POPULIST DISCOURSE: AN ADORNIAN RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL OF PAULINE HANSON'S ONE NATION By Christina Laura Bobrowski BA Hons A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA November 2004 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of the candidate's knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis. Christina Laura Bobrowski November 2004 STATEMENT OF AUTHORITY OF ACCESS This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Christina Laura Bobrowski November 2004 ABSTRACT This thesis offers a sociological explanation for the electoral appeal of Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON) by performing a discourse analysis of the parties manifesto. This manifesto is comprised of the public speeches, parliamentary speeches and media releases of PHON delivered during the period of Hanson's term in the Australian Federal Parliament 1996-1998. The analysis is a synthesis of methodological approaches originated by Theodor Adorn° and Erving Goffrnan. These approaches are rhetorical analysis and frame analysis. The combination of these approaches augmented by the simultaneous identification of key thematic domains allows the discourse analysis to be linked to issues canvassed by the Australian Election Study 1998 (AES 1998). It is proposed in the thesis that Hanson's political style is of the populist type that is demonstrated to be increasingly prevalent in Western politics. It is the paucity of sociological explanation that focuses on the manifestos of contemporary populist politics in order to understand the mechanism of appeal of such political movements that warrants this in-depth analysis of an Australian example of the phenomena. Firstly, the work of Adorno is revisited by considering the historical climate in which he was working in the 1930s including the development of The Frankfurt School. During this time, Adorn° developed a 'Gallery of Tricks and Devices' for analysing the radio programs of the fascist Presbyterian preacher, Martin Luther Thomas. The Gallery is actually a typology of rhetorical devices that Adorn° identified in the speech of Thomas. Thomas employed a populist style and is known for his emotional iv appeals to his audience. This typology was then applied to the manifesto of 116 documents comprised of public and parliamentary speeches and media releases produced in Hanson's name from her election to Federal Parliament in 1996 until her defeat in 1998. The objective of this step of the discourse analysis was to assess the utility of Adorno's typology. A content analysis was also performed to ascertain the weighted means of the prevalence of the devices within each of the document categories. The results suggested that the typology required some revision to enhance its suitability for the efficient analysis of contemporary populist discourse. A Revised Typology was formulated and applied. This new typology has the potential to be useful in the analysis of the manifestos of a variety of political movements. This rhetorical analysis gives insight into the potential impact on listeners of particular excerpts of speech. The impact is the transference of messages about particular issues and is frequently emotive in tone. The incidence of each rhetorical device is composed of one or more sentences. The key issues identified were grouped according to theme. Three key thematic domains are identified and are labelled Cultural, Social and Economic Sovereignty. A contemporary form of Goffman's (1974) frame analysis developed by Snow and Benford (1986) informs the scrutiny of the discourse. The purpose of this step of the analysis is to ascertain what the overall potential impact of the collective effect of the rhetorical devices is on audiences. The term applied by Snow and Benford to describe the collective impact of the meaning of a particular discourse is Master Frame. It is asserted that the Master Frame of the PHON discourse is an Identity Frame. It has been suggested that a factor lacking in frame analysis generally, is the absence of the acknowledgement of the role of emotion in attracting people to political or social movements. The incorporation into the analysis of the application of a rhetorical typology addresses this shortcoming. It also serves to identify the emotional component of the discourse that is associated with the populist political style. The thesis claims that PHON's appeal is founded on successfully communicating its master frame to the constituency via its populist style. Furthermore that that this populist style relies heavily on emotionally charged presentations by the leader. The identification of the key thematic domains of the discourse is necessary in order to establish if there is indeed a link between the master frame of the discourse and PHON's appeal to the constituency. This is achieved by the statistical analysis of the •AES 1998 data set. The first step of this analysis was to create a reliable scale to measure respondents 'feelings' towards PHON's leader, Pauline Hanson. Ten items were selected from the data sets that address aspects of respondent's feelings towards Hanson. This scale was labelled the Emotional Energy Scale following Randall Collins' (1988b) definition of this concept. The data set was then searched for items that addressed issues encapsulated by the thematic domains. Section D. Election Issues, E. Social Policy and G. Constitution, Rights and Minorities were found to contain items that corresponded to the thematic domains. Section D. related to Economic Sovereignty; Section E. related to Social Sovereignty and Section G. related to Cultural Sovereignty. Factor analysis was used to create scales from items within each of these sections that addressed issues that vi dominated the PHON manifesto. Regression analysis was then employed. The results indicate that high levels of positive Emotional Energy for Hanson is predictive of shared attitudes towards issues by respondents with Hanson. This suggests that there is a strong correlation between the feelings held for people towards PHON and the level of support for PHON's position on issues. These findings indicate that Hanson successfully employed populist rhetoric to achieve a remarkable level of support for her new political party. However it must be acknowledged that an audience already existed for whom the PHON message could resonate. The demographic characteristics of PHON this audience of voters has been described at length elsewhere and this work is acknowledged. It must however be appreciated that though Pauline Hanson has experienced the inevitable decline of the charismatic leader, those who demonstrated support for her still reside in the electorate. These people may still be waiting for the right 'style' of voice to emerge on the political scene to represent them. This thesis provides an innovative approach for understanding the mechanism of populist appeal in contemporary politics. It proposes a revised typology for assessing populist rhetoric and it is the first thorough, systematic analysis of PHON's manifesto. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A piece of work like this that takes an individual so long to produce, is none-the-less a burden carried by many— partners, supervisors, parents, colleagues and friends, all of those who are in the web of the writer's social network. Now that it is finished I suspect that the only feeling that will be more overwhelming will be the one that comes with relating the outcome to the long suffering crew. Firstly I must thank my supervisors. I have been very fortunate to have had input from such patient and clever people. I use the plural, as I seem to have a knack for being assigned to academics that are on the brink of promotion to positions that take them away to greener pastures or at least more distant offices. Dr Timothy Phillips who helped me to get on track when the wheels had all but fallen off. I always felt better about the project after discussing my thoughts with Tim. Dr Glenda Jones who was willing to hold the fort whilst others were indisposed. Dr Bruce Tranter who was always willing to share unwritten rules and large data sets. Professor Jan Palculski who was always generous with his time and encouragement. But especially Professor Stephen Crook who convinced me to come to Tasmania in the first place and who casually asked me one day if I had read much of Adorno. It makes me terribly sad to think that he is not here to see the finished product. No student has ever had a more inspirational mentor than he. He is greatly missed. viii Sincere thanks must go to my colleagues at the Tasmanian School of Nursing and Midwifery for their support, generosity and practical advice. My best friend Annette Marlow deserves a special mention. Her friendship is like sustenance on the bad days and champagne on the good. She knows when to listen, when to visit, when to go and when to take you shopping! To Mum and Dad who have never had any doubt about my ability to do anything and who have supported me through good times and bad. However the person without whom I'd be in big strife is my wonderful husband Peter Bobrowski who could not have done more to help