism is used by politicians from Norfolk and Suffolk both at word and sentence level using a sample of the regional newspaper Eastern Daily Press, published in Norwich (UK). To this end, I will rely on the frameworks of critical-political discourse analysis (Van Dijk 1993, 1997; Wilson 2001), pragmatic theory, particularly politeness and facework (Brown and Levinson 1987), and Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff 1993). The results obtained reveal that euphemism plays an important role in the "self-promotion" of regional politicians, who employ euphemism – mostly by understatement, litotes and underspecification – for a variety of purposes, namely sensitivity to audience concerns, avoidance of expressions that can be perceived to marginalize socially disadvantaged groups, polite criticism and mitigation – even concealment – of unsettling topics.
Reference
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[36] Lutz, William (1987) "Doublespeak at large". English Today 12, 21–24. | DOI 10.1017/S0266078400003072
[37] Lutz, William (1999) Doublespeak Defined: Cut through the Bull**** and Get the Point! New York: Harper Collins.
[38] McGlone, Matthew S. and Jennifer A. Batchelor (2003) "Looking out for number one: Euphemism and face". Journal of Communication 53 (2), 251–264. | DOI 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2003.tb02589.x
[39] McGlone, Matthew S., Gary Beck and Abigail Pfiester (2006) "Contamination and camouflage in euphemisms". Communication Monographs 73 (3), 261–282. | DOI 10.1080/03637750600794296
[40] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2014) "Coercive metaphors in news headlines: A cognitive-pragmatic approach". Brno Studies in English 40 (1), 149–173. | DOI 10.5817/BSE2014-1-8
[41] Musolff, Andreas (2004) Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
[42] Partington, Alan (2003) The Linguistics of Political Argument. The Spin-doctor and the Wolf-pack at the White House. London and New York: Routledge.
[43] Quirk, Randolph, Sydney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1972). A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
[44] Rodríguez González, Félix (1992) "Euphemism and political language". UEA Papers in Linguistics 33, 36–49.
[45] Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J. (2000) "The role of mappings and domains in understanding metonymy". In: Barcelona, Antonio (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 109–132.
[46] Sornig, Karl (1989) "Some remarks on linguistic strategies of persuasion". In: Wodak, Ruth (ed.) Language, Power and Ideology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 95–113.
[47] Steen, Gerard (2011) "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. Now new and improved!" Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9 (1), 26–64. | DOI 10.1075/rcl.9.1.03ste
[48] Van Dijk, Teun A. (1993) "Principles of critical discourse analysis". Discourse & Society 4 (2), 249–283. | DOI 10.1177/0957926593004002006
[49] Van Dijk, Teun A. (1997) "What is political discourse analysis?" In: Blommaert, Jan and Chris Bulcaen (eds.) Political Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 11–52.
[50] Wilson, John (2001) "Political discourse". In: Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 398–416.
[51] Watts, Richard (2005) [1992] "Linguistic politeness and politic verbal behaviour: Reconsidering claims for universality". In: Watts, Richard, Sachiko Ide and Konrad Ehlich (eds.) Politeness in Language (2nd ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 43–69.
[52] Wodak, Ruth (2012) "Politics as usual. Investigating political discourse in action". In: Gee, James P. and Michael Handford (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 525–540.
[2] Allan, Keith (2012) "X-phemism and creativity". Lexis. E-Journal in English Lexicology 7, 5–42. http://lexis.univ-lyon3.fr. Accessed 20 December 2013.
[3] Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge (1991) Euphemism and Dysphemism. Language Used as Shield and Weapon. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
[4] Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge (2006) Forbidden Words. Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5] Brown, Peter and Stephen Levinson (1987) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[6] Bull, Peter and Anita Fetzer (2006) "Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews". Text & Talk 26 (1), 3–37. | DOI 10.1515/TEXT.2006.002
[7] Burridge, Kate (1998) "Euphemism with attitude: Politically charged language change". In: Schmid, Monika S., Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter Stein (eds.) Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 57–76.
[8] Burridge, Kate (2004) Blooming English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[9] Burridge, Kate (2010) "Linguistic cleanliness is next to godliness: Taboo and purism". English Today 26 (2), 3–13. | DOI 10.1017/S0266078410000027
[10] Burridge, Kate (2012) "Euphemism and language change. The sixth and seventh ages". Lexis. EJournal in English Lexicology 7, 65–92. http://lexis.univ-lyon3.fr. Accessed 6 January 2014.
[11] Chamizo Domínguez, Pedro (2005) "Some theses on euphemisms and dysphemisms". Studia Anglica Resoviensa 25, 9–16.
[12] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2005) Politicians and Rhetoric. The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[13] Chilton, Paul A. and Christina Schäffner (1997) "Discourse and Politics". In: Van Dijk, Teun A. (ed.) Discourse in Social Interaction. London: SAGE, 206–230.
[14] Chilton, Paul A. and Christina Schäffner (2002) "Introduction. Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse". In: Chilton, Paul A. and Christina Schäffner (eds.) Politics in Text and Talk. Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1–41.
[15] Claridge, Claudia and Merja Kytö (2014) "I had lost sight of them then for a bit, but I went on pretty fast. Two degree modifiers in the Old Bailey Corpus". In: Taavitsainen, Irma, Andreas Jucker and Jukka Tuominen (eds.) Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 29–54.
[16] Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer (2005) "Euphemistic strategies in politeness and face concerns". Pragmalingüística 13, 77–86. | DOI 10.25267/Pragmalinguistica.2005.i13.05
[17] Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer (2007) El eufemismo y el disfemismo. Alicante: Universidad.
[18] Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer (2013) "Euphemistic metaphors in English and Spanish epitaphs. A comparative study". Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 35 (2), 99–118.
[19] Dirven, René and Rälf Pörings (eds.) (2003) Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[20] Dynel, Marta (2009) "Where cooperation meets politeness. Revisiting politeness models in view of the Gricean framework". Brno Studies in English 35 (1), 23–43.
[21] Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
[22] Fraser, Bruce (2009) "Hedging in political discourse: The 2007 Bush press conference". In: Cap, Piotr (ed.) Papers from the 2nd International Conference on Political Discourse, 201–213.
[23] Fraser, Bruce (2010) "Pragmatic competence: The case of hedging". In: Waltenböck, Günther, Wiltrud Mihatsch and Stefan Schneider (eds.) New Approaches to Hedging. Bingley: Emerald Group, 15–34.
[24] Goffman, Ervin (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. New York: Double Day.
[25] Halmari, Helena (2011) "Political correctness, euphemism and language change. The case of "People First". Journal of Pragmatics 43 (3), 828–840. | DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.09.016
[26] Hart, Christopher (2008) "Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: Toward a theoretical framework". Critical Discourse Studies 5 (2), 91–106. | DOI 10.1080/17405900801990058
[27] Hoggart, Simon (1986) "Politics". In: Enright, D. J. (ed.) Fair of Speech. The Uses of Euphemism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 174–184.
[28] Johnson, Mark (1987) The Body in the Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[29] Kampf, Zohar (2009) "Public (non-)apologies: The discourse of minimizing responsibility". Journal of Pragmatics 41 (11), 2257–2270. | DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.11.007
[30] Kövecses, Zoltán (2011) "Recent developments in metaphor theory: Are the new views rival ones?" Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9 (1), 11–25. | DOI 10.1075/rcl.9.1.02kov
[31] Lakoff, George (1993) [1979] "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor". In: Ortony, Andrew (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–251.
[32] Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[33] Lakoff, George and Mark Turner (1989) More than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[34] Leech, Geoffrey (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman.
[35] Luchtenberg, Sigrid (1985) Euphemismen im Heutigen Deutsch. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang.
[36] Lutz, William (1987) "Doublespeak at large". English Today 12, 21–24. | DOI 10.1017/S0266078400003072
[37] Lutz, William (1999) Doublespeak Defined: Cut through the Bull**** and Get the Point! New York: Harper Collins.
[38] McGlone, Matthew S. and Jennifer A. Batchelor (2003) "Looking out for number one: Euphemism and face". Journal of Communication 53 (2), 251–264. | DOI 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2003.tb02589.x
[39] McGlone, Matthew S., Gary Beck and Abigail Pfiester (2006) "Contamination and camouflage in euphemisms". Communication Monographs 73 (3), 261–282. | DOI 10.1080/03637750600794296
[40] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2014) "Coercive metaphors in news headlines: A cognitive-pragmatic approach". Brno Studies in English 40 (1), 149–173. | DOI 10.5817/BSE2014-1-8
[41] Musolff, Andreas (2004) Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
[42] Partington, Alan (2003) The Linguistics of Political Argument. The Spin-doctor and the Wolf-pack at the White House. London and New York: Routledge.
[43] Quirk, Randolph, Sydney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1972). A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
[44] Rodríguez González, Félix (1992) "Euphemism and political language". UEA Papers in Linguistics 33, 36–49.
[45] Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J. (2000) "The role of mappings and domains in understanding metonymy". In: Barcelona, Antonio (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 109–132.
[46] Sornig, Karl (1989) "Some remarks on linguistic strategies of persuasion". In: Wodak, Ruth (ed.) Language, Power and Ideology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 95–113.
[47] Steen, Gerard (2011) "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. Now new and improved!" Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9 (1), 26–64. | DOI 10.1075/rcl.9.1.03ste
[48] Van Dijk, Teun A. (1993) "Principles of critical discourse analysis". Discourse & Society 4 (2), 249–283. | DOI 10.1177/0957926593004002006
[49] Van Dijk, Teun A. (1997) "What is political discourse analysis?" In: Blommaert, Jan and Chris Bulcaen (eds.) Political Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 11–52.
[50] Wilson, John (2001) "Political discourse". In: Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 398–416.
[51] Watts, Richard (2005) [1992] "Linguistic politeness and politic verbal behaviour: Reconsidering claims for universality". In: Watts, Richard, Sachiko Ide and Konrad Ehlich (eds.) Politeness in Language (2nd ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 43–69.
[52] Wodak, Ruth (2012) "Politics as usual. Investigating political discourse in action". In: Gee, James P. and Michael Handford (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 525–540.