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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2012

Emotions as a rhetorical tool in political discourse

Résumé

This paper aims at showing the way emotion is integrated in the political discourse and may contribute to enhance its efficiency. I argue that emotion is a rhetorical tool used by politicians, by media discourse and also by citizens in order to impact on the opinion or to build it (see Brader et al. 2011). I define a rhetorical tool as means of influencing the addressee in order to impose a point of view and to determine acting, i.e. a tool having a performative potential. A rhetorically strong discourse is a discourse that may generate power and thus sustain politics (cf. Salavastru 2005); from this point of view, the analysis of the political discourse is concerned with the evaluation of its rhetorical efficiency. I adopt the point of view of Discourse Analysis (cf. Pêcheux 1975, Van Dijk 1995 and 2006), considering that the institutional discourses like the political and media discourses occupy a dominant position in the process of ideological constructions and at the level of the performative effects. The analysis of emotionally charged linguistic units and of their potential/real discursive effects through some concrete cases not only helps to understand the way political rhetoric functions but also questions the relationship between politics, power, media and lay public.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

hal-01465658 , version 1 (13-02-2017)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01465658 , version 1

Citer

Georgeta Cislaru. Emotions as a rhetorical tool in political discourse. Maria Zaleska. Rhetoric and Politics, Cambrige Scholar Press, pp.107-126, 2012. ⟨hal-01465658⟩
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