The Realization of Impoliteness in Arguments between the Democrats and Republicans over the Government Shutdown Issue in the US

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

The present research is intended to illustrate how linguistic features of impoliteness are manifested in the debates between two of the main American political parties, Republicans and Democrats, in 2013 government shutdown issue. The research questions sought to analyze the impoliteness strategies each party employed to aggravate or attack the face of the opposing party. The study was conducted by performing qualitative discourse analysis based upon the theoretical framework of Culpeper’s (1996) super strategies and Bousfield’s (2008) off-record impoliteness . The data consisted of the transcripts of the speeches of the two parties’ members all through September, 20, to October, 16, 2013. The study primarily managed to elicit eight major impoliteness strategies in this corpus. The analysis chiefly revealed that both parties used all the strategies in relatively similar frequencies to induce their opponents to act upon their preferences. Challenges , dissociating from the other , sarcasm/mock politeness, and seeking disagreement/avoid agreement were among the most commonly used impoliteness strategies in the debates. In addition, as the Chi-Square test disclosed, the two parties did not differ from one another in a statistically meaningful way in their total use of impoliteness strategies. In conclusion, our study showed that there seems to be a relatively similar pattern of use of impoliteness strategies by these two parties over the aforementioned issue which can be attributed to the demands of political discourse.

About the authors

Minoo Alemi

Islamic Azad University, West Tehran Branch

Email: Minooalemi2000@yahoo.com
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Islamic Azad University, West Tehran Branch, and a post-doctoral associate at Sharif University of Technology (SUT), Iran. She is the associate editor of Applied Pragmatics (John Benjamins) and sits on the editorial/review boards of many journals Simaye Iran St., 1467686831, Tehran, Iran

Ashkan Latifi

Sharif University of Technology

Email: ashkan.latify@gmail.com
holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from Sharif University of Technology and is currently an MA student of Sociology at Bu-Ali Sina University Azadi Ave., 11365-11155, Tehran, Iran

References

  1. Alemi, M., Latifi, A., & Nematzadeh, A. (2018) Persuasion in political discourse: Barak Obama’s presidential speeches against ISIS. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(2), 278-291.
  2. Alemi, M., Tajeddin, Z., & Rajabi Kondlaji, A. (2018) A discourse-historical analysis of two Iranian presidents’ speeches at the UN General Assembly. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 6(1), 1-17.
  3. Arnold, N. S. (2009) Imposing values: an essay on liberalism and regulation. Florence: Oxford University Press.
  4. Bicameralism (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bicameralism.
  5. Bleiker, R. (2003) Discourse and human agency. Contemporary Political Theory, 2(1), 25-47.
  6. Bolívar, A. (2005) Dialogue and confrontation in Venezuelan political interaction. Aila Review, 18(1), 3-17.
  7. Bousfield, D. (2008) Impoliteness in Interaction. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  8. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  9. Chilton, P. (2002) Do something! Conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. Journal of Language and Politics, 1(1), 181-195.
  10. Chilton, P. (2004) Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. Taylor & Francis e-Library.
  11. Cohen, T. (2013, October 17) House approves bill to end shutdown. CNN International. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/16/politics/shutdown showdown/index.html?utm_source=feedburner &utm_medium=feed&ut_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+Politics%29
  12. Cook, G. (2011) Discourse Analysis. In Simpson, J. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge, 431-445.
  13. Culpeper, J. (1996) Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 349-367.
  14. Culpeper, J. (2005) Impoliteness and the weakest link. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 35-72.
  15. Culpeper J. (2013) Impoliteness: Questions and answers. In Jamet D. & M. Jobert (eds.) Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2-16.
  16. Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D., & Wichmann, A. (2003) Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (10/11), 1545-1579.
  17. de Marlangeon, S. K. (2018) Fustigation impoliteness, emotions and extimacy in Argentine Media celebrities. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(1), 161-174.
  18. Dunmire, P. L. (2012) Political discourse analysis: Exploring the language of politics and the politics of language. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6(11), 735-751.
  19. Espo, D. (2013, September 30) Republican unity frays as government shutdown looms. Hoffington Post (AOL). Associated Press. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/ republicans-governmentsh_n_4019692.html.
  20. Farmer, B. R. (2006) American political ideologies: an introduction to the major systems of thought in the 21st century. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  21. Garcia-Pastor, M. D. (2002) Face aggravation, mitigation, and unofficial power in a political campaign debate. In Walton D. & D. Scheu (eds.) Culture and Power. Bern: Peter Lang, 347-367.
  22. Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Doubleday.
  23. Gornostaeva, A. A. (2016) The place of irony in the speech portrait of a modern politician. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 20(1), 57-76.
  24. Government shutdowns in the United States (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States.
  25. Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In Cole P. & J. Morgan (eds.) Speech Acts [Syntax and semantics 3]. New York: Academic Press, 41-58.
  26. Grigsby, E. (2008) Analyzing politics: An introduction to political science. Florence: Cengage Learning.
  27. Harris, S., Grainger, K., & Mullany, L. (2006) The pragmatics of political apologies. Discourse and Society, 17(6), 715-737.
  28. Hinton, P. R., Brownlow, Ch., McMurray, I., & Cozens, B. (2004) SPSS explained. London and New York: Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group.
  29. Holmes, J. Marra, M., & Schnurr, S. (2008) Impoliteness and ethnicity: Māori and Pākehā discourse in New Zealand workplaces. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2): 193-219.
  30. Holmes, J., & Schnurr. S. (2005) Politeness, humour and gender in the workplace: Negotiating norms and identifying contestation. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1), 121-149.
  31. Institute of Medicine. Committee on consequences of uninsurance (2004, January 13) Insuring Ame­rica’s health: principles and recommendations. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
  32. Jamet, D., & Jobert, M. (Eds.). (2013) Aspects of linguistic impoliteness. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  33. Levy, J. (2006) The state after statism: New state activities in the age of liberalization. Florence: Harvard University Press.
  34. Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2005) Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 1(1), 9-33.
  35. Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2009) “You’re barking mad, I’m out”: Impoliteness and broadcast talk. Journal of Politeness Research, 5, 159-187.
  36. Maalej, Z. A. (2012) The ‘Jasmine Revolt’ has made the ‘Arab Spring’: A critical discourse analysis of the last three political speeches of the ousted president of Tunisia. Discourse & Society, 23(6), 679-700.
  37. Maynard, S. K. (1994) Images of Involvement and Integrity: Rhetorical Style of a Japanese Politician. Discourse and Society, 5(2), 233-261.
  38. Mikis, S. M., & Melieur, J. M. (2005) The great society and the high tide of liberalism. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press.
  39. Mills, S. (2003) Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  40. Mirhosseini, M., Mardanshahi, M., & Dowlatabadi, H. (2017) Impoliteness strategies based on Culpeper’s model: An analysis of gender differences between two characters in the movie Mother. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 4(3), 221-238
  41. Mirzaei, A., Eslami, Z. R., & Safari, F. (2017) Exploring rhetorical-discursive practices of Rouhani’s presidential campaign and victory of his prudence-and-hope key: A discourse of persuasion. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 21(1), 161-182.
  42. Murphy, J. (2014) (Im)politeness during Prime Ministers Questions in the U.K. Parliament. Pragmatics and Society, 5(1), 76-104.
  43. National Research Council, & Committee on Population (2013) US health in international perspective: Shorter lives, poorer health. National Academies Press.
  44. Oddo, J. (2011) War legitimation: representing ‘us’ and ‘them’ in four presidential addresses. Discourse & Society, 22(3), 1-28.
  45. Okulska, U. & Cap, P. (2010) Analysis of political discourse: landmarks, challenges, and prospects. In Okulska U. & P. Cap (eds.) Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Bejamins, 3-22.
  46. P`erez de Ayala, S. (2001) FTAs and Erskine May: Conflicting needs? Politeness in question time. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(2), 143-169.
  47. Pelinka, A. (2007) Language as a political category: the viewpoint of political science. Journal of Language & Politics 6(1), 129-43.
  48. Peters, J. W. (2011, January 20) Conservatives’ aggressive Ad campaign seeks to cast doubt on health law. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/politics/ conservatives aggressive ad-campaign-seeks-to-cast-doubt-on-health-law.html?_r=0
  49. Public Law (2010, March 23) 111th United States Congress. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/PLAW-111publ148/ PLAW 111publ148/content-detail.html
  50. Toddington, R. S. (2015) Impoliteness as a vehicle for humour in dramatic discourse (Doctoral dissertation, University of Central Lancashire). Retrieved from http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/12121/1/ Toddington%20Rachel%20Final%20e-Thesis%20%28Master%20Copy%29.pdf
  51. United States Congress (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/United_States_Congress
  52. Van Dijk, T. A. (1997) What is political discourse analysis. Belgian journal of linguistics, 11(1), 11-52
  53. Watts, R. J. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  54. Wilper, A. P., Woolhandler, S., Lasser, K. E., McCormick, D., Bor, D. H., & Himmelstein, D. U. (2009) Health insurance and mortality in adults. American Journal of Public Health, 99(12), 2289-2295
  55. Zaripov, R. I. (2014) Manipulation impact through metaphors in political discourse. Russian Journal of Linguistics, (2), 145-158

Copyright (c) 2019 Alemi M., Latifi A.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies

You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

About Cookies