The Languages of Politics

The Languages of Politics/ La politique et ses langages Volume 2 Edited by Marta Degani, Paolo Frassi and Maria Ivana Lorenzetti The Languages of Politics/La politique et ses langages Volume 2 Edited by Marta Degani, Paolo Frassi and Maria Ivana Lorenzetti This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Marta Degani, Paolo Frassi, Maria Ivana Lorenzetti and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9768-X ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9768-6 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Section I: Political Discourse and Political Genres Chapter One ................................................................................................. 9 Les débats présidentiels comme lieu de confrontation d’éthos : une approche interactionnelle du discours politique Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 33 Les campagnes présidentielles entre publicité et propagande : la rhétorique du slogan Laura Santone Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47 A propos des éléments de langage Alain Polguère Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 67 Electoral posters’ second life: intertextuality in the 2010 UK electoral campaign, from billboards to Web spoofs Chiara Degano Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 91 A corpus-based discourse analysis of security in White House press briefings Cinzia Spinzi, Marco Venuti Section II: The Lexicology and Lexicography of Politics Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 117 Mots de la politique et mots de la science politique Paul Bacot vi Contents Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 133 Le politique via la lexicologie : la revue Mots Paolo Frassi Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 153 Politique et idéologie dans un discours lexicographique pour enfants : l’exemple du Robert Junior, éditions de 1999 et 2012 Patricia Kottelat Chapter Nine ........................................................................................... 173 « Convergences parallèles » : les mots de la politique en lexicographie bilingue Giovanni Tallarico Section III: Historical Perspectives on Political Discourse Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 201 The spectacle of passions: classical rhetoric and theatricality in the trial against Warren Hastings Chiara Rolli Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 215 The discourse of conflict in Northern Ireland: from the IRA to globalisation Kim Grego Section IV: Political Language in the New Media Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 237 Terminology with a slant: a multimodal perspective on political polarity in the media Anna Zanfei Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 259 Twitter as a source of change in political discourse Stefania Spina CHAPTER ELEVEN THE DISCOURSE OF CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND: FROM THE IRA TO GLOBALISATION KIM GREGO UNIVERSITY OF MILAN Abstract This paper addresses the discourse of the conflict that has been going on for centuries in Northern Ireland (NI) between Unionists and Republicans, Catholics and Protestants, reaching its peak with the “Troubles” of the 1970s, with negotiations starting in the early 1990s, and finally evolving into full devolution in 2007. Meanwhile, the 2001 attacks on the US have changed the very notion of terrorism, and the effects of the globalising trends emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall and boomed in the 1990s and 2000s are still shaping the current politics, economies and societies of nations worldwide. This study intends to present a contemporary, historical view of the discourse of rival NI politicians, as it is expressed in their own words and in the media. Results are expected to shed light on the correlation and influence between the discourse of the conflict and the conflict itself. 216 The discourse of conflict in Northern Ireland 1. Background1 The so-called “conflict” in Northern Ireland2 is rooted in ancient history. Since the Norman occupation of the island began in the 12th century under Henry II, the coexistence of the English, Protestant and local Irish, Catholic communities – to which immigrants from Scotland (mainly Presbyterian) were added, as they also started colonising the northern part of Ireland in the 17th century – has never been peaceful. It was not until after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, however, that English rule firmly established itself over the land, with colonisation and exploitation programmes continuing throughout the 18th century, until the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland was created in 1801. Northern Ireland was then partitioned from the rest of the island in 1921, following the Irish independence process. A thirty-year period of political and social unrest followed (1968-1998), known as “The Troubles” (see O’Maolain 1989, Miller 1994, Moloney 2002, Jackson 2005, Bellocchio 2006 for extensive historical and political background). 1.1 Politics A distinction is proposed here between the armed stage of the Troubles (1969-1993) and the Northern Irish peace process that began in 1993 and reached a peak in 1998 with the Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement, followed by another difficult decade until devolved government was finally returned to Belfast after the 2007 election. Adopting this distinction, the 1969-1993 period is seen as a moment of armed conflict, denoting neither a forced nor a peaceful solution, whereas the 1999-2007 period is considered one of political conflict, implying the parties had started to work on a solution they sought through negotiation, i.e. through communication. It is precisely when the conflicting parties stopped fighting and started communicating that a “language of the conflict” (and not of “war”) could emerge and consolidate in Northern Ireland; it is this linguistic and communicative aspect that the project investigates. 1 This paper reports on a long-term, ongoing project on the discourse of conflict in Northern Ireland (NI). The original core of this research was first presented as a doctoral thesis in Grego (2005), The Language of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Gerry Adams vs. Ian Paisley, later edited and published in Grego (2010a). The current stage sees a development and expansion of the previous research on the subject. 2 The terminological issue of what to call the NI situation, whether a ‘conflict’, ‘war’ or ‘guerrilla’, is discussed at length in Grego (2005, § 2.1). Kim Grego 217 1.2 Linguistics Conflict is a multifaceted notion that is found at all levels and in all sorts of human interactions. Terminologically, the first issue to contemplate is whether to use the words ‘conflict’, ‘struggle’ or ‘war’ in reference to Northern Ireland’s recent history. The definitions overlap: CONFLICT a. An encounter with arms; a fight, battle. b. esp. A prolonged struggle. c. The clashing or variance of opposed principles, statements, arguments, etc. STRUGGLE a. An act of struggling; a resolute contest, whether physical or otherwise; a continued effort to resist force or free oneself from constraint; a strong effort under difficulties. b. A strong effort to continue to breathe, as in the death-agony or under conditions tending to produce suffocation. WAR a. Hostile contention by means of armed forces, carried on between nations, states, or rulers, or between parties in the same nation or state; the employment of armed forces against a foreign power, or against an opposing party in the state. b. transf. and fig. Applied poet. or rhetorically to any kind of active hostility or contention between living beings, or of conflict between opposing forces or principles.3 In fact, they are cross-referential: ‘conflict’ is defined using ‘struggle’, ‘war’ using ‘conflict’. As a consequence: a war is certainly a conflict, but a conflict is not necessarily a war. […] a war is just one type of conflict: it belongs to the “conflict set”, as a subset delimited by specific features. Looking again at the definitions, the main characterising feature here seems to be the adjective “armed”, so a first logical definition of war could be “a type of conflict characterised by the use of arms”. If a war is “a type of conflict characterised by the use of arms”, then the years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland were definitely one; still, the word “conflict” continues to be largely

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