The rhetoric of political corruption: Sociolinguistic, dialectical, and ceremonial processes

Although political corruption has been examined within a political‐institutional context by political scientists and economists, few scholars have investigated the social‐rhetorical roots, manifestations, and functions of the public discourse surrounding such acts. This essay argues that the ritualistic deposition of corrupters is based in a sociolinguistic process of assigning meanings to acts, a dialectical process of contrapositioning competing voices, and a ceremonial process of acting out the drama of purgation before the affected institutions and/or the society at large.