The Great Debate: A Critical Analysis of the Brexit Campaign

(1)

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia D

IPARTIMENTO DI STUDI LINGUISTICI E CULTURALI

C ORSO DI L AUREA M AGISTRALE IN

L ANGUAGES FOR C OMMUNICATION IN I NTERNATIONAL

E NTERPRISES AND O RGANIZATIONS

The Great Debate: A Critical Analysis of the Brexit Campaign

Prova finale di:

Maria Battimiello Relatore:

Marina Bondi

Correlatore Franca Poppi

Anno Accademico 2018/2019

(2)

I

Following 2016 referendum on Brexit, which scored a win for the Leave supporters, a growing debate as to why Brexiteers succeeded ensued. One of the reasons given for their success was that Leave was more convincing in their arguments, so much so that they even managed to change the mind of Remain supporters (Bailey, 2016). In this dissertation I will analyse a political debate organised by the BBC in 2016, just two days prior to the vote, called The Great Debate. The purpose of this analysis is to see why Leave was considered more convincing. The methodology used is an adaptation of Fairclough and Fairclough’s model of analysis, which focuses on the reconstruction of argumentative structures. After a general theoretical overlook to Critical Discourse Analysis, the framework used for this analysis, and a brief presentation of Brexit, in chapters 3, 4 and 5 I will analyse each intervention of each speaker in answer to questions asked by the audience on three issues: the economy, immigration, and Britain’s place in the world. After this initial analysis, I will look at the most interesting items in the list of most frequent words of each of the three sections.

To conclude each chapter, I will present the argumentative structure of each question.

In seguito al voto a favore della Brexit nel 2016, in diverse discipline è nato un dibattito sul perché di questa scelta da parte del popolo britannico. Una delle motivazioni menzionate è l’alto potere persuasivo degli argomenti a favore dell’uscita dall’Unione Europea, così convincenti da riuscire a far cambiare idea a molti in favore della permanenza all’interno dell’UE (Bailey, 2016). In questa tesi analizzerò un dibattito politico tenutosi due giorni prima del voto, organizzato dalla BBC e chiamato The Great Debate. Lo scopo di questa analisi è di scoprire in che modo gli argomenti a sostegno dell’uscita dall’Unione risultano più convincenti, utilizzando una versione adattata del modello sviluppato da Fairclough e Faiclough (2012). Dopo un breve riassunto teorico di ciò che si intente per Critical Discourse Analysis, la teoria utilizzata per questo lavoro, e una presentazione generale della Brexit, nei capitoli 3, 4 e 5 si prosegue con un’analisi dettagliata di tutti gli interventi di ciascun politico, chiamati a rispondere a domande poste dal pubblico su tre macroaree: l’economia, l’immigrazione e il ruolo della Gran Bretagna nel mondo. In seguito, si propone un’analisi degli elementi più interessanti fra le parole più frequentemente utilizzate in ogni sezione per poi concludere con una ricostruzione della struttura argomentativa di ogni domanda.

(3)

II

Introduction

In 2016 the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union after more than 40 years of joined work on the international scene. As a strong believer in the European project, it was a decision I had a hard time accepting. I could not understand how a country such as the UK, with a long history of international collaborative endeavours and which already enjoyed a certain degree of freedom within the EU, could decide to abandon the dream of a strong, united Europe.

After a careful initial research for the reasons behind this drastic choice, I discovered that even though the majority of British citizens approached this referendum with the idea of voting in favour of Remain, after listening to the ideas supported by Leave campaigners, they changed their mind (Bailey, 2016: 4).

For this reason, I decided to further investigate the campaign of both groups, to see why the Leave coalition was, indeed, more convincing.

Soon, I discovered that the two groups had two different key themes they hardly ever abandoned:

for Leave, it was immigration control and investments in public services; for Remain, it was the economy, which was enjoying a growing momentum that could soon disappear in case of Leave winning. Almost never the two groups spoke directly about the same issue, which made it hard to compare and contrast their argumentation.

The Great Debate, organised by the BBC and broadcast on national television, proved to be the best subject for my analysis, as the two groups had to answer to the same questions, asked by audience members, which made it possible to look more closely at their argumentation. The three topics that were discussed were the economy, immigration, and Britain’s place in the world.

Method and methodology

Throughout this dissertation, I will analyse The Great Debate according to Critical Discourse Analysis.

CDA is an academic field that aims at analysing discourse not only from a linguistic perspective:

CDA’s purpose is to unveil all the hidden manipulative moves that lie behind discourse (Hidalgo Tenorio, 2011: 188).

Under the name CDA fall many analytic methods (Wodak, van Dijk, Jäger,…), but for my analysis I decided to adopt Fairclough and Fairclough’s model (2012) as it centred on deliberation, the genre that aims at reaching a practical conclusion, an action that must be undertaken in order to achieve a goal (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 17).

(7)

6

In this case, the debate was across a nation, each individual citizen had the right to express their opinion, their goal was that of a better off country and the action to be undertaken was voted in a referendum. Fairclough and Fairclough’s model is tailored for debates that reach an immediate conclusion, which means that at the end of the discussion, the parties have chosen what is the best route. For this reason, their model had to be adapted slightly.

Beyond the analysis of the argumentative structure, I will also propose a brief corpus-based analysis of selected words of each section of the debate, having a closer look at the most relevant instances in the list of the most frequent words. The software used to carry out this part of the research is AntConc 3.5.8.

Structure of the dissertation

This work starts with a brief theoretical overview of CDA, starting from its theoretical background, moving on to some of the most famous examples of CDA analytic methods and a short list of the features shared by all CDA theories. I will then move on to Political Discourse Analysis and I will present Fairclough’s and Fairclough’s model.

In chapter 2, I will present the historical and cultural background against which the debate came to be, as the context is a key factor in CDA. Starting with an historical recap of the events that led to the UK’s membership, I will talk describe a general overview of the two group’s campaigns.

Chapter 3, 4 and 5 are dedicated to the analysis of The Great Debate. As mentioned before, the debate was based on question asked by the audience. For each question, I will analyse each speaker’s turn, which means underlining the rhetorical tools used (e.g. repetitions, alliterations, concession,…) by each speaker when intervening in the debate. Afterwards, I will present the results of a corpus-based analysis of the list of the most frequent words in the corpus. To conclude, for each question, I will present an argumentative structure, adapting Fairclough and Fairclough’s model proposed in their book (2012): I will state the claims and the counterclaims, the circumstances, the means, the mean-goals, the facts and the supporting claims used by both Leave and Remain to support their believes, respectively that Britain is better off out or in the European Union.

In the appendix, a transcription of the debate can be found, each line has been numbered to help the reader follow the analysis.

(8)

7

1. Critical Discourse Analysis: a brief theoretical overlook

The chapter is so structured: starting from a definition of CDA and a recap of its theoretical origins, we move on to different theories of CDA, to end up with a short list of some of the common features of all CDA theories. Then, we shift our focus on Political Discourse Analysis, presenting its main features and tools. We finish with an introduction to the method of analysis which will be used in chapters 3, 4 and 5.

1.1 Defining CDA

Society has always had a keen interest on the written or spoken word and its power to persuade. It is enough to think about the discipline of rhetoric, born in ancient Greece and developed by philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato (Huckin, Andrus, Clary-Lemon, 2012). CDA was born out of a social need: in the last decades of the previous century, a renewed awareness of how people communicate, how those in position of power speak with those at a lower level, developed and later evolved into an academic field (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997).

Power is the cornerstone of CDA: all the different analytical theories and methods which fall under this name share one common feature, unearthing hidden power relations. Power is the starting point of any CDA theory, theories which may differ in their theoretical background or in their analytic framework but that always share the same objective. Fairclough and Wodak (1997) state that CDA “analyses real and often extended instances of social interaction which take a linguistic form, or a partially linguistic form” (Fairclough, Wodak, 197, 258). To them, CDA analyses two types of relationships, the relation between language and society and the relation between analysis and the practices analysed.

CDA defines discourse as a “social practice” (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997, 258) in which we can observe an interesting phenomenon: in fact, just like discourse is shaped by the situation in which it takes place, at the same time, it shapes the context in which discourse itself occurs. For this reason, Fairclough and Wodak define discourse as “socially constitutive as well as socially shaped”

(Fairclough, Wodak, 1997, 258). Discourse has the tremendous power to either replicate the status quo or to change it radically, and it is its ability to echo even unequal power relationship that lays at the centre of Fairclough’s book, Language and power (1989). The true aim of CDA is to unveil the hidden shades of discourse, to make power relations evident, a feature which ties it, unavoidably, to politics, the world of power and decision making.

(9)

8

Besides power, another fundamental concept of CDA is ideology, a term which first appeared in in France, in the late 18^th century. In CDA, ideology is “an important means of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations”’ (Weis, Wodak, 2007: 14). The beliefs that are true for a group, that support the interests of an elite, are expanded to society as a whole, without an explanation as to how this expansion came to be (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012).

CDA’s focus on how the language is used to attain a certain goal makes it a rather relevant field of study in today’s society, where, following the awakening of feminist movements and a sharp increase in racist behaviour, citizens seem to be more aware of the impact their words have. This social turn was also present in the 90s, when CDA was born (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997). Already in that period, before the electronic revolution, the authors underlined the importance of CDA in a world in which politicians, thanks to television, had daily access to a wide audience, the size of which had never even been imaginable before. Today, with the internet and social media, their audience has become even larger, which has two consequences: the first, the creation of a well-structured political discourse has become increasingly important, the second, the analysis of rhetoric and themes used by politicians has become even more fundamental.

Reisgl and Wodak (Fochter, Wodak, 2017: 136) number three types of critique that can be achieved through CDA:

• Text-immanent critique, a strongly text-oriented analysis tied to hermeneutics that wishes to uncover contradictions in the text through language.

• Socio-diagnostic critique, which, although also text-oriented, is deeply influenced by the analyst’s social commitments. In fact, one of CDA’s major risks is that it can yield strongly biased results.

• Prospective (retrospective) critique expands its vision to the context in which the text is produced, so as to build a criticism that will, hopefully, lead to a social change.

1.2 Origin of CDA

Even though it originated in the social world, CDA has a strong theoretical background which spans over many disciplines. CDA, as stated by Weis, has not a “uniform theoretical framework” (Weiss, Wodak, 2007: 14). There is no one formation theory, as it originates from different disciplines and theorists, bur rather than a weakness, this has proven to be a strength of CDA, as it has endowed it with a high degree of dynamism.

(10)

9

Fairclough and Wodak (1997) place CDA within the framework of ‘Western Marxism’, as this philosophical theory has strongly emphasised the importance of culture in reproducing capitalist relations. According to Graham and Fairclough, Marx himself engaged in CDA when he analysed (and rejected) Hegel’s theory that ‘the idea’ can act (Forchter, Wodak, 2017, 137).

One of the key figures of Western Marxism is the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who often spoke in his works about “cultural hegemony”, a concept he never fully defined. Despite this lack of formality, there is one passage from his Prison notebooks that is referred to as a definition of what cultural hegemony is: the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production (Jackson Lears, 1985, 568). What Gramsci meant is that a ruling class (in his works, the capitalist class) is able to dominate over lower classes through a methodical manipulation of culture, a manipulation which ensures that beliefs and values that allow the ruling class to stand above the rest of society is accepted as the norm and is never questioned. Gramsci’s ideas have inspired many other philosophers, such as Louis Althusser, but they have also found strong opponents, such as Michel Foucault.

Foucault defined discourses as knowledge systems which influence social and governmental

“technologies” (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997). These technologies, in turn, shape power in society.

Discourse was never the main focus of Foucault’s analysis, he treated it as a practice through which power is exercised. Foucault believed that power relations are reproduced both through language and through practices, such as the design of a prison or a school. In order to discover these hidden power relations, Foucault designed an analysis method which has been defined as “rather abstract”

(Fairclough, Wodak, 1997, 261) as it is not tied to a specific text, a limit which various CDA analysts have tried to overcome, including Fairclough in his book Discourse and social change of 1992.

Foucault (1981) is the father of the key concept of orders of discourse, a theory that has often been referred to by many CDA linguists, such as Fairclough and Jäger. We can summarise orders of discourse as “combinations of genres (ways of acting), discourses (ways of representing) and styles (ways of being)” (Forchtner, Wodak, 2017, 139).

One of the most famous lectures of Foucault on this topic took place in 1970, at the inauguration of the College de France, where Foucault delivered a speech in which he outlined his research ideas.

Foucault started by listing three external criteria that define what kinds of discourse can be

(11)

10

produced: themes, as some themes are to be avoided, reason, as madness is not to be paid attention to, and truth, as falsity is not accepted.

Discourse also has to obey to internal criteria which define what type of discourse is being created.

The most common kind of discourse is commentary, a narrative which is repeated over and over, though only a small part of commentaries stand on a higher step, like literary work or juridical texts which are reproduced by people other than the author, unlike commentary made by ordinary individuals on a daily basis. The second limit placed upon discourse is the author principle:

everything the individual creates later has to be unified into an oeuvre through a selection process.

The third constraint is that of discipline, which is not a synonym for all that is true about a field of knowledge, as there can be mistakes in theorization, but, if presented in the correct form of discourse, even a fallacious theory can be part of a discipline.

Another boundary discourse has to respect is when it is allowed to be employed: as a matter of fact, there are some rituals that must be respected in order to take part in a discourse, some behaviours or gestures. In the past it was common to find ‘fellowships of discourse’, groups that preserved discourse only within their community, as were the rhapsodists, performers of epic poems in ancient Greece, though this practice has mostly faded. Something similar to the fellowship of discourse can be seen in the doctrinal groups, where the members are prevented from creating discourse belonging to other doctrines and the doctrine itself cannot be repeated by those who do not belong to the group.

As far as its theoretical background is concerned, CDA is also tied to the Frankfurt School of Philosophy: it is to the Frankfurt School and to Habermas that we trace back the term “critical” in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 261). This school goes back to philosophers who theorized before Marx, such as Kant and Hegel. They distance themselves from Marx’s belief that society is a by-product of economy. On the contrary, they believe that culture is quite independent form the economy. One of the most influential philosophers of this school is the German Jürgen Habermas, who defined discourse as strictly tied to the claim the speaker wishes to justify; so, in order to analyse discourse, the validity of the claims made has to be challenged.

Habermas thinks that a critical science has to be self-reflexive, that is to say, it has to consider the interests behind the science itself. Furthermore, the historical context of social and linguistic interactions must be taken into account during an analysis. Habermas developed the concept of

‘ideal speech situation’, an imaginary, unreachable state in which interactions of any kind are not

(12)

11

influenced by power relations; the only way to achieve an ideal speech situation is through rational discourse. Habermas has deeply influenced the Discourse-Historical Approach developed by Wodak, of which we will speak later on in this chapter (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 261).

Another strong influence of CDA is Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, and his idea of ideology. To him linguistics signs are the material realization of ideology, therefore, all language is ideological.

Linguistic sings are the epitome of class struggle, even the meaning of words is a class struggle to Bakhtin, who also underlined the important feature of intertextuality of texts, the link that unites all texts to one another. This connection can manifest itself in various ways, as a text can be an answer to another one, or inspiration, or even a transformation (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 262).

Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory is worth mentioning in this list, as it has provided the theoretical background for many analysis attempts (Forchter, Wodak, 2017: 140). Marxism – or better, the negation of some Marxist theories – is at the basis of this theory. DT is a post structuralist theory with an extensive specific jargon; it is based on the assumption that society does not necessarily depend on classes or economics and it has no defined direction, which means that Marx’s interpretation of history as a series of social struggles ais abandoned. And yet, there is a society, there is an organization, and this is due to articulation, the process through which people give meaning to the world around them as they speak. Through the reiteration of articulation, consistency is created, and society is born. As articulation happens through discourse, social structure is discursive. Because of its highly theoretical content, it has proven to be rather difficult to apply this theory to concrete discourse, though many have used this framework (Jacobs, 2018).

1.3 Applications of CDA

CDA can be approached from different perspectives, each with a particular focus. There has never been a one-size-fits-all CDA theory, the only one constant in all CDA theories is change, change in the approach and change in the definition of key terms of the discipline. It is enough just to mention the different definitions of the word ‘discourse’ to get an idea of how wide the landscape of CDA truly is: ‘text’ and discourse cannot be used as synonyms in the German and Central European tradition, in the Anglo-Saxon world ‘discourse’ can refer to both written and oral texts, whereas for Lemke ‘discourse’ refers to the abstract knowledge, whereas ‘text’ is the realization of discourse (Weiss, Wodak, 2007: page?). This mutability allows CDA to always change and improve.

It is outside of the scope of this dissertation to make a list of all the types of CDA an analyst can choose from, but in the following pages, some of the main branches of this field are presented, as

(13)

12

listed by Fariclough and Wodak in their chapter in “Critical discourse analysis” (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 262-268).

1.3.1 French CDA

One of the main theorists of CDA in France was Michel Pêcheux, who specialized, at first, in French political discourse analysis, with a special attention to left wing parties. Later in his career, he shifted his attention to written texts, such as textbooks and workplace discourse, both written and oral.

(Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 262, 263)

Pêcheux, following Althusser’s lead, affirms that people believe to be themselves the source of their discourse but, in truth, it is their ideological positioning that influences the choices of the elements in their discourse. Even the meaning of words changes based on the speaker’s ideology, the word

‘struggle’ is the most famous instance brought forward by Pêcheux, as this lexical item is used most frequently by the working class. When used by people in other social classes, its meaning changes.

This is an example of how people are shaped by their position in society, even if they might not be aware of it. For Pêcheux, individuals can achieve a change in their own position only through political revolution. (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997, 263)

1.3.2 Critical linguists

Critical linguistic analysis is a branch of CDA which was born in Britain in the 1970s. These linguists were strongly influenced by Michael Halliday’s ‘systemic’ linguistic theory, a theory first developed through study of Chinese grammar and later extended to other languages. Halliday’s theory aimed at analysing grammar from a different perspective, that is to say, not from the point of view of the rule, rather from the point of view of the resource. It is because of Halliday’s influence that critical linguists developed a more practical approach to analysis.

Critical linguists analyse texts with the aim of outlining those grammatical choices that have a strong impact on representation. For instance, if, when speaking of Third World countries, writers use more transitive verbs and these countries are the objects of such verbs, then the writers are creating an image of Third World countries as victims. Through small choices like this, it is possible to reproduce the existing status quo. Later, critical linguists also focused on how the choice of lexical items shapes the event that is communicated, especially in the news. (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 263)

1.3.3 Social semiotics

Social semiotics stems from critical linguistic analysis. The subject of study of this field is, once again, text, but with an emphasis on its multi-semiotic aspects. This is why visual images are often at the

(14)

13

centre of the analysis. Social semiotics also works on media discourse, blurring the lines between linguistic and cultural studies. Some of the main representatives of this kind of analysis are Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress. (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 264)

1.3.4 Discourse-Historical analysis

Discourse-historical analysis was born in Vienna, following the lead of Ruth Wodak. As mentioned before, Wodak was strongly influenced by the Frankfurt School, especially by Habermas. Her first work using this analysis method was an analysis of antisemitism in Austria in the 1990s. The main feature of this approach is that it includes as much data as possible of the context in which the discourse takes place, which means the analyst has to have a wide visual of politics, psychology, sociology and history.

Wodak developed her theory also thanks to the studies of Teun van Dijk and his socio-cognitive approach, an approach that aimed at showing how prejudice and racism are systematically reproduced in the media. For van Dijk, discourse and social structures are not directly connected, but they are mediated by social cognition, a concept borrowed from psychology that refers to how people store and apply information (Ghachem, 2015: 263)

Wodak discovered that, even though some similarities could be found, the content of discriminating discourse vary based on the social group being discriminated and, above all, based on the social context in which the interaction takes place. As a matter of fact, oftentimes the prejudice is hidden and can be understood only if the background is known by the recipient of the message (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 266)

1.3.5 Duisburg School

German linguist Siegfried Jäger is amongst the most prominent members of the Duisburg School, a school which was heavily influenced by Foucauldian theories. Their analysis is characterized by a concern with topoi and other elements, such as iconicity, with contribute to the text’s cohesion.

Jäger strongly believes that discourse helps reproduce the status quo, it has strong historical roots which have a strong impact also on the future and on the present and it is CDA’s duty to uncover these ties. The Duisburg School is not solely focused on discursive practices but on non-discursive practices as well (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 267).

To Jäger, discourse presents itself through ‘discourse strands’, which are made of discourse fragments, text on the same topic but delivered from different ‘discourse positions’, that is, the social position of the speaker who delivers such fragments (Frochter, Wodak, 2017:140).

(15)

14

Jäger developed a methodological analysis system of discourse fragments: divided in steps, this method, besides the aforementioned topoi, also aims at discovering metaphors and agentive structures. Siegfried and Margaret Jäger used this method to analyse German right-wing discourse, pointing out that in the right-wing media outlets it was extremely common to encounter racist discourse (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 268).

1.3.6 Reading analysts

From a combination of Foucault’s ideas and hermeneutic methodology, Utz Maas developed Reading Analysis, which he used to delve deep into the discourse of National Socialism. To him, discourse is an assemblement of linguistic forms mixed with social practice, hence the importance of an analysis which relies on sociology and history as well. Maas aims at defining the rules of each specific discourse; to him, intertextuality is a key feature of discourse, both synchronically and diachronically. Reading analysis refuses the idea that discourse analysis must be bound only to the text at hand, because there is risk of missing the wider picture (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 267).

1.4 The eight principles of CDA

All the analysis methods that have been mentioned above share some common features, typical of CDA. In their article, Fairclough and Wodak (1997) try to make a list of features shared by all CDA interpretations, even though they admit that some of these characteristics are more controversial in the debate of CDA. They propose eight principles that characterise CDA, from here on reported:

1. Social problems as the foundation of CDA: Fairclough and Wodak define CDA as an “analysis of linguistic and semiotic aspects of social processes and problems” (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 271). What the authors are trying to underline through this definition is that CDA is not merely an analysis of language for language’s sake, it is an analysis that aims at showing how society and culture deeply influence the linguistic choices of the speakers.

CDA is interdisciplinary, it is closely related to social and cultural studies. Through CDA, people can develop an awareness of the strategies used by speakers to support their ideologies. Because of the stress placed on the importance of the context and the society in which discourse takes place, CDA also provides analysis of the themes being used in discourse.

2. Discourse reproduces power relations: in CDA power is always a central theme. The media provide a crucial stage on which it is possible to see power relations at work is. Whether it is the media that controls politicians or vice versa is still unclear, but interviews always offer

(16)

15

an interesting source of analysis. Interviewers constantly try to control the themes, the time for each questions, the perspective from which topics are being presented, but politicians can always try (and often succeed) to escape from the linguistic boundaries interviewers set;

for instance, they can take longer turns and, through rhetorical strategies, go back to the topic closer to their heart (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 272).

3. The shaping power of discourse over society and culture: the basic assumption from which Fairclough and Wodak start is that discourse shapes society and, at the same time, is shaped by it. Through discourse, three dimensions can be constituted:

- Representation: how history, events are represented, talked about. The same event, in fact, can be described as positive or negative depending on the speaker’s attitude towards it.

- Relations: speakers are always creating a relation with their audience. It is a technique especially evident in political discourse: politicians can stand in solidarity with their people or take a defensive stance towards their opposition, depending on what the situation calls for.

- Identities: in discourse, speakers give each other identities. For instance, in politics it is fairly common to refer to the audience as a community with certain characteristics, which could be their shared values or their opposition to change.

These dimensions do not work independently, each text, be it spoken or written, is constructing representations, relations and identities. This multifaceted aspect of text is a legacy of Halliday’s systemic linguistic theory that says that even just a single sentence in enacting the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 273).

4. Ideological work of discourse: as has already been mentioned before, Marxism developed the theory of ideology, but today the concept is used also in other fields of knowledge.

Ideologies are ways of “representing and constructing society”(Fairclough, Wodak, 1997:

275), at the same time they represent society and construct identities. The main function of ideologies is to reproduce power relations, especially unequal ones, as is the case of gender ideologies that describe women as emotionally unstable, unlike their better, more stable counterpart, men. The best method to define whether a text has an ideological function is by looking at how the audience will receive it and which social reactions the text will trigger (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 275).

(17)

16

5. Historical features of discourse: any discourse is not created in a bubble, the historical context in which it takes place is fundamental in its analysis, as it reflects actions and social events of a specific time in history. Furthermore, the intertextual aspect of texts should not be underestimated: speeches or written texts refer to other writings created before or at the same time, a useful piece of knowledge that should be kept in mind when analysing a text according to CDA criteria (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 276).

6. Society and text are mediated: according to CDA, there is a link between text and the society in which it is produced, but these two are not connected directly, there is a mediator of sorts between them, and that is, according to Fairclough and Wodak, Foucault’s orders of discourse. Other linguists offer other mediators, for example van Dijk, faithful to his socio- cognitive approach, thinks social cognition plays this role. These complementary differences further prove how varied is the realm of CDA, where each theorist prioritises a different aspect of discourse (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 277).

7. The interpretative and explanatory role of CDA: CDA analysts have often proved how the same text can be not only analysed according to different criteria, but can also be interpreted differently, from one recipient to another. Age, gender, nationality, beliefs, emotions and many more variables provide a background against which discourse can be read. Such a high degree of variability brings forth another question: how much context is needed to formulate a precise analysis? As there is no fixed measure in CDA, all analysis is to be considered incomplete and open to new further additions (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 278).

8. CDA as the catalyst of social change: CDA does not operate only in politics, but in any social sphere, such as education, where CDA analysis of schoolbooks have been carried out in more than one country. A famous anecdote is Gruber and Wodak’s analysis of a column of one of the most popular Austrian tabloids, accused of denying the Holocaust. Their analysis proved how the column at the centre of their work fell into a wider range of antisemitic attitudes of the tabloid. Sadly, their analysis was not enough to sentence the tabloid as guilty during trial.

CDA has been often successful in triggering positive social change in various areas of social life: it is thanks to CSA that we now have established guidelines to avoid discriminatory language, especially towards women, or other sets of strategies that aim at eliminating dominating attitudes in doctor-patient relations (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997: 280).

(18)

17 1.5 Political discourse analysis

As the main topic of this dissertation is an analysis of political discourse, a brief overlook at what political discourse and political discourse analysis are is necessary. Van Dijk article What is political discourse analysis? (1997) has been used as the main source of this paragraph, with the support of John Wilson’s article Political discourse (2001) and Fairclough and Fairclough’s Political discourse analysis (2012).

Political discourse analysis is a branch of CDA which, unlike other methods which analyse relation of power in any type of discourse, focuses on developing a critical analysis exclusively of political discourse. If we wish to give a simple definition of PDA, we can say that PDA analyses discourse created by politicians or political institutions, be these small-town mayors or presidents of countries.

This definition, though, must be completed with by mentioning the audience: politicians are not alone in their creation of discourse, and the recipients of their speeches or texts are just as important for analytic purposes. Another addition to this basic definition is that not only politicians create political discourse, but anybody who takes part in politics, through protest or voting, can produce political discourse. Furthermore, not all utterances by politicians are part of political discourse, so we must reduce the possible material of analysis to texts created by politicians acting as “political actors” (van Dijk, 1997: 14).

To define whether a specific fragment of discourse falls within the scope of PDA, a useful criterion is context; to exemplify the importance of context, van Dijk uses the pragmatic example of members of Parliament debating during an official parliament session: within this context, discourse is obviously political. Some say that a text can be defined as political if it has political goals, but van Dijk deems this criterion not specific enough, as not only politicians have to make decisions or pursue goals that affect a wider public, and, according to this definition, even the speeches of managers or doctors would have to be defined as political. So, to summarise, political discourse is better defined through context, regardless of the authorship, but relying on the aim of the discourse at hand or where the discourse took place (van Dijk, 1997: 15).

The definition of what is politics is just as delicate a task: politics can refer to political processes, political systems, political ideologies or political relations. In order to better define what politics is, van Dijk (1997) provides a brief list of relevant characteristics of structures and themes of politics (van Dijk, 1997: 16):

(19)

18

• Societal domain: political speeches can always be labelled as part of a specific field of knowledge, such as health or law, or public sphere.

• Political systems: discourse concerning systems such as Communism, democracy or dictatorship are by nature political, as they are political acts dealing with the distribution of power.

• Political values: discourse in which values such as freedom or solidarity are referred to.

• Political ideologies: discourse which outlines the beliefs that shape a political system.

• Political institutions, organizations, groups and actors: these are the authors of most of political discourse.

• Political relations: discourse presenting the relation that unites government and citizens.

• Political process: sequences of political actions aimed to achieve a specific goal.

• Political actions: these are practical actions, such as meetings.

• Political discourse: it can take many forms, like propaganda, interviews, ballots…

• Political cognition: a background against which political action is measures, the most common being common sense.

Despite all the criteria that have been established to define political discourse, real life situations are not always clear cut: for example, off-the-record statements by politicians are always part of political discourse, as they have a political function, but quiet commentaries made by MPs during a debate or everyday work-related conversations of Prime Ministers are more difficult to frame.

Furthermore, a line must be drawn between political discourse and media discourse, like newspaper articles reporting news or official statements (van Dijk, 1997: 21, 22).

In line with the interdisciplinary nature of CDA, PDA opens itself to be used not only in linguistics but in political and social sciences too, where it could become an extremely useful tool for two main reasons: firstly, a detailed analysis of discourse can unveil hidden political moves in all political practices, from documents to laws; secondly, PDA’s focus on the context in which discourse takes place allows to unearth connections between discourse and ideologies which may not be apparent at first sight, such as racism or eurocentrism (van Dijk, 1997, 41).

Studies of political discourse were born with politics itself, but a more linguistic form of analysis was born in the 80s/90s. George Orwell was among the first theorizers of Political Discourse in his article Politics and the English language of 1946, an article in which he showed how language can be used to manipulate thought; for example, by calling a bombing of a village “pacification”, an attack seems

(20)

19

justified (Wilson, 2001: 400). On the whole, it can be stated that manipulation of language always aims at hiding negative events, so as not to frighten the population. Orwell’s worrisome theories are shared by many other scholars, including Pêcheux and Fairclough, who both agreed on the fact that words change their meaning based on who uses them, e.g. the left and the right wing have different ideas of what “social benefit” is (Wilson, 2001: 401).

These are issues of representation, how language is used to represent what we know. “To have others believe you, do what you want them to do, and generally view the world in the way most favourable for your goals, you need to manipulate, or, at the very least, pay attention to the linguistic limits of forms of representation” (Wilson, 2001: 401), says Wilson. There are two schools of thought in representation, a universalist and a relativistic one. The former states that our world understanding comes from universal concepts and language reflects these possibilities. The relativistic view, on the other hand, sees language and thought as deeply interwoven, consequently our understanding of the world comes from our linguistic resources (Wilson, 2001: 401). Once an image of a group or individual is created, it is rather difficult that a text representing a group of

“undesirable” in a positive light succeeds in changing the audience’s mind (Wilson, 2001: 406).

Because of this highly manipulative power, political discourse does not have a good reputation. It is referred by many as “nukespeak”, a clear reference to Orwell’s book 1984 in which the dictatorship tries to control the people’s thought through language, eliminating those words referring to concepts the Party does not want the people to know (Wilson, 2001: 401). A clear example of manipulation is provided by Montgomery’s analysis of 1992, in which manipulation is made evident:

killing civilians is defined as demographic targeting and a neutron bomb is enhanced radiation weapon (Wilson, 2001: 401). Another tool is transitivity, which allows to eliminate completely the agent of the action, as Wilson proves by reporting an example provided by Goodman in 1996 (Wilson, 2001: 402): the same event, the same material process can be described as an action, a transaction or an event:

Action → The soldier fired

Transaction → The soldier killed innocent villagers Event → Innocent villagers died

There are no text structures which are exclusively political, for this reason, the one fundamental difference between analysing discourse and analysing political discourse is analysing the context in which political discourse takes place. Official political discourse does have some characteristics,

(21)

20

though, although these features are not exclusive; for example, in official situations, such as parliament debates, politicians have to use a formal language, a style which is proper also in other contexts. Here are some of the common features of political discourse (van Dijk, 1997: 24).

Topics

As politics deals with a wide range of topics, it could be argued that political discourse could cover any theme political actors are interested in, but, even though this is undoubtedly true, research has shown that some topics are more common than others. If we were to make a list, the first place would be occupied by politics itself, as systems, processes, policies, events and actors are often on centre stage of political discourse. In second place, following closely politics, social themes are often interwoven with political discourse, namely immigration, which is almost every day referred to by politicians all over the globe (van Dijk, 1997: 25.

Authorship

Despite the wide range of possible topics, political discourse does have some restraints, which van Dijk presents using terminology of one of his previous works, Semantic macro-structures and knowledge frames in discourse comprehension (1977).

One of the restraints of political discourse concerns authorship: by defining topics as “semantic macro-propositions” (van Dijk, 1997: 26), that is “semantic structures of discourse whose meaning and reference is defined in terms of their constituents' meanings” (van Dijk, 1977: 7), he says that the authors of political discourse are “topical participants” (van Dijk, 1997: 26) that can influence the political process, which is why public political actors are as politicians or elites. This does not completely exclude people outside the top tiers of society, but their appearances are rather rare, and, when they occur, these actors are to play the role of the victim, as is often the case in tales of heroic stories of individuals who had to face unbearable hardships to emigrate.

Predicates

Another restraint can be found in predicates: the majority of the time, in political discourse predicates refer to the future, what the speaker plans to do, how he or she will improve the current situation. Obviously, the present is always described as negative by all those actors that oppose the actual leadership. In fact, only those responsible for the present situation speak about the current state in more pleasant tones. The past is ambiguous, as especially conservatives speak about times gone by with a certain degree of nostalgia, a feeling that is also shared by other parties, such as the

(22)

21

environmentalists who dream of a bygone unpolluted world. Nevertheless, not all political groups share this view (van Dijk, 1997: 26).

Speaking about predicates, it is worth mentioning that often topics are modalized, especially when presenting the current situation and painting a picture of what the situation should be. This kind of structures are generally highly persuasive (van Dijk, 1997: 27).

Polarization

Political discourse is by nature polarized: politicians present a “we” against a “they” who never shares our opinions, our values and offers poor ideas. The language used to describe “them” has always a negative connotation (van Dijk, 1997: 28).

Genre

Political discourse genre can be categorized based on schemata, a conventional division of topics for each discourse genre. Each genre has its own rules, and the manipulation of these rules can truly be used as a powerful political tool, for example by hiding important pieces of information in less prominent position, and by filling the gaps where noteworthy information should be with minor details which are placed under the limelight, a technique often used in newspaper headings. Some genres have structures which must be respected, such as Openings and Closings of Parliament sessions, but others are more flexible, as they are merely strategic (van Dijk, 1997: 29).

1.5.1 The tools of political discourse

Political discourse always has a purpose, there is a goal that must be achieved, and manipulation of the language helps politicians to reach it. Here are some of the tools most frequently used.

Argumentation

Argumentation is probably the most powerful tool of political discourse. Born in ancient Greece, the study of argumentation was first theorized by Aristotle, who developed the concept of topos, a concept later reformulated by great classic authors such as Cicero (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 18).

As Fairclough and Fairclough say (Fairclough, Faiclough, 2012: 18), Aristotle already spoke of the deep connection between language and politics in his work Politics, where he defines man as a political animal, as it is the only living being who has been gifted with speech, and it is this gift that allows politics to exist. It appears as if Nature was following a masterplan: give human beings speech so they could engage in politics. In Rhetorics, Aristotle distinguishes three types of rhetoric:

(23)

22

deliberative, to deliberate about what to do as a society, forensic, to defend or condemn actions, and epideictic, to praise or criticise an individual.

It is said that persuasion by argumentation is the “hallmark of democracy” (van Dijk, 1997: 29), and persuasion can be achieved only by attacking fallacies in the opponent’s argumentation.

While there is a wide literature on the topics of the macro-structure of political discourse, literature on local level, i.e. micro-structure level, is lacking, and thus it is impossible to say whether characteristics like those of the macro-structure can be found. Despite this lack of data, it is possible to make hypotheses: even at a local level, it is highly likely that the polarization between “us” and

“them” is repeated. Probably, positive predicates are used in describing “us” in explicit, direct claims, and while the good actions of “us” will be described in detail, “our” misgivings will be overlooked (van Dijk, 1997: 31). This technique of juxtaposition can be achieved through different methods, one of which is the “disclaimer”; to quote an example from van Dijk (van Dijk, 1997: 32), it is often used when speakers are trying to avoid being labelled as racist: “I have nothing against Blacks, but…”. Of course, such constructions can be adapted to attack political opponents.

Argumentation can be defined according to different disciplines, for example in logic, an argument

“is a set of statements (explicit or implicit), one of which is the conclusion (claim) while the other are the premises” (Faiclough, Fairclough, 2012: 36). The premises justify the conclusion, which should be reached after an analysis of the premises, but all the disciplines agree in saying that argumentation’s main purpose is persuasion (Faiclough, Fairclough, 2012: 37).

Aristotle provided a distinction in argumentation: inductive and deductive. Let us start from the deductive argumentation: in this case, the conclusion follows the premises, so if the premises are true, so is the conclusion. Hence, the conclusion cannot be false if its premises are true. On the other hand, if the premises are false, then the conclusion can be valid, though untrue. Here is an example provided by Lepore (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 37):

All fish fly.

Anything which flies talks.

So, all fish talk.

In inductive argumentation, the process works backwards: it is highly likely the conclusion is true, if the premises are true, but there is no certainty like in deduction. For example, as most children like Harry Potter, it is possible that your child likes it too, but it is not certain, so we could draw a false

(24)

23

conclusion from a true premise. In the first case, major and minor premises are linked together, whereas in the second, the premises are coordinated, so the more premises there are, the stronger is the argument (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 37).

After Aristotle, another type of argumentation was introduced: conductive argumentation, where the premises are organized in a convergent pattern, which means that they are all independently tied to the claim, but each premise could be strong enough to support the claim even if the others are taken away. A typical example is everyday reasoning, where pros and cons are weighted to reach a conclusion, e.g. deciding whether to take a job opportunity in another city. Unlike in inductive argumentation, premises do not have to be tied together. From the same premises, each individual could reach a different conclusion, each equally valid, depending on which premise is more important for them (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 38).

Walton later proposed yet another argument, the plausible argument, the argument which leads to a conclusion when the premises are not certain, as it is based on presumption and it can change if new premises are added to the balance. For example, in murder trials, it is plausible to sentence a man found on the scene of the murder, but if new, undeniable proof is discovered, which sets the man free, then the claim must be changed. Plausible arguments are practical arguments, the arguments of everyday life which are open to change (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 38).

Lexicon

Lexicon will, of course, adapt itself to the ideology we are defending. Therefore, even the lexical items will reproduce the ideology of “us” vs “them”, using more negative terms to describe the opponents, to stress how wrong their ideas are. On the other side, lexical items with positive connotation will be employed to describe “us”, and, should there be a need to mention a misgiving made by “us”, then a euphemism will most definitely step in to cover for such a slip up (van Dijk, 1997: 33).

Syntax

Syntax’s manipulation is an often overlooked tool, and yet it is just as effective. Pronouns, word order, active and passive constructions, nominalization and much more falls within this category.

• Pronouns is amongst the most used instruments. For example, “we”, which indicates a group in which the speaker identifies: “we” the West, the democrats, the people. Of course, other pronouns can be used, according to the needs of the speaker, such as “you”, to speak directly to the audience (van Dijk, 1997: 33).

(25)

24

• Word order, as deviations from the standard can emphasize or mitigate a word or a phrase (van Dijk, 1997: 34).

• Nominalization allows to hide the actor of an action. Wilson reports that some studies have shown that, in the period previous to the Gulf War, American newspaper employed many nominal clauses to represent the Iraqi threat, to make it look more real and urgent, even though it was nothing more than speculation, as many already claimed at the time. Yet, thanks to this technique, the speculation became very tangible for the people (Wilson, 2001:

403).

• Active vs passive predicates portray two different images of the same event: by using an active verb, the subject becomes the agent, whereas with a passive verb, the focus is on the victim. Each sentence has a different focus, choosing which one to use automatically manipulates the narrative of the event in the public’s eyes (Wilson, 2001: 403).

Persuasive definitions

Emotive words and persuasive definitions are what Skinner calls “rhetorical re-descriptions”

(Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 93) of reality. Persuasive definitions are another tool employed to persuade the audience; they are extremely striking when used in argumentation, e.g. “taxation is theft” (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 92). Emotive terms fulfil the same role, e.g. “coward”.

Persuasive definitions can be treated as arguments as they are waiting to be challenged by a counterargument. They are not to be considered manipulative per se; they are simply a way of making an argument more persuasive. The problem is when this tool is misused, that is, when they are treated as universal truth that breech no counterargument. In this case, they are a form of manipulation (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 93).

Rhetoric

Rhetoric moves accordingly to the principles presented above, that is, it aims at supporting one party against the other. Rhetoric is surrounded by a halo of confusion when it comes to its definition.

It is usually defined as the study of persuasion and for some it has a negative connotation, such as Plato or Foucault. Even in modern linguistics rhetoric is regarded as a play with words to deceive the audience, used mainly in politics and advertisement. But for others, such as Aristotle or van Eemeren, that is not the case (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 56).

Rhetoric has been at the centre of political discourse analysis for many years, as it plays a rather prominent role in discourse. The main difference between rhetoric and the principles mentioned

(26)

25

above (syntax, semantic…) is the rhetoric is not compulsive in political discourse: when it used, it is done so consciously and mindful of the effect it will have on the audience (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

As common rhetorical figures, we may list:

• Repetition, be it of sound (alliteration), of sentence structure (parallelism) or of meaning.

Repetition helps the audience remember the word or the concept the politician wants to send across (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

• Addition, giving more details than necessary both in favour of the party the speaker represents, for example by detailing a good deed, or against the opposition, by creating a negative story around the opposition (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

• Euphemisms, litotes and hyperboles, the first two are figures that try to soften the news whereas the latter exaggerates it (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

• Deletion, omitting information about the context, so that the audience cannot have the complete picture (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

• Substitution, to use a concept that does belong in that context, as can be irony, metonymy or metaphor (van Dijk, 1997: 35).

Expression structures

Politics does not occur only through linguistic symbols, but also through non-linguistic ones, as the tone of voice during a public speech or the design of a headline. Such tools as well obey to the general principle of politics of presenting in a positive light “us” vs “them” (van Dijk, 1997: 36).

Speech acts and interactions

Not all political interventions are the same, what kind of speech act will be used depends on the purpose of the intervention. As a result, a government declaration will be made mostly of assertions while political dissent is created through accusations. These fixed structures, though, are slowly disappearing, as Fairclough in 1994 noticed: politics is taking a more conversational turn (van Dijk, 1997: 36, 37).

Manipulation

Manipulation is a willing lie told by the agent. If the speaker truly believes that the situation is as he is describing it, then it is not manipulation. This is what makes manipulations such a delicate subject:

nobody but the speaker has access to his thoughts, so it is difficult to prove that manipulation occurred, as simple analysis is not enough to determine whether there was manipulation (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 95)

(27)

26

One form of manipulation is rationalization: rationalization occurs when the arguer uses reasons to support the claim that are not those he believes. For example, the American war against Iran was presented as the only way America could prevent Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction.

America and the UK where positive the country had extremely dangerous weapons, when actually there were none. Opponents of the war challenged the existence of WMD form the start, saying that this decision was due to America’s hegemonic desire. Even Blair always defended UK’s role in the war, saying that they truly believed, based on evidence, that Iraq was a global threat (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 96).

1.6 Political Discourse analysis: Fairclough and Fairclough

The analysis of the political debate around which this dissertation is centred will be based on the method proposed by Isabela and Norman Fairclough, as it provides a specific framework to analyse deliberation processes. As first theorized by Aristotle in Rhetorics, that is a discourse where a group of citizens debate one focal question: talking about events that affect us, not others, what do we do?. Aristotle says we deliberate about the means to reach an end, not about the end goals themselves (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 19).

Fairclough and Fairclough’s idea of politics has roots in classical and modern political thinking. They share van Dijk’s definition of politics and political actors, as those who act in political processes and events, and they agree on the importance of institutional context (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 17).

Unlike other analytical methods, Fairclough and Fairclough’s does not wish to delve too deep into the issue of representation, as analysis developed by other linguists do, such as Chilton, whose theories have roots in cognitive linguistics (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 20). The authors also mention Wodak as a starting point in the development of their method, explaining that her theory provides an excellent taxonomy but the risk this classification entails is that politics can come across as a sequence of processes, and important connections between parts can be missed (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 22). In addition, although Wodak recognizes the importance of action in politics, her focus is still on representation (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 23). Another fundamental difference between DHA and PDA is that the former defines argumentation as a discursive strategy, whereas the latter thinks of argumentation as a verbal and social activity whose purpose is to convince the listener. PDA requires a careful analysis of the argumentative structure, which is the basis of the analysis (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 23). Furthermore, PDA does not use topoi to categorise the themes used in discourse, but rather argumentative schemes, structures divided in premises connected to a conclusion (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 23).

(28)

27

Each political intervention has a strategy, a plan of action for achieving a goal or a future condition;

the desired change, though, can only be accomplished through social action. Strategy is discursive as in it is developed in discourse, but it is not a discursive category, because it belongs to theory of actions. For this reason, only an action can be described as strategic, not a discourse. This does not mean that discourse is not an action, because it is, but strategies move outside and beyond discourse since they are about changes in the world, not discourse. So, the changes that we wish for can be described through discourse and in part discourse helps achieve them, but it is not the only driving force of change (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 25).

From political theory, Fairclough and Fairclough take its dual nature of being both descriptive and normative (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 25). As mentioned above, there are many ways to define politics, for example Hay provides twelve definitions of it (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 25). Despite this variety, it is possible to define four main characteristics of politics: “politics as a choice, as the capacity for agency, as deliberation and as a social interaction” (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 26).

The one feature that all theorists agree on is that politics is deliberative, which means there are choices to be made. Saying that political discourse is deliberative is stating a feature, it does not matter if the deliberation happens thorough a democratic process nor if the final agreement is good for the population, and not always deliberation leads to an agreement (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012:

26). Deliberation is born out of alternatives, if there are no alternatives there can be no choice, thus no politics. In today’s society, it is never a problem of alternatives, as there are always many to choose from, each defending different interests and moving along different lines, but rather a problem of allocation of resources, as they are never sufficient to cover everyone’s needs. Political choices also have to deal with urgency, sometimes more urgency, sometimes less, but the impact it has on deliberation should not be underestimated. To deliberate, reasons must be evaluated.

However, not all deliberations are good or democratic, as often choices are made by the few in the name of the many, without the latter having any power. In an ideal world, politics could be more democratic, debates could involve everyday citizens. Sadly, this is not the case, as in today’s society there is an undeniable oligarch tendency (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 26).

The method developed by Fairclough and Fairclough is defined as practical, not because of its content (political discourse) or context, but because its aim is to reach a normative and descriptive conclusion. This method was developed starting from the theories of Audi and Walton. The first difference from these models is that Fairclough and Fairclough offer different agent’s goals and they

(29)

28

add a circumstantial premise, institutional facts: institutions lay down basic rules that must be respected by all actors, so if a goal has a negative consequence, the action should not be performed (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 40).

The authors add to Audi and Walton’s argumentation internal or external reasons: both starting theories are based on the assumption that an action is undertaken because of a wish to reach a goal, but that is not always the case. From time to time, people have to do something they do not wish to do but is their obligation to. These are called external reasons, as opposed to internal reasons. As to why people should obey external reasons, Fairclough and Fairclough answer that the actors are thinking about a future, better state of affairs, as they are concerned about the present.

A way to express this obligation is through deontic modals, e.g. must, ought to or should. Deontic modals are based on normative premises, the situation that we want to create, and circumstantial premises, what is the current situation (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 42).

This is how practical reasoning works: in these circumstances, I have this goal, and as I am (or should be) concerned about reaching this goal, I should do A. As a consequence, if A does not assure that I will be able to achieve my goal or might compromise other goals of ours, than the claim must be re- evaluated (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 42).

Fairclough and Fairclough believe that agents follow a hierarchy of goals and a hierarchy of values, hence agents can accept some costs, but not all. The accepted costs are costs that can be borne if they do not compromise higher goals or values. Speaking about goals and values, it has to be said that there can be more than one value which shapes present actions, such as law, morality or norms.

Often, though, the fact that we must answer to these norms are binding forces on agents (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 47). For these to actually influence the actions of the agent, the values have to be internalized, they have to be a concern, otherwise they remain an external reason which does not necessarily bind the agent (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 48).

1.6.1 Power

Fairclough and Fairclough want to eliminate the widespread assumption that in politics argumentation is not important, because decisions only depend on power. In truth, politics is argumentative by nature, but not all arguments are reasonable and sometimes the decisions do not depend on the strength of an argument but on other forces. Power is the moving force behind action (Fairclough, Fairclough, 2012: 112).

The Great Debate: A Critical Analysis of the Brexit Campaign

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia D

C ORSO DI L AUREA M AGISTRALE IN

L ANGUAGES FOR C OMMUNICATION IN I NTERNATIONAL

E NTERPRISES AND O RGANIZATIONS

The Great Debate: A Critical Analysis of the Brexit Campaign

Prova finale di:

Maria Battimiello Relatore:

Marina Bondi

Correlatore Franca Poppi

Anno Accademico 2018/2019

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Critical Discourse Analysis: a brief theoretical overlook