Textual analysis of political discourse

Abstract

Norman Fairclough and Isabela Fairclough, in this contribution, outline an approach to analyzing political texts, discourses, and policies, aiming to remedy the deficiencies in specific disciplines within discourse theory, specifically cultural political economy and post-structuralist discourse analysis. Their approach is grounded in a view of politics as involving deliberation, decision-making, and action, and of political discourse and texts as distinct in that they contain practical argumentation that proposes and assesses potential courses of action based on premises that take into account the current (rejected) situation and the imagined (desired) one, as well as the values and goals of social actors and the means that lead from the rejected situation to the desired one. They therefore suggest an approach that surpasses the analytical approaches proposed by some critical discourse analysts. This approach focuses on analyzing political discourse through a dialectical and practical argumentative perspective, which is based on the analysis, interpretation, and normative evaluation of arguments and their premises. They refer to this approach as "textual analysis."