N.B.: The conference languages are French, Portuguese, Spanish and English, without giving priority to any of them.
Content: Political discourse is omnipresent in our societies since we have access to a never-ending stream of political messages through media, messages about how the outside world is governed or should be governed. Politics is basically about ideas, ideologies, visions, and arguments, conveyed by language, with which it is closely connected. It is difficult to study one aspect without taking the other into account. In other words, the different approaches (linguistics, discourse analysis, history, political and social sciences) are complementary to each other, as the starting point of analysis is different. Whereas linguistic and discourse analytical approaches have as starting point concrete textual elements and discourse practices (micro-level analyses), the political and social science approach often takes as its starting point society at a macro-structural level. Thus, while the latter gives a picture of general tendencies, the former highlights the practices of individual politicians and political parties.
The idea of the conference is to focus on political election debates in different Romance speaking countries. This target is justified by the fact that election debates are particularly important in the study of political discourses. As social phenomena, they are very important since they are public, they are large media phenomena, and they reflect the ideological polarization of our societies. As a linguistic activity, the political debates are interesting study objects, especially within rhetorical, argumentative and interactive studies. Many election debates have influenced different countries’ ideological choices, national identities, and they have also left their stamp on the languages. The plenary lectures will thus deal with political debates broadly within discourse analysis perspective that is, from textual analysis of linguistic units in a social context to studies of debates – not as language activities, but as cultural, social and historical phenomena creating meaning in relation to the outside world. The common denominator, the closely related languages and cultures as well as common points in the discursive and rhetorical traditions of the Romance countries despite of the existing diversity, turns an interdisciplinary, comparative study into an especially interesting subject with a high relevance for larger questions concerning, for instance, the European and the Mercosur integration processes and the necessity to shape a public opinion and political discourse across the national borders.
For more informations see the complete Cfp as pdf.