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Harris’s Coercive Discourse Is Stabilizing: Discourse Strategies and Effects

Received: 25 April 2021    Accepted: 31 May 2021    Published: 16 June 2021
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Abstract

Since politicians make use of language in their quest to garner support and credibility, among other things, many coercive strategies are utilized by recourse to some manipulative avenues. These same coercive strategies happen in the matrix of a peculiar socio-cultural environment independently from ideologies and common or shared goals. The latter claims make this paper’s focus manifold. Kamala Harris, the vice US President, opted for a number of stabilizing, as it seems, linguistic choices of diction, and thus messages to yield an automatic effect at a time of crisis. This research, in view of this, applies of qualitative method to analyze Harris’s victory speech while implementing van Dijk’s framework adopted from politics, ideology and discourse. In order to attain persuasive ends, some ideological macro-strategies have been widely invested in the speech like emphasizing Our Good things, de-emphasizing Their Bad things and so forth. Shaping public opinion has, thus, been coercively perceived via some ideological discourse categories like lexicalization, consensus and counterfactuals. Results show that coercive discourse has a stabilizing effect and is significantly linked to ideologies and political quibbles dissident from her predecessors. Results also show that coercion is endemic in political discourse and is overtly swinging in various directions to meet many ends.

Published in Advances in Sciences and Humanities (Volume 7, Issue 2)
DOI 10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15
Page(s) 38-43
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Ideologies, Coercive, Discourse, Stabilizing, Strategies

References
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  • APA Style

    Abidi Hajer. (2021). Harris’s Coercive Discourse Is Stabilizing: Discourse Strategies and Effects. Advances in Sciences and Humanities, 7(2), 38-43. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15

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    ACS Style

    Abidi Hajer. Harris’s Coercive Discourse Is Stabilizing: Discourse Strategies and Effects. Adv. Sci. Humanit. 2021, 7(2), 38-43. doi: 10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15

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    AMA Style

    Abidi Hajer. Harris’s Coercive Discourse Is Stabilizing: Discourse Strategies and Effects. Adv Sci Humanit. 2021;7(2):38-43. doi: 10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15,
      author = {Abidi Hajer},
      title = {Harris’s Coercive Discourse Is Stabilizing: Discourse Strategies and Effects},
      journal = {Advances in Sciences and Humanities},
      volume = {7},
      number = {2},
      pages = {38-43},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ash.20210702.15},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ash.20210702.15},
      abstract = {Since politicians make use of language in their quest to garner support and credibility, among other things, many coercive strategies are utilized by recourse to some manipulative avenues. These same coercive strategies happen in the matrix of a peculiar socio-cultural environment independently from ideologies and common or shared goals. The latter claims make this paper’s focus manifold. Kamala Harris, the vice US President, opted for a number of stabilizing, as it seems, linguistic choices of diction, and thus messages to yield an automatic effect at a time of crisis. This research, in view of this, applies of qualitative method to analyze Harris’s victory speech while implementing van Dijk’s framework adopted from politics, ideology and discourse. In order to attain persuasive ends, some ideological macro-strategies have been widely invested in the speech like emphasizing Our Good things, de-emphasizing Their Bad things and so forth. Shaping public opinion has, thus, been coercively perceived via some ideological discourse categories like lexicalization, consensus and counterfactuals. Results show that coercive discourse has a stabilizing effect and is significantly linked to ideologies and political quibbles dissident from her predecessors. Results also show that coercion is endemic in political discourse and is overtly swinging in various directions to meet many ends.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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    PY  - 2021
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    T2  - Advances in Sciences and Humanities
    JF  - Advances in Sciences and Humanities
    JO  - Advances in Sciences and Humanities
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    AB  - Since politicians make use of language in their quest to garner support and credibility, among other things, many coercive strategies are utilized by recourse to some manipulative avenues. These same coercive strategies happen in the matrix of a peculiar socio-cultural environment independently from ideologies and common or shared goals. The latter claims make this paper’s focus manifold. Kamala Harris, the vice US President, opted for a number of stabilizing, as it seems, linguistic choices of diction, and thus messages to yield an automatic effect at a time of crisis. This research, in view of this, applies of qualitative method to analyze Harris’s victory speech while implementing van Dijk’s framework adopted from politics, ideology and discourse. In order to attain persuasive ends, some ideological macro-strategies have been widely invested in the speech like emphasizing Our Good things, de-emphasizing Their Bad things and so forth. Shaping public opinion has, thus, been coercively perceived via some ideological discourse categories like lexicalization, consensus and counterfactuals. Results show that coercive discourse has a stabilizing effect and is significantly linked to ideologies and political quibbles dissident from her predecessors. Results also show that coercion is endemic in political discourse and is overtly swinging in various directions to meet many ends.
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Author Information
  • Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Sfax, Universtity of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

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