Speech strategies and discourse analysis: the powerful and the oppressed (edited volume)

Co-editors: Manuel Macías (URJC) and Carmen Gómez-Galisteo (UNED)
manuel.macias@urjc.es cgomez@flog.uned.es


This edited volume analyzes political speeches in the last thirty years from a discourse analysis perspective. In real and fictitious political speeches, as important as the contents, are the emotions these texts elicit, moving audiences to support a running candidate or to endorse a political decision. By political speeches we encompass political speeches given in political meetings and rallies as well as parliamentary discourse in various legislative bodies in real life or in fiction contexts. Public authorities’ declarations and statements can also be considered. All these texts may be oral or in written form. While our focus is on political discourse in English-speaking contexts (L1, L2 or EFL), we also welcome submissions that offer a comparative perspective between, for example, EU parliamentary discourse vs. American Congress speeches.
Potential submissions may address the following questions (although not limited to):
- What are the most common ideas in political discourse?
- What pragmatic strategies do speakers employ?
- What discourse analysis conventions are observed? Which are flounted?
- How do speakers engage their audiences? What strategies do they use?
- How do speakers appeal to their audiences? Do they appeal to their emotions, to their feelings, to their rational thoughts?
- How can the language in political discourse be characterized? What register does it belong to?
- What implicatures are used?
- How is persuasive language employed?
- How are inferences used? How does the speaker imply information? How is presupposition used?
- How is politeness conveyed?
- How is the linguistic adaptation theory put into practice in political speeches?




DEADLINES
Submission of proposals – please submit a 500/1,000-word proposal along with your contact information and a biographical statement (approx. 100/200 words) by March 1, 2025.
After acceptance, contributors are expected to submit final book chapters (6,000/8,000 words, including references and footnotes) by December 1, 2025.
Strong interest in this volume has been expressed by a leading academic publisher. More information will be given to prospective contributors as details are finalized and a contract is secured.


Bibliography
Elsanhoury, Mohamed, Abeer M. Refky M. Seddek, Névine M. Sarwat, & Riham. E. A. Debian. "A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Political Speeches: The Case of Donald Trump’s 2016 Election Speeches." Journal of Language and Literature [Online], 20.2 (2020): 168. Web. 23 Oct. 2024 https://e- journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/JOLL/article/view/2390
Fetzer, Anita, ed. The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations across cultures.
John Benjamins, 2013.
Locher, A., Miriam & Jucker, H. Andreas. (2021). The Pragmatics of Fiction. Edinburgh University Press.
Pan, Jun. "The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: An Analytical Framework and a Comparative Study of Policy Speeches in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong". Bandung 6.2 (2019): 252-284.
Schaffner, Christina. 1996. “Editorial: Political Speeches and Discourse Analysis.” Current Issues In Language and Society 3 (3): 201–4. doi:10.1080/13520529609615471.