ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics provides a comprehensive overview of this important and dynamic area of study and research. Language is indispensable to initiating, justifying, legitimatising and coordinating action as well as negotiating conflict and, as such, is intrinsically linked to the area of politics. With 45 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers the following key areas:

  • Overviews of the most influential theoretical approaches, including Bourdieu, Foucault, Habermas and Marx;
  • Methodological approaches to language and politics, covering – among others –  content analysis, conversation analysis, multimodal analysis and narrative analysis;
  • Genres of political action from speech-making and policy to national anthems and billboards;
  • Cutting-edge case studies about hot-topic socio-political phenomena, such as ageing, social class, gendered politics and populism.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics is a vibrant survey of this key field and is essential reading for advanced students and researchers studying language and politics.

part I|136 pages

Theoretical approaches to language and politics

chapter 3|24 pages

Jürgen Habermas

Between democratic deliberation and deliberative democracy

chapter 4|15 pages

Michel Foucault

Discourse, power/knowledge and the modern subject

chapter 5|14 pages

Jacques Lacan

Negotiating the psychosocial in and beyond language

chapter 7|13 pages

Pierre Bourdieu

Ally or foe of discourse analysis?

chapter 8|13 pages

Conceptual history

The history of basic concepts

chapter 9|16 pages

Critical Discourse Studies

A critical approach to the study of language and communication

part II|156 pages

Methodological approaches to language and politics

chapter 10|16 pages

Content analysis

chapter 11|18 pages

Corpus analysis

chapter 12|15 pages

Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Studies

Connecting language and image

chapter 13|16 pages

Competition metaphors and ideology

Life as a race

chapter 14|15 pages

Legitimation and multimodality

chapter 15|14 pages

Narrative analysis

chapter 16|15 pages

Rhetorical analysis

chapter 19|16 pages

Politics beyond words

Ethnography of political institutions

part III|178 pages

Genres of political action

chapter 20|17 pages

Parliamentary debates

chapter 21|16 pages

Government communication

chapter 22|13 pages

Press conferences

chapter 23|13 pages

Policy-making

Documents and laws

chapter 26|14 pages

Performing politics

From the town hall to the inauguration

chapter 28|14 pages

Music and sound as discourse and ideology

The case of the national anthem

chapter 29|14 pages

The language of party programmes and billboards

The example of the 2014 parliamentary election campaign in Ukraine

chapter 30|14 pages

Caricature and comics

chapter 31|17 pages

Meetings

part IV|116 pages

Applications and cases I: language, politics, and contemporary socio-cultural challenges

chapter 33|14 pages

Old and dependent

The construction of a subject position for politics and care

chapter 34|14 pages

Language and gendered politics

The ‘double bind’ in action

chapter 35|13 pages

Queering multilingualism and politics

Regimes of mobility, citizenship and (in)visibility

chapter 36|16 pages

Language and globalisation

chapter 37|15 pages

A cultural political economy of Corporate Social Responsibility

The language of ‘stakeholders’ and the politics of new ethicalism

chapter 39|14 pages

Religion and the secular

part V|86 pages

Applications and cases II: language, politics, and (de)mobilisation

chapter 43|14 pages

The materiality and semiosis of inequality and class struggle and warfare

The case of home-evictions in Spain

chapter 44|13 pages

Language under totalitarian regimes

The example of political discourse in Nazi Germany