History of Political Language

William F. Buckley afforded conservatives of all stripes a provocative rhetorical style, a gladiatorial style, as I term it. The gladiatorial style is a flashy, combative style whose ultimate aim is the creation of inflammatory drama. I claim that conservatives encountered Buckley's potent arguments about God, government, and markets and the gladiatorial style simultaneously. The theatrical appeal of Buckley's gladiatorial style inspired conservative imitators with disparate beliefs and, over several decades, became one of the principal rhetorical templates for the performance of conservatism.

Aspects of political language in the age of "post-democracy" and beyond
Editors: Luke Blaxill (University of Cambridge), Emilia Di Martino (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa)
Copy-editor: Jacqueline Aiello (New York University/Università di Napoli L'Orientale)
Foreword: John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh)

First coined by Colin Crouch at the turn of the millennium, the term "post-democracy" was used to describe a coming age in which democratic institutions seemed strong, but their energy and effective power were in fact gradually being transferred to an oligarchic politico-economic elite. Opinion is divided on whether recent political events, not least the rise of anti-establishment 'populism' in the Western World, point to a further realization of a post-democratic order, or instead indicate that we have moved beyond it, in ways Crouch did not foresee. 

Although long recognized as inescapable, the interplay between language and politics has emerged at the fore of academic research only fairly recently. This has brought with it an attempt to forge a dedicated sub-discipline ("political linguistics"), encouraged a political approach to discourse, and promoted a new emphasis on interdisciplinarity, particularly between political science and linguistics. Recent political events, not least in 2016, have also seen renewed public interest in political language across the world.

It is exactly this emphasis on interdisciplinarity that we place at the heart of this issue of Textus, which welcomes Dr. Luke Blaxill, a British political historian working with political language corpora, to the editorial team, with a view to mutual enrichment and cross-pollination. He is especially eager to explore the intersection between language, history and political science, and to receive contributions which stretch disciplinary boundaries.

The volume sets out to focus on political discourse as used by politicians, representatives from political media, and political analysts, rather than the broader and more abstract political dimension of language use at large. It aims to offer Italian anglicists a shared locus for discussing a topic that is an object of inquiry for many of them and has already produced research studies of outstanding quality at an international level. We are especially interested in contributions that seek to explore the ways in which particularly controversial issues in recent years (for example immigration, the EU, unemployment, women and minority rights) have been articulated through language by politicians. We are also interested in the linguistic choices made to build consensuses, and those which seek to shift or redefine ideological positions (for example, a political rebranding designed to move a party or issue from extreme to mainstream).

The time frame we have selected for analysis is the last two decades of the twentieth century to the present day. The 1980s are often seen as marking the start of the slide towards "post-democracy" - i.e. the gradual move away from the centrality of welfare, and the emergence of a marketing citizenship model. Although "post-democracy" may be, both conceptually and in terms of chronology, a debatable issue, the label is used here as a linguistic shortcut to refer to the contemporary evolutions of political systems in the Western world.

We welcome contributions that address the following themes, which may be tackled with the (possibly combined) methods of sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, genre analysis and critical discourse analysis:

- The effects of the digital revolution on political language;
- The language of political analysts;
- The style of public political rhetoric, both popular and parliamentary;
- Contemporary migrations of political terms and concepts from one language to another;
- The linguistic presentation of key (and especially controversial) political issues;
- The building of consensus;
- Language and political ideology.

Abstract submission deadline: 28th February 2017
Notification of acceptance: 15th March 2017
Preliminary papers to the editors: 30th June 2017
Revised peer-reviewed papers to the editors: 30th October 2017
Final versions from the editors to the publisher: 20th December 2017

Књига Милоша Луковића, Развој српскога правног стила, издата пре тачно двадесет година, један је од ретких лингвистичких и функционалностилистичких осврта на правни подстил административног функционалног стила српског језика. Наиме, аутор на посебно одабраном корпусу истражује особине правног стила од средине 19. века до почетка 20. века. Корпус за који се аутор определио јесу правни прописи у Србији од 1868. до 1918. године. Књига носи и поднаслов Прилог историји језика и права у Србији тако да је намењена и лингвистима и правницима. Књига је писана јасним научним стилом уз обиље примера и упућивања на ширу лингвистичку и правну литературу. Корпус извора представљају све три врсте правних аката које обухвата појам правни пропис (устави, закони, подзаконски акти) (в. Луковић 1994: 74).  Развој српскога правног стила аутор дели у четири нумерисана и насловљена поглавља: (1) Приступ теми, (2) Стварање и прихватање вуковског језика, (3) Обликовање модерног језичког стандарда и (4) Синтаксичко-стилска својства правних прописа у Србији од 1868. до 1918. године у светлу развоја стандарднојезичке норме.

The ability of skillful and persuasive use of language is a politician’s most powerful weapon. Throughout history, the most successful political leaders have been considered great orators, for they knew how to captivate their audience. This is not always easy to achieve; rhetoric has thus played an important part in public speaking since the beginning of civilization. Many authors have introduced a number of rhetorical devices and have tried to advise orators on how to speak in public. The thesis attempts to illustrate how rhetoric and political language have developed throughout the years, with special attention paid to rhetorical devices used in present day political discourse in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. I present the results of my short discourse analysis that show that both classical and modern rhetorical devices are present in modern political discourse, that British politicians use rhetorical devices more often than American politicians, and that conservatives are more skilled orators than liberals.

As was the case with many newly independent African nations, Somalia was beset by a language problem whose complexity had begun well before independence and the unification of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland in 1960. With three languages (English, Arabic, and Italian) used as media of communication in government offices and in schools, various Somali administrations struggled to contain the impasse but found no tangible solution. Barely three years after Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in October 1969, he had his military regime introduce the Somali orthography in the Latin alphabet. Based on this milestone, Siad Barre's military rule is highly commended for taking a remarkable step forward in what came to be known as the Somalization project. However, officials of the government and Somali scholarship failed to

Este libro se asoma, desde un momento crítico como el actual, a otro tiempo convulso, el de las revoluciones liberales y de independencia en los mundos ibéricos, y lo hace desde un prisma poco común: el de la semántica histórica. A mitad de camino entre la historia intelectual, la historia política y la historia cultural, el enfoque histórico-conceptual aquí adoptado presta una atención muy especial a los cambios en los vocabularios usados por los actores de la época y a las hondas transformaciones en la conciencia temporal que tuvieron lugar en aquellas décadas decisivas que alumbraron un nuevo mundo político sobre las ruinas de los imperios atlánticos.
Además de analizar algunos aspectos cruciales de las modernidades ibéricas, incluyendo los cambios en los conceptos, mitos, metáforas e imaginarios, así como en las percepciones del tiempo por parte de los actores del siglo XIX, el autor plantea reflexiones de gran interés sobre algunos puntos esenciales para la disciplina histórica y para cualquier acercamiento al pasado, tales como para qué sirve la historia, la recuperación de los significados perdidos, los saltos en la conciencia histórica y los retos que el historiador responsable deberá afrontar en los difíciles tiempos que se avecinan.

Nella coscienza collettiva i guelfi e i ghibellini evocano insanabili discordie civili e feroci lotte intestine, e rappresentano il lato oscuro di quell’età comunale che per altri versi simboleggia un momento altissimo nella storia civile e politica d’Italia. La tradizione storiografica, da parte sua, ha spesso alimentato l’idea che questa coppia terminologica di sorprendente longevità non faccia che sopravvivere a se stessa già a partire dal Trecento. Eppure i contemporanei non cessano di utilizzare guelfi e ghibellini come chiave interpretativa degli avvenimenti fino al pieno Cinquecento. È davvero possibile, allora, che ben due terzi della parabola del binomio politico forse di maggior successo della storia italiana si riducano alla lenta agonia di parole così precocemente destituite di senso? È il principale interrogativo cui cerca di rispondere questo libro, che indaga la presenza e il rilievo dei guelfi e ghibellini nella politica interna ed estera degli stati dell’Italia centro-settentrionale nell’età del Rinascimento.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of six dicta testium from the Tuscia from 1177 to 1237, highlighting fascinating elements of political language and discourse. For instance, the study of a particular theme (violent conflict) and several particularly gravid words (guerra, exercitus, cavalcata, oste) indicate the existence of several groups or communities of memoria in the territories documented in the inquisitiones. The contraposition of these groups within the judicial vertices prompted them to manipulate the record through the use of particularly sophisticated and well-chosen language. Indeed, among the principal characteristics of the dicta is the fact that their memoria cannot be reduced to the linear, pacified, coherent thread that emerges from other types of source, for example libri iurium and statutory codes, making them an ideal record for the purposes of counterfactual historical research.

I aim to locate the scriptural force of American conservatism’s secular canon. My basic claim is that the canon created and managed the potential for symbolic fusion and fracture among conservatives. The canon provided the tools to weather the rocky marriage between various conservative sects: traditionalists, libertarians, neoconservatives, and others; the canon afforded resources for each faction to establish their bona fides and to protect their version of authentic conservatism from impostors and apostates. I conclude by analyzing the link between the principles of classical conservatism and canonical politics.

The history of the Venetian translation of Emer de Vattel's "Droit des gens" (1781) with the an account on the life and career of the translation Ludovico Antonio Loschi and an analysis of the translation choises as a case of the transformation of the Italian political language in late Enlightenment.

En esta investigación sostenemos la tesis de que existe una teoría política venezolana, que se articula en torno a la paradoja de si el gobierno reforma al individuo o el individuo al gobierno y cómo cada uno de ellos escapa a la corrupción general para acometer la reforma del otro. Esta paradoja emerge dentro de los confines de un discurso reformista, el que a su vez es reproducido por las estructuras semánticas del campo semántico naturalista. Este discurso tiene sus orígenes principalmente en las producciones discursivas de las autoridades españolas tras la crisis política a raíz de la invasión de Napoleón. Pretendiendo los criollos de Tierra Firme ser partícipes de la reforma de la monarquía española, culminaron declarándose independientes de la misma, enfrentándose a la tarea de darse un nuevo gobierno y de formar al individuo adecuado para el mismo. Se decidió entonces que Venezuela se regiría bajo una forma republicana federal, procediéndose entonces a ilustrar a los que por ignorancia permanecían en la esclavitud. El medio del que disponían para lograr esto era una constitución escrita. Al caer la república bajo las armas realistas se presenta el mismo discurso reformista, pero bajo los ropajes de la conservación y el restablecimiento. Se trata de dos formas diferentes de reformar al individuo y de promover reformas en el gobierno. En Angostura se consolida el poder patriota y se tiene la oportunidad de reconstituir a la república y de consolidar la unión con la Nueva Granada. La unión colombiana nace bajo intensos conflictos constitucionales, en parte producto de la indecisión sobre la provisionalidad de la constitución promulgada, pero fundamentalmente como resultado de las divergencias de opinión en torno al mejor sistema de gobierno para regir un espacio tan vasto, a saber, el federalismo o el centralismo. Estas disensiones se expresaron en torno al diagnóstico común de la mala constitución de Colombia, sólo que los federalistas argumentaban que la solución residía en la reforma del gobierno bajo una forma federal y los centralistas –unidos en torno a Simón Bolívar- argüían no sólo que debían hacerse las reformas constitucionales para hacer del sistema de gobierno uno central, sino que el verdadero problema residía en la reforma de los individuos, o bien, la reforma de las costumbres del pueblo. Estos problemas irreconciliables desembocaron en la división de Colombia y la constitución de Venezuela como nación independiente, cuando de nuevo se plantea el tema de la regeneración, y justamente el 26 de noviembre de 1829 fue visto como una fecha de fiesta nacional, porque conmemoraba la recuperación de la independencia y la libertad. Para abordar esta investigación hemos desarrollado un nuevo enfoque teórico-metodológico partiendo de una evaluación de las corrientes predominantes en la historia intelectual, a saber, la Escuela de Cambridge, la historia de las mentalidades, la arqueología del saber y la historia intelectual. Todas estas escuelas convergen en tres problemas: las categorías de análisis, el tratamiento del texto y la temporalidad. Partiendo de estos problemas desarrollamos una teoría operativa del significado cuyo postulado principal es que los significados se producen en cada enunciación, por lo que el principal problema sociolingüístico no es el cambio de significado sino la estabilidad semántica. Este supuesto nos enfrenta ante un cambio de paradigma en las ciencias históricas: el paradigma autopoiético. Esta teoría nos brinda además las categorías de análisis que empleamos en la investigación, a saber, campo semántico, estructura semántica, lugar común, concepto y discurso.

A sustained form can be located in the complicated history of populist rhetoric. Despite its chameleonic qualities, the advancement of populism is constituted by alterations in the focus and content, not the structure, of populist activism. This structure, or what I term its argumentative frame, positions a virtuous people against a powerful enemy and expresses disdain toward traditional forms of democratic deliberation and republican representation. I trace these themes through the rhetoric of the People's Party, Huey Long, and George Wallace. I conclude by analyzing the link between populism's persistence in U.S. history and the nation's Founding.

This paper examines the earliest regulation of the cities in Tuscany (especially Pisa, Pistoia, Siena and Volterra). The results of the diplomatistic, archivistic and codicological investigations carried out by specialists, analysis of texts and comparison with other urban contexts (Genoa, Milan, Piacenza, Alessandria, Alba) are enlightening. In some Tuscan cities, up until the late 13th century, there existed no single law code capable of distilling all the regulations in force. However, this apparent 'disorder' was not due to an increase in the institutional complexity of the municipal authorities. In fact, by tradition, as early as the 12th century, the regulations of many cities were distinguished as two completely separate types of document, collectively known as the 'brevi' and the 'constituta'. The former comprised regulations governing political organization, while the latter were mainly devoted to local management of civil rights. This long-lasting legal ‘multi-centralism’ may be able to tell us something of the origins and development of the Italian ‘Comune’, or municipal council, which, rather than being the gradual affirmation of an undifferentiated socioprofessional amalgamation, was the result of an expedient and occasional collaboration between autonomous power groups.

Despite its massive presence in our cities, the accusations of vandalism have caused scholars of Italian language and culture to shy away from the analysis of graffiti. Another factor might also have been a certain traditional elite perspective, to the detriment of ordinariness and of the everyday. In today's society of widespread control of both physical and virtual spaces through capillary video surveillance and online monitoring which sees the usable spaces for dissent reduced graffiti art still represents an opportunity for free communication. Documenting and studying graffiti means participating in a work of democratization of linguistics, lightening it from the redundant burden of the classics, by the rigid reference to standard Italian compared to popular Italian (intended as a variety of speakers from the lower social classes characterized by poor social prestige), and by a certain purism that translates into fear of those evolutionary dynamics of the language that find representation in graffiti, not by chance creator and diffuser of numerous neologisms and linguistic contact.

Le retour du « bien commun » est patent dans le vocabulaire public de l'Europe en crise, à côté des «biens communs». Les deux formules constituent un topos discursif massivement utilisé mais très ambigu. Pour essayer de décrypter cette ambiguïté, il faut reconnaitre tout d'abord que « bien commun » et « biens communs » sont des expressions en principe hétérogènes. Tout au moins au niveau des concepts, les seconds ne sont pas le pluriel du premier et les réflexions qui se développent sur ces notions, tout en renouvelant les contenus, maintiennent en général la distinction.

Based on the first years of Takvîm-i vekayi' and Le Moniteur Ottoman, this study aims to shed light on the Ottoman political language and the rhetoric of the political authority in the early 1830s, focusing on one of the semantic fields that shapes it: the vocabulary of the reform. The official gazette is a corpus containing a large number of texts that express a collective political thought in the making that, beginning in 1826 when the Janissary Corps was abolished, gradually bore a new configuration of power and, inevitably, a new discourse that framed it. This discourse on reform is characterized by a future-oriented temporality in which the present is increasingly detached from the past. It is also deeply innovative by the fact that it is a discourse intended to be publicized as widely as possible and is therefore intended to be pedagogical.

This article offers an analysis of political language as manifested in the representation of two historical episodes in the Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300): the minorities of the Castilian kings Alfonso VIII and Enrique (Henry) I. In comparison with representations of the same events in related chronicles from the preceding period, a close examination of the discourse gives insight into the strategies deployed by the chronicler to offer an ideologically invested version of the past. Conclusions drawn from this investigation are used to discuss the battle for historiographical hegemony, in relation to the struggle for political power between the magnate class (the ricos hombres) and royal authority.

Resumen: Este artículo ofrece un análisis del lenguaje político evidente en representaciones de dos episodios históricos en la Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300): las minorías de edad de los reyes de Castilla Alfonso VIII y Enrique I. En comparación con representaciones de los mismos eventos en crónicas emparentadas del período que lo precede, un examen atento de los discursos aporta información sobre las estrategias usadas por el cronista para proponer una versión ideológicamente investida del pasado. Usamos las conclusiones sacadas de esta investigación para discutir la lucha por la hegemonía historiográfica, en relación con la lucha por el poder político entre los magnates (o ricos hombres) y la autoridad real.

This review analyses "The Political Discourse of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth: Terms and Ideas", a monograph written by Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz. The work describes the main concepts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s political language between 1569 and 1795. The study is mostly based on political literature, i. e. theoretical treatises and works devoted to relevant issues of the political life of the state. The author makes an attempt to create her own methodological approach, which consists of describing the political discourse of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by analysing its basic concepts, i. e. “Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”, “law”, “freedom”, “forma mixta” and “separation of powers”, “consent”, “virtue”, “patriotism”, and “ancientry”. The scholar notes the small role that the concepts of “sovereignty”, “state”, and “property” played in political discourse. The reviewer compliments the wide range of literature used by the author and the high level of generalisations, due to which the work is a successful attempt at synthesising existing historiographic knowledge. At the same time, the reviewer points out further prospects for studying the issue: the application of a comparative approach, consideration of the context of ancient thought, analysis of differences in the political language in various parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the evolution of political discourse, as well as a significant expansion of the research base.

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В рецензии представлен анализ монографии Анны Гжеськовяк-Крвавич «Dyskurs polityczny Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów: pojęcia i idee» («Политический дискурс Речи Посполитой Обоих Народов: понятия и идеи»). В этой книге охарактеризованы главные понятия политического языка Речи Посполитой в 1569–1795 гг. Исследование основано на политической литературе – теоретических трактатах и сочинениях, затрагивающих актуальные вопросы политической жизни государства. Автором предпринята
попытка создания собственного методологического подхода, заключающегося в описании политического дискурса Речи Посполитой при помощи анализа его основных понятий: «Речь Посполитая», «право», «свобода», «forma mixta» и «разделение властей», «согласие», «добродетель», «патриотизм», «давность». Отмечено, что понятия «суверенитет», «государство» и «собственность» играли небольшую роль в политическом дискурсе. Рецензентом высоко оцениваются широкий круг использованной автором литературы и уровень обобщений, благодаря чему рассматриваемая работа является удачным синтезом существующих в историографии наработок по данной проблематике. Указано на дальнейшие перспективы изучения
данной проблематики, среди которых применение компаративистского подхода, рассмотрение контекста античной мысли, проблемы своеобразия политического языка в различных частях Речи Посполитой и эволюции политического дискурса, а также существенное расширение источниковой базы исследования.

Actualmente nos encontramos en medio de un debate metodológico en la historia de las ideas, en donde sus protagonistas principales son los planteamientos de Skinner, Pocock y Koselleck. Uno de los problemas que se han traído a colación en el mismo es la centralidad del lenguaje para comprender los hechos históricos y lo que se denomina ideas o pensamiento, mientras que otro problema es cómo el lenguaje puede llegar a politizarse y jugar un rol importante en una estructura de poder. Es precisamente en este punto, donde la historia de las ideas penetra en el campo de la teoría política pretendiendo explicar fenómenos de cambio político y social. Sin embargo, poca atención se ha prestado a la estructura social o se le ha conceptualizado de manera demasiado abstracta como para obtener un concepto útil. Por ende, sugerimos que la teoría de los sistemas de Niklas Luhmann puede compensar esta deficiencia, agregando un elemento que enriquezca el debate, a saber, el estudio de la estructura social y su relación con la semántica. Asimismo, la teoría social de Luhmann también podría brindar nuevas campos de problemas para la investigación histórica contribuyendo al re pensamiento de la disciplina.

Political turbulence in Europe in the early 1990s challenged the fundaments of Finnish foreign policy. The reunification of Germany, democratisation processes in Central and Eastern Europe and mostly the dissolution of Soviet Union did not only challenge the neutral-orientation of Finland, but also conceptualisation of borders and bordering became under the scrutiny. A stabile, bloc-based international order of Cold War was transmuting and the place of the neutral states was also redefined during the first years of the 1990s. (Brommesson 2010, 224; Murray&Holmes 1998, 2-6; Wæver 1992)

Re-bordering of post-Soviet and post-Socialist space occurred in parallel with European integration process and first post-Cold War enlargement round of European Community (EC). Europeanisation is highly contested and discussed concept in contemporary research. (Olsen 2002; Graziano&Vink 2007) Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeir defines it narrowly as “states adopt EU-rules” (2005, 7), while it can be seen in very broad sense as any kind of processes related on Europe (Radaelli 2000) or as multidimensional notion linked various process, diffusions and constructions of rules, shared beliefs and political practices in Europe. (Katzenstein 2006, 20; Subotic 2011, 311) In this paper I use the term “Europeanisation” in very broad sense for illustrating processes of bordering and identity building in post-Cold War Europe.

Firstly this paper reviews the state of art in field of Europeanisation and especially its relation to border studies in the post-Cold War period. Secondly, this paper take a closer look on Finnish public and political debates on border and bordering. The paper presents preliminary results of empirical analysis of texts published in Helsingin Sanomat (HS) during three major contextual events: the dissolution of Soviet Union, the enlargements of EU and NATO, and the Ukrainian Crisis. The empirical material is collected on the framework of EUBorderscapes-project and its work package Reconfiguration of Post-Soviet Borders and Conceptual Change.

Thirdly, the paper reflects the public discourse of HS to broader and general discussion of Europeanisation. Through the contested conceptualisations of the border, the paper illustrates how Europeanisation was affected on national border discourses in media on the one hand, and interpret different meanings and definitions of Europeanisation on the other. Key documents related on border policies of EU have been used reflective material and for illustrating the EU’s attempts to re-define and re-conceptualise the border in post-Cold War context.

In the latter half of the 12th century, the families of the groups overseeing the comuni forged widespread, implementable and strictly regulated military alliances. These alliances were organized around the control of tower houses. However, the paucity of surviving documentation has long hindered meaningful research into these ‘intermediate bodies’ of society, too often considered relics of a ‘feudal’ past. The shared management of power and assets, the written regulation of violence, and the presence of controlling groups that would vary according to precise legislation all indicate that the ‘association of towers’ organized around the ‘pacta’ were not simply family groups, rather complex coordinating bodies not dissimilar to the city communes.

As a part of wider research project drawing on the methodological tools of both history and linguistics, the article aims at analyzing the international circulation and reception of Filangieri's "Scienza della legislazione". The article is centred on the Austrian translations of 1784 and analyzes the different choises for translatin three key concepts in the political language of the Enlightenment.

This article aims at contributing to the documentation of the transition from the spelling system known as "ortografía chilena" (‘Chilean orthography’) or "ortografía casera" (‘domestic orthography’) to that of the Royal Spanish Academy in Chile by studying the collection of political pamphlets made available to the public digitally by the Library of the National Congress of Chile. The analysis of 35 pamphlets printed between 1880 and 1939 shows a progressive adoption of the academic model, which by 1910 already seemed widely predominant. Thus, the possibility is raised that the 1927 decree establishing the adoption of the academic orthography was but the official reaffirmation of a tendency noticeable in the country since almost two decades before, at least as far as the genre under study is concerned.

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The poems of circumstances written in England during the Wars of the Roses, in the second half of the fifteenth-century, have never been properly studied, mainly because of their little aesthetic value. However, they are precious for the historian who whishes to study the political communication of the late Middle Ages : not a simplistic propaganda, they are part of a textual nebula – which includes other texts such as manifestos, oriented chronicles, geneaological and heraldic littérature, prose treatises – and feed the contemporary debates in a society whose members are more and more sensitive to political thinking.