Analyzing Political Language

The ‘interpretive turn’ in mid-late 20^th century social sciences brought with it renewed attention to the role of language in social and political life.  The ‘linguistic turn’ built on the established idea that in (re)presenting lived experience, language is not, and should not be seen as, an exact ‘mirror of [human] nature’ (to invoke Richard Rorty’s title) or a transparent referent of those experiences, but needs to be understood as an interpretation of them.  As researchers, we ‘translate’ others’ and our own experiences into language—what Charles Taylor (1971) called ‘text analogues’ (see also Ricoeur 1971)—for purposes of analysis. Consider, for example, field notes that render persons, events, interactions, and the material world of research settings and the artifacts in it as written texts. Additionally, these days, the notion of language needs to be taken not only in a literal sense–referencing research-relevant documents, whether contemporary or archival, or field conversations, including interviews–but also with respect to repertoires of visual and nonverbal ‘languages.’

This course will explore several methods or approaches that have been developed to analyze political language:  metaphor analysis, category analysis, narrative and storytelling analysis, framing analysis, and visual analysis.  Each day’s session is intended to introduce one of these ways of looking at the topic, theoretically, and includes a set of empirical articles or papers that use that method.  We will touch briefly on language and the politics of science (e.g., 1976 articles by Richard Harvey Brown and by Joseph Gusfield), but the course will not cover rhetoric, discourse analysis or some other topics that might well fit under this broad umbrella.  (For discourse analysis proper, see the self-standing course offered in the ECPR Methods Summer School. But please note that some of the confusion over what discourse analysis means includes the analysis of discourses, and some of the topics we will take up fall within that understanding.)

Note: There is no opportunity to do additional work beyond the bounds and dates of this course in order to earn additional credits beyond the 2 ECTS that are offered for a one-week course.

1. This course presumes some knowledge of interpretive methodological presuppositions, including the so-called ‘linguistic turn,’ an aspect of the interpretive turn, described in the long course outline [#6 below]. We are not likely to have sufficient time to go into this background in depth.  If you have missed out on these ideas, you can find them in the following key readings:

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. NY: Basic Books, esp. ch. 1.

Hawkesworth, M.E. 1988. Theoretical issues in policy analysis. Albany: SUNY Press, chs. 1-4.

Hiley, David R., Bohman, James F., and Shusterman, Richard, eds. 1991. The interpretive turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark.  1980.  Metaphors we live by.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. [although focused on metaphor, this book includes arguments in re. the character of language underlying this course]

Polkinghorne, Donald E. 1983. Methodology for the human sciences. Albany: SUNY Press. [esp. the opening chapter]

Rabinow, Paul and Sullivan, William M., eds. 1979, 1985. Interpretive social science, 1^st and 2^nd eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1971. The model of the text. Social Research 38: 529–62.

Taylor, Charles.  1971/1979. Interpretation and the sciences of man. In Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, eds., Interpretive social science: A reader, 25–71 [also in the 2^nd ed.]. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine and Yanow, Dvora. 2012.  Interpretive research design:  Concepts and processes.  NY: Routledge.

Yanow, Dvora and Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine. 2014/2006.  Interpretation and method:  Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn, 2^nd ed.  Armonk, NY:  M E Sharpe, especially book introduction, part introductions, chs. 1-7, 24-25.

2. Those students who have already conducted field research and have their own ‘word data’ to analyze are likely to benefit the most, in a practical sense, from this course, although it is not a prerequisite for the course. Those who have not yet generated their own research data will also gain knowledge of this range of ways of looking at linguistic materials.