Political Discourse Analysis

The Dangers of Methodological Absolutism

Bibliographic Data

ID6348183
AuthorsCameron Hay (0000-0001-6327-6547, University of Sheffield, corresponding author), Colin Hay
Year2013
Volume11
Issue3
Pages321-327
Publication date2013-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1478-9299 • E-ISSN: 1478-9302
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1478-9302.12026
OpenAlexW1937399071
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited1

Isabela and Norman Fairclough have written a very important book whose full significance is perhaps in danger of being missed if we view it simply, in their own self-depiction, as a text for advanced students. Indeed, in what follows I want to argue that their book is much better seen as the occasion for a debate that we desperately need to be having about how to conduct political discourse analysis rather than as the elucidation of an agreed, almost official, methodology for the conduct of such a form of discourse analysis. At times their book reads like the definitive statement of the only credible approach to the analysis of political discourse as both political and as discourse, derived logically and forensically from a consideration of the specificity of the political itself. While I have considerable sympathy for the attempt to reflect and preserve the specificity of the political in an avowedly political discourse analysis, I have rather more problem, as will become clear in what follows, in the methodological absolutism that leads the Faircloughs to present their approach as, in effect, the only way to do political discourse analysis properly. At this stage in its development political discourse analysis needs a proliferation, not a narrowing, of methods and acknowledgement that there is more than one way to analyse political discourse politically. I will argue for a certain methodological pluralism in political discourse analysis, pointing to problems both with the approach to political discourse analysis that the Faircloughs espouse and with their attempt to foreground such an approach in an essentially Aristotelian account of the specificity of the political

Absolute monarchy · Civil discourse · Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Political communication · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Systems and Governance · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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