CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2010
| Author | Szilágyi, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | The Political Language and the Human Body:Comparative Discursive Analysis of Vladmir Putin`s 2000 and Viktor Orban`s 2010 Campaign Rhetorics |
| Summary | In the MA thesis I compare the campaign rhetorics of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán during the 2000 Russian presidential and the 2010 Hungarian parliamentary elections, respectively. These elections took place in a similar environment of political and economical crisis and both politicians won with the overwhelming majority of votes. The research explores if the similarity of contexts could trigger societal responsiveness towards a discourse that contributed to the enormous success of the candidates. The multi-disciplinary analysis focuses both on structural politico-economic contexts and discursive features of campaign texts in order to explore the complex relation between the two. The analysis combines political science concepts with a detailed analysis of linguistic practices (especially, the use of key metaphors). The major finding of the work is that the moment of deep economic-political crisis triggers societal responsiveness towards a public discourse that is mainly characterized by the lack of the political and evokes a simple moral value system of traditional family and gender conceptualization. The popularity of this language lays in its ability to present otherwise threatening complex problems as solvable issues that require simple physical intervention. I also conclude that the distinct political and cultural traditions, as well as the position of the countries after the democratic turn largely influence the specific discursive strategies of the speakers. Accordingly, I demonstrate that the politicians evoked two distinct ‘subtypes’ of physically oriented masculinity. In Putin`s language the ideal of the army man (particularly, the army commander) emerged, while Orbán`s discourse evoked a specific rural masculinity. |
| Supervisor | Enyedi Zsolt |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2010/szilagyi_anna.pdf |
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