Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students

In this accessible new textbook, Isabela and Norman Fairclough present their innovative approach to analysing political discourse.

Political Discourse Analysis integrates analysis of arguments into critical discourse analysis and political discourse analysis. The book is grounded in a view of politics in which deliberation, decision and action are crucial concepts: politics is about arriving cooperatively at decisions about what to do in the context of disagreement, conflict of interests and values, power inequalities, uncertainty and risk.

The first half of the book introduces the authors’ new approach to the analysis and evaluation of practical arguments, while the second half explores how it can be applied by looking at examples such as government reports, parliamentary debates, political speeches and online discussion forums on political issues. Through the analysis of current events, including a particular focus on the economic crisis and political responses to it, the authors provide a systematic and rigorous analytical framework that can be adopted and used for students’ own research.

This exciting new text, co-written by bestselling author Norman Fairclough, is essential reading for researchers, upper undergraduate and postgraduate students of discourse analysis, within English language, linguistics, communication studies, politics and other social sciences.

Isabela Fairclough is Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Lancaster. Her publications include Discourse Analysis and Argumentation Theory: Analytical Framework and Applications (2006).

Norman Fairclough is Emeritus Professor at Lancaster University, UK. He is author of numerous titles, including New Labour, New Language? (2000), Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (2003), and Language and Globalization (2006), all published by Routledge.