B029544 - POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES

Lectures and seminaries are held in Italian

Models and theories of political discourse, political language strategies and narrative stereotypes. Persuasion as a strategic and pragmatic mode of political discourse: symbols, metaphors, new social media. These contents aim to provide the students with an articulated frame of knowledge and an adequate methodological basis.

Benedetta Baldi 2021, Il linguaggio del potere, Carocci, Bologna

Benedetta Baldi, Persuasion we live by. Symbols, metaphors and linguistic strategies
online su QULSO, Quaderni di linguistica e studi orientali, unifi.it
https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-qulso

Benedetta Baldi, Linguistic and pragmatic devices in political communication:delegitimization of the opponent, in Fulvio Cammarano (ed.), Praxis, language and theory of political delegitimization in contemporary Europe, pp. 121-141. Roma, Viella, 2017, edizione open access https://www.viella.it/libro/9788867289530

George Lakoff, Understanding Trump, https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/

Knowledge objectives: The course aims to provide a basic formation concerning the field in which the political actors operate and the communication strategies put in place; the student will be able to master the theories and the models of communication, the media language and the narrative stereotypes. In this regard, the course also investigates the political language, the social language and the strategies of persuasion through symbols and metaphors. Specifically, the course aims to provide the basic skills about the main categories of communication (perception, stereotypes, biases, ethnocentrism) and about the semantico-cognitive implications associated to the mass media.
Moreover, the course aims at stimulating the active participation in the university and the capacity of applying these knowledges in the current issues.

Basic knowledges in the different fields of political communication theories are an important support in order to enter into the contents of course

Frontal lectures and seminaries

Attendance is not mandatory but strongly recommended. Students who do not attend classes will contact the teacher at the beginning of the course to agree on a dedicated program.

The exam takes place in oral mode and concerns all of the topics developed in the course. Specifically it concerns: 1) the relation between language and thought; 2) the relation between language and politics; 3) argumentation in political discourse; 4) the language of persuasion in politics (speech making); 5) metaphors and symbols in politics. The aim is to verify the knowledge acquired by the students in the different field treated during the course and their ability of using these notions in a critical and autonomous manner. It is necessary that the student shows a sufficient knowledge of each topic among the ones discussed during the lessons. In this perspective, the expressive capacities and the ability in appropriately combining theoretical models and real phenomena are considered. The final evaluation is the complete result of verification of the different exam topics.

The course deals with the analysis of political language and the general question of the relationship between politics, society, mass media and public opinion on the basis of an in-depth reflection on the theoretical models of communication and specifically of political discourse and its pragmatic and semantic modalities. Symbols and metaphors as a key to understanding the contents of the collective imaginary to which political discourse resorts, will be investigated together with discursive strategies and pragmatic tools, seen as crucial elements of the interpretation of discourse. The media representations, the narrative stereotypes, the important and pervasive effects and uses of the new media and the question of alternative truths, as an effect of the capillary control mechanisms made possible by social networks are studied.
In particular, the following topics are treated
Society and communication theories
Theories and models of the mass media political communication
Media construction and media representation of reality and post truth
Politics and mass media
Prejudices and stereotypes
Political narrative
Persuasion
The power of the mass media
Rhetoric and argumentation for political purposes
Metaphors, symbols and narratives
The political discourse
Fake news

Not present