DISCOURS Digest - 5 Dec 2001 to 6 Dec 2001 (#2001-106)

[peterson]

The problem with the Czyzewski,et al model has much to do with the nature of
the "mutual understanding" we regard political actors to be working toward.
While it is quite true that political groups constitute themselves in
opposition to one another, and that their discourse reflects this, the very
nature of their opposition is often based on a mutually constructed set of
meanings that allows them to disagree so thoroughly.

I have recently been analyzing debates in Congress over "official English"
legislation.  In 1996, the debate over HR 123 was constructed in a typically
oppositional way, even more neatly split than usual between democrats and
republicans.  Underlying this, however, and enabling it, was an unstated
agreement to base the entire debate on a particular discursive premise, the
myth of America as a "land of immigrants."  There is nothing haphazard about
such a construction; a great deal of discursive work takes place to ensure the
debate does not derail by challenging this assumption.

I've been borrowing Bourdieu's terms orthodox, heterodox and doxa to describe
this.  Orthodox and heterodox positions construct political groups in contrast
to one another BUT this debate depends on underlying doxa.  The metapragmatics
of the Congressional speech event are organized so as to deflect or reorient
speeches that might challenge the underlying doxa.

In other words, I believe it takes "jointly constructed meanings" at one to
serve as a basis for a jointly constructed disagreement at another.

Mark Allen Peterson
American University in Cairo

>
>From: Jakob Cromdal <jakcr at tema.liu.se>
>Date:  Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:17:26 +0100
>
>Hi again,
>re to your (second) query:
>>Is there a model that is specifically designed to account for political
discourse?
>>Do we need one?
>>Does politcal discourse have (enough) distinctive features the
>understanding of which one would need a special model?
>
>Indeed, this seems to be the question to ask. According to the Czyzewski,et
al model, there are two distinctive features of pilitical discourse (as well
as 'discourse of politics', which is another category they use) namely that:
>
>a/ this sort of debates are characterized by an openly displayed
>inability/unwillingness to work towards a mutual understanding of issues or
joint construction of meaning (which seems to be a principle underlying most
of social interaction, or if you will sociability -at least from the point of
>ethnomethodologically informed approaches)
>
>b/ this displayed 'patterns' of 'non-understanding' or perhaps even
'anti-understanding' (as opposed to misunderstanding) get routinized and, with
time, ritualized to the extent as to form culturally shared expectations in a
society; that is to
>say, people grow to EXPECT politicians NOT to try to meet each other in a
sort of dialogical exchange(i.e., at least attempting to assume a reciprocity
of perspectives and so on) -hence the label 'ritual chaos'. And obviously, the
media act as
>catalyst in this ritualization of discourse involving politicians and
>'cultural elites'.
>
>I'm not sure if this was what you were after, but this is their basic
argument, and for this reason, yes, these authors would claim that political
discourse (and 'discourse of politics') is rather (and unfortunately) distinct
from other forms of
>public discourse.
>
>Hope this helps,
>
>jakob cromdal
>
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>
>Jakob Cromdal
>Assistant Professor
>Dept. of Child Studies		tel: +46 13 282907
>Linkoping University		fax: +46 13 282900
>581 83 LINKOPING		email: jakcr at tema.liu.se
>SWEDEN				www.tema.liu.se/tema-b/
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