Genres in Political Discourse

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This article begins with a discussion of ‘genre’ and of possible ways of understanding and delimiting ‘politics,’ on the basis of which I propose an approach to the topic of ‘political genres.’ I then review recent research on four particular political genres: political interviews, political speeches, policy documents, and public sphere dialogue. The article emphasizes two characteristics of political genres: their shifting and hybrid character, and their openness to new forms of hybridity; and the interconnection of political genres, the relations between them in genre ‘chains’ or ‘networks,’ and the relations of recontextualization that obtain between them.

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Norman Fairclough is former Professor of Language and Social Life in the Linguistics Department at Lancaster University, UK: Emeritus Professor of Lancaster University and Emeritus Professorial Fellow in Lancaster's Institute for Advanced Studies in Management and Social Research. He has written extensively on critical discourse analysis, including work on political discourse. His books include Language and power (Longman, 2nd edn., 2001), Discourse and social change (Polity Press, 1992), Critical discourse analysis (Longman, 1995), Media discourse (Edward Arnold, 1995), Discourse in late modernity (with Lilie Chouliaraki, Edinburgh University Press, 1999), New labour, new language? (Routledge, 2000), and Analyzing discourse: textual analysis for social research (Routledge, 2003). His particular concern has been developing discourse analysis as a theory and method within interdisciplinary research on social change. He is currently working on aspects of ‘transition’ in Central and Eastern Europe from a discourse analytical perspective.

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