Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

'Slogans, political discourse and education: An interview with Ruth Wodak'.

In this open access (free to read) article, Prof. Ruth Wodak discusses some of the most pressing issues associated with slogans, political discourse and education.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

The introductory section of the interview touches on Prof Wodak’s work in critical discourse analysis. The central part examines slogans as one of the main vehicles of political propaganda & policy-making. In the concluding section, Wodak discusses her plans for future research.

Interviewer:

RW: "Actually, I inherited a strong interest in politics and political communication from my parents: politics were always talked about at home. Not only because of my father’s profession (he was a high-ranking diplomat) but also because of my parents’ personal biography."

"They were forced to flee Austria in 1938, after the so-called Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-Germany, and survived the war as refugees in the United Kingdom. Hence, I grew up with a strong sense of ‘#NeverAgain’."

"Raising the awareness about the currently emerging dangers of undemocratic actions, and fascist, xenophobic, racist, sexist and antisemitic attitudes has always been salient for my work. I started investigating political communication in the 1980s at the University of Vienna."

"For example, in a seminar, we analysed election campaigns and TV-talk shows, in a first funded project a team investigated the media reporting about a large ecological grass-root protest movement in 1983."

"In 1986, I was asked by the then vice-major of Vienna to analyse the emerging antisemitism during the so-called Waldheim-Affair in Austria. During this interdisciplinary study, we developed the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) which was elaborated during subsequent projects."

"After having been awarded the Wiitgenstein Prize in 1996, I was able to hire a fantastic international and interdisciplinary team of researchers, and we started fieldwork in the European Parliament and European Commission. Many publications were the result."

"The books which you mention in your question are all the result of these research interests, especially The Politics of Fear. The shameless normalisation of far-right discourses (2021)."

Interviewer:

POLITICAL SLOGANS

RW: "Slogans, that is, ‘a short and striking or memorable phrase used in advertising’ (Oxford Dictionary of English) have been used for advertising (of goods, beliefs, ideologies, political parties, politicians) since many centuries."

"Thus, elements of advertising are used, for example, flag-words, positive adjectives, rhymes, catchy metaphors, and so forth. Slogans have to be short, easy to memorise and to be repeated, they thus have to be worded in attractive, creative, simple and appealing ways."

For political parties, "they are part & parcel of campaigning, appearing on posters, in video clips, in social media & so forth, also in speeches, interviews, press conferences, party programs & demonstrations; thus quasi branding the respective political party & its program."

"In this way, they can be used for all genres in the field of politics, and frame the party agenda. Indeed, they quasi ‘sell’, condense and essentialise the program of the respective party. In managerial terms, we would speak of the summary of a mission statement."

"Accordingly, the boundaries of advertising, branding, spin, political communication and political campaigning become blurred."

Interviewer:

RW: "In our globalised world of polycrises, much insecurity and uncertainty are evident. Slogans and other rhetorical devices such as metaphors, personifications, synechdoches, etc. provide simple condensed narratives, realised in slogans or other rhetorical tropes."

"The latter allow for many projections of one’s own beliefs and interpretations, they support simple explanations, and distract from complex issues, and also, for example, allow for simplistic scapegoating (shifting blame to ethnic, religious, and other minorities)."

"This is ever more the case, as differentiated messages require more space and time – and these are not available in the most frequented media channels. In this way, politicisation and mediatisation support brief, condensed and poignant messages."

"In Austria, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), for example, was quite skilful in inventing ever new rhymes, metaphors and slogans to abuse and insult their opponents."

api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400…

"Donald Trump provides another good example of sloganization: MAGA has become the trademark & brand of the Grand Old Party (GOP) & of Trumpism, one does not even use the full slogan anymore, the acronym suffices as slogan & brand, in all genres, & available on-line..."

"...printed on bags, t-shirts, caps, cups, etc."

Interviewer:

"It should be made perfectly clear what functions slogans fulfil in the political field; and what the limitations of slogans are."

"That repeating slogans actually does not allow for differentiated opinions or debates; other written, visual and spoken genres should receive more attention, depending always on the respective context. In other words, specific genres are adequate for specific contexts!"

"Moreover, teaching critical literacy already in primary schools, teaching how to challenge critically what is said or written to children, adolescents and students would allow de-essentialising such messages."

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1496057466626392064?s=20

"Understanding and deconstructing media and political communication should most certainly become an inherent and necessary part of school curricula. From antiquity onwards, political discourse has been imbued with slogans."

Interviewer:

RW: "As already mentioned above, slogans have been created and used for centuries, in different modes, from the right-wing and left-wing spectrum. Slogans are one of many elements of political propaganda with specific contents and functions."

"Thus, slogans are used in grass-root movements such as FFF (Fridays for Future) or BLM (Black Lives Matter) as well as in far-right, conservative, liberal and left-wing parties."

"One has to analyse form & content & not only that, but on the dialectic between form & content. If well-worded, recognizable, repeatable & easily memorised, then slogans will probably be successful, especially if picked up & recontextualised in various media channels."

"The visualization is of course also important, via posters, memes, etc. In this way, as already mentioned above, slogans serve to condense political and programmatic agenda. Condensation implies simplification and allows for projection of one’s own beliefs, wishes and visions."

"Simplification thus leads to a range of possible interpretations; everybody could use a slogan in whatever way it suits their purpose."

Interviewer:

"Of course, slogans are instrumentalised in all political fields and for the propagation of policies. Political parties specifically create slogans for agenda which are salient at a specific time and in a specific context."

"If education is important for a political party and resonates with their voters, then slogans for furthering and investing in education will obviously be highlighted as well."

Interviewer:

"Political communication & discourse about politics (in all contexts) is a very complex social field, & hence, also a complex field of research. Such complex phenomena are best analysed in interdisciplinary ways: looking at the programmatic agenda, at the politicians themselves..

..at the audiences, alternative proposals, socio-political, glocal, regional, national & global contexts, etc. Thus, interdisciplinary research: media studies, discourse studies, pragmatics, history, multimodality, ethnography, audience studies, political science and so forth."

Interviewer:

RW: "Critical Discourse Studies and studies on political communication have delivered much research on many aspects of political communication. Slogans have always been part and parcel of studies of election campaigns, identity politics and politics of the past."

Interviewer:

RW: "One aspect which deserves more attention is the staging and performance of politicians and the continuous discursive co-construction of – what is frequently labelled as – charisma".

"Moreover, grass-root movements remain under investigated; probably so because much detailed sociolinguistic fieldwork would be necessary as well as transcription of visual and verbal data, etc."

"This is why much research still focusses on the analysis of newspapers (quality and tabloids) as well as diverse political speeches because the data are easily available although, of course, one should not reduce media studies on traditional media."

The analysis of the entire range of social media must be included in our research nowadays. There is also little work on the ‘everyday lives’ of politicians – something I started by investigating the European Parliament’s backstage."

"But much remains to be studied, specifically the influence of social media and digitalisation on our daily political lives."

Interviewer:

RW: "In the UK, neoliberal ideology and thinking have entered scholarship in the 1990s. Managerial discourse became ubiquitous in describing and especially in evaluating research".

"Eg by furthering competition on all levels; by ranking universities, Depts, scholars & publications globally, regionally & nationally; by ranking & measuring the impact of journals in specialised areas; by highlighting grants & the acquisition of project monies, and so forth."

"Thus, more traditional criteria of success such as writing monographs or editing relevant volumes or publishing handbooks became less important as such endeavours take much time and are usually not part of the measurement of success in international competition."

"Due to such huge changes in the educational field, it is not surprising that the discourse has changed as well; many studies in Critical Discourse Studies and Discourse Studies in recent decades have traced these enormous transformations...

..also due to the implementation of the so-called Bologna Process in HE in the European Union, and have focussed on the quite radical change of brochures, websites and curricula at universities where strategies of advertising and management are employed to attract more students."

"New hybrid genres have thus emerged. Managerial criteria, discreet measures, the acquisition of grants, journal publications, high impact numbers, competition etc have frequently substituted the more traditional emphasis on interdisciplinary debates & in-depth writing projects."

Interviewer:

RW: "Much research in Critical Discourse Studies has documented changes in discourse, in text, talk & image, due to neoliberal policies eg the important 2000 book by Norman Fairclough 'New Labour, New Language' illustrated the discourse of the so-called ‘third way’ in detail."

"Many other studies, for example, by Jane Mulderrig (2009), have also documented the impact of neoliberalism on the field of education in the United Kingdom. Many comparative studies followed some of which are part of the edited volume by Jessop et al., (2008) mentioned above."

Interviewer:

RW: "Right now, I am focussing – again – on the rise of illiberalism and the undermining of pluralist democracies. I am also very interested in the revival of traditional elements of political propaganda."

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

"Obviously, (leaders of) far-right populist parties instrumentalise the media & intervene into processes of mediatization in different ways, depending on socio-political contexts, their position of power, their role in Govt or opposition & their specific access to media."

"In fact, far-right populist leaders and their parties continuously seek to delegitimise independent media altogether (such as Donald Trump) or they might – as owners of the (all) relevant media – directly influence media’s content (such as Silvio Berlusconi);"

"Some enforce new laws forbidding critical investigative journalism and close independent media tout court (such as Viktor Orbán, Jarosław Kaczyński and Vladimir Putin)."

"Or they might implement a step-by-step control of media (and thus of mediatization) via bribery, manipulated opinion polls and other illegal means (such as the former Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz)."

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1659175682155462657?s=20

"In my recent research, for example, I focussed on one of the many ways propagandistic tools are employed to control the relevant agenda & information being disseminated by both traditional media (broadsheets, tabloids, public TV radio) & online. in other words message control."

"The concept of ‘message control’ emerged from the specific propaganda tool developed by Sebastian Kurz and his followers and implies launching and thus controlling select information via weekly press conferences, briefings, personal conversations, back-room debates and...

...text messages, and to financially subsidise only those media that reported favourably about the activities of Kurz’s government. Thus, a new media logic based on favouritism, nepotism and clientelism was established and normalised in Austria."

"This stands, as I was able to illustrate in detail, in contrast to Trumpism, which delegitimised all investigative journalism without explicitly attempting to control it. Trump extensively used Twitter to spread systematic disinformation."

"Of course, slogans and other rhetorical tropes as well as many elements of advertising continue to be employed in political propaganda and in efforts to delegitimise (properly) independent media."

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1640635689824927745?s=20

"Moreover, in authoritarian regimes such as in the Russian Federation, we encounter censorship and traditional methods of propaganda, like the construction of second realities (Barthes)."

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1336483694794731520?s=20

"These developments would certainly lend themselves for important in-depth analysis to understand and explain the success or failure, and the resonance of such old and new propaganda tools."