What is Political Language?

About the lecture

In this module, we think about what is political language, focusing in particular on: (i) political language as a means of creating cooperation and achieving consensus; (ii) political language as a means of enforcing power and authority; (iii) political language as an appeal to common, shared values; (iv) political language as a means of distinguishing the in-group from the out-group; (v) the asymmetry of power implicit in political language; (vi) the interest of political language to a range of different disciplines: linguists, political scientists, philosophers of language, moral psychologists, etc.; (vii) political language as language in action; and (viii) the important of both monologic and dialogic forms, as well as of both written and spoken texts.

About the lecturer

Prof. Jonathan Charteris-Black is Professor in Linguistics at UWE Bristol. His recent publications include Metaphors of Brexit: No cherries on the cake? (2019) and Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor (2018).