Bringing together a body of related research which has recently developed in Critical Discourse Analysis, this book is the first to address the role of perspective in socio-political discourse. Specifically, the contributions to this volume seek to explore, from a cognitive standpoint, the way in which perspective functions in three dimensions – space, time, and evaluation – to enact ideology and persuasion. A range of discourse genres are analysed, including political discourse, media discourse, and songs used as political tools.
Starting from the contention that discourse processing relies on the same mechanisms that support our understanding and experience of space, the book finds a recurrent theme in the way in which perspectival concepts like distance and focus, prompted by linguistic signs, feature in our discursively constructed knowledge of social and political realities. By highlighting the complex nature of perspective-taking in ideological discourse, the volume sets the agenda for further research in this area. The book will appeal to linguists, discourse analysts, media scholars, and political scientists, and all who are interested in the relationship between language and cognition in the socio-political domain. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Discourse Studies.
Laura Filardo-Llamas lectures in English at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Her main research area is discourse analysis and conflict resolution, applied particularly to ethno-nationalist conflicts and domestic violence. Some of her publications can be found in Ethnopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, CADAAD Journal, and Critical Discourse Studies.
Christopher Hart is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK. He is author of Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse (2010) and Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (2014).
Bertie Kaal is a PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her main interest is in discourse-space analysis and rhetorical structures in language use for social action, together with methods for text analysis and party positioning. She is co-editor of the book From Text to Political Positions: Text analysis across disciplines (2014).
