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ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the discursive construction of in-groups and out-groups through a politics of fear and a politics of hope. It draws on the 2015 Greek election and referendum campaigns of the two main political parties – the radical left Syriza and the conservative New Democracy – and emphasises how they legitimised their political decisions via these two forms of politics. The Greek bailout referendum took place on 5 July 2015 in a climate of polarisation and insecurity. We assume that the referendum, at the campaign level, could be considered an extension of the January 2015 election campaign that was shaped on the basis of a synthesis of a politics of fear and a politics of hope. Using the discursive strategies of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), and especially argumentation strategies and the concepts of topos and recontextualisation, we illustrate the link between political communication, election campaign strategies and political discourse through the prisms of fear and hope. Drawing on the Spinoza ‘affects’, we intend to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the contemporary Greek political scene and to illustrate whether and how political rhetoric and communication strategies are conducive to political dichotomies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Salomi Boukala is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) where she is working for the European programme ‘INFOCORE: (In)forming conflict prevention, response and resolution: the role of media in violent conflict’ funded under the 7th European Framework Program. She was awarded her PhD from Lancaster University and the Department of Linguistics and English Language. Her research interests include critical discourse analysis and the DHA, argumentation analysis, political rhetoric, (social) media discourse and identity politics.
Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou is assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) and research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Since January 2014, she is the Principal Investigator for ELIAMEP and Work Package-Leader on Social Media in the research project ‘INFOCORE: (In)forming conflict prevention, response and resolution: the role of media in violent conflict’. Her research interests include online and participatory journalism, social media and networks, political communication, media and political discourses. She is currently the Chair of the European Communication Research and Education Association’s (ECREA) Journalism Studies Section.
Notes
1. By quoting Roosevelt, ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself’ Tsipras distinguishes ‘Us’ (Syriza as hope) and ‘Them’ (New Democracy as fear). See: http://www.primeminister.gov.gr/english/2015/06/28/prime-minister-alexis-tsipras-statement-concerning-on-the-latest-developments.
3. In ‘The Origins and Nature of the Affects’ Spinoza clarifies that
by affect he understand the affections of the body, by which the power of acting of the body itself is increased, diminished, helped or hindered, together with the ideas of these affections. If, therefore, we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, then the affect can be an action, otherwise it is a passion. (Citation2001, p. 98).
4. Here we adopt Kontogiorgis concept of ‘κομματοκρατία’ (Citation2012) that could be translated as ‘partitocracy’. Kontogiorgis uses this concept in order to highlight the absolute domination of the ruling party.
5. See for instance: Van Dijk (Citation1998), Fairclough (Citation2006), Wodak (Citation2011), Fairclough and Fairclough (Citation2012), Richardson and Wodak (Citation2013), Howarth, Norval, & Stavrakakis, (Citation2000) and Laclau (Citation2000).
6. In Topics, Aristotle maintains that an enthymeme is a syllogism that is based on a valid argument where the ‘truth’ of the conclusion is transferred from the ‘truth’ of the premise(s) (Citation1992: A1, 100a). In Rhetoric, he elaborates the use of enthymemes and maintains that enthymemes are based on premises which, in terms of their truth value, may be either universally true or, more often, true only for a majority (Citation2004, A2, 1357a)
7. For a detailed presentation of the discursive strategies of the DHA, see Reisigl and Wodak (Citation2001, p. 31–90).
10. ‘O κύβος ερρίφθη’ (Greek) οr ‘iacta alea est’ (Latin) is an idiom that means that the point of no return has been passed.