The Second Persona in Political Commentary
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
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The Second Persona in Political Commentary. / Bengtsson, Mette.
Rhetorical Argumentation: The Copenhagen School. ed. / Christian Kock; Marcus Lantz. Vol. 13 Windsor, ON : Windsor Studies in Argumentation, 2023. p. 306-332.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
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RIS
TY - CHAP
T1 - The Second Persona in Political Commentary
AU - Bengtsson, Mette
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - This article offers a critique of the genre of political commentary, as found in a Danish context. Based on 90 specimens of political commentary from national newspapers published during the parliamentary election campaign in 2011, I present an analysis of the implied audience of the genre, using the analytical procedure proposed by Edwin Black (1970) in three steps: Frist, I analyze the dominant claims and stylistic tokens in the corpus to be able to draw a profile of the implied audience. Next, I relate this profile to various conceptions of democracy, including their conception of the role of the citizen, and I argue that the profile of the audience thus discursively implied coincides with a conception of the citizen’s role in a democracy centered around competition. Finally, I offer a moral assessment of this construction of the audience, and on that basis, I discuss the implications of this construction with reference to two studies of mine, each of which presents an impression of an authentic audience’s response to this construction of the audience. The article could be a point of departure for comparative analyses still to be undertaken in the rhetorical community in Scandinavia, and it could contribute to broader discussions of the role of the mass media in a democracy.
AB - This article offers a critique of the genre of political commentary, as found in a Danish context. Based on 90 specimens of political commentary from national newspapers published during the parliamentary election campaign in 2011, I present an analysis of the implied audience of the genre, using the analytical procedure proposed by Edwin Black (1970) in three steps: Frist, I analyze the dominant claims and stylistic tokens in the corpus to be able to draw a profile of the implied audience. Next, I relate this profile to various conceptions of democracy, including their conception of the role of the citizen, and I argue that the profile of the audience thus discursively implied coincides with a conception of the citizen’s role in a democracy centered around competition. Finally, I offer a moral assessment of this construction of the audience, and on that basis, I discuss the implications of this construction with reference to two studies of mine, each of which presents an impression of an authentic audience’s response to this construction of the audience. The article could be a point of departure for comparative analyses still to be undertaken in the rhetorical community in Scandinavia, and it could contribute to broader discussions of the role of the mass media in a democracy.
M3 - Book chapter
VL - 13
SP - 306
EP - 332
BT - Rhetorical Argumentation
A2 - Kock, Christian
A2 - Lantz, Marcus
PB - Windsor Studies in Argumentation
CY - Windsor, ON
ER -
ID: 347574550