The Politics and Rhetoric of Commemoration: How the Portuguese parliament celebrates the 1974 Revolution (Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies) - Softcover

Billig, Michael; Marinho, Cristina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350099155 ISBN 13: 9781350099159

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Synopsis

In recent years there has been much interest in collective memory and commemoration. It is often assumed that when nations celebrate a historic day, they put aside the divisions of the present to recall the past in a spirit of unity. As Billig and Marinho show, this does not apply to the Portuguese parliament's annual celebration of 25 April 1974, the day when the dictatorship, established by Salazar and continued by Caetano, was finally overthrown. Most speakers at the ceremony say little about the actual events of the day itself; and in their speeches they continue with the partisan politics of the present as combatively as ever.

To understand this, the authors examine in detail how the members of parliament do politics within the ceremony of remembrance; how they engage in remembering and forgetting the great day; how they use the low rhetoric of manipulation and point-scoring, as well as high-minded political rhetoric. The book stresses that the members of the audience contribute to the meaning of the ceremony by their partisan displays of approval and disapproval. Throughout, the authors demonstrate that, to uncover the deeper meanings of political rhetoric, it is necessary to take note of significant absences.

The Politics and Rhetoric of Commemoration illustrates how an in-depth case-study can be invaluable for understanding wider processes. The authors are not content just to uncover unnoticed features of the Portuguese celebration. They use the particular example to provide original insights about the rhetoric of celebrating and the politics of remembering, as well as throwing new light onto the nature of party political discourse.

About this title

About the Authors

David Machin is Professor of Media and Communication at Örebro University, Sweden.

JOHN E. RICHARDSON is Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK.

Michal Krzyzanowski is Chair in Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University, Sweden and Chair in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350099155
• ISBN 13: 9781350099159
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232