| Abstract [eng] |
Parliamentary Discourse Analysis: Expression of Power and Solidarity. The aim of this MA thesis is to analize the expression of power and solidarity in political discourse, mainly in speeches produced by left-wing and right-wing members of Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania. The main objective of this paper is to examine how solidarity and power is expressed with the use of modal verbs. After analyzing transcripts of political speeches produced by members of left-wing and right-wing parties in respect of the usage of modal verbs next to the second person pronoun you, an attempt to answer the following questions was made: what and to what extent dominates right-wing and left-wing parliament members political discourse – power or solidarity; can we notice a pattern in choosing the linguistic devices to express power and solidarity; how right-wing and left-wing political discourse differs in terms of expressing solidarity and power. The material for this study consists of two corpora compiled by the author of this paper and is based on political speeches from 2008–2013 delivered by the members of Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania. Total amount of words from right-wing politicians: 1 987 043, total amount of words from left-wing politicians: 1 309 784. Both qualitative and quantitative methods while analysing the data were applied. Given the results of the study, the following conclusions can be drawn. It was noticed that to each other both right-wing and left-wing politicians tend to use significantly more power expressions instead of solidarity expressions. Power is expressed with the help of typical narrative techniques of high and low modality verbs and context become significant while determining which verb is used in which context – power or solidarity. The power is usually expressed with modal verbs and a set of fixed expressions that carry negative or humiliating effect, directives or subjunctive mood, adjectives or nouns that have negative connotational meaning. Politicians seek to devalue their collegues, they emphasize flaws in their work, they are hostile towards politicians that belong to different political parties or express different views. Solidarity is present only in situations that are related to parliamentary procedures. These findings bear implications of futher research for linguists and political analysts whoare interested in political discourse and notions of power and solidarity in political speeches. |
