Abstract
Political talk readily challenges the assumption of stability and regularity associated with the notion of genre. The genres of political communication often adopt hybrid formats, borrowing from or travelling to other social domains, such as when political campaigning is carried into the realm of entertainment TV talk shows. On the face of the quick changes that characterize the field, Analyzing Genres in Political Communication offers a revision of the notion of political genre. Drawing from both theoretical and applied perspectives, the book seeks to question the conventional parameters of genre analysis in political communication, to refine our understanding of both established and emerging political genres, and to assess how much indeterminacy can be allowed in tracing their contours.
The book is arranged in an Introduction by the volume editors, followed by two parts. The first of these, comprising Chapters 1–6, emphasizes theoretical considerations. The chapters cover a range of genres, from inaugural speeches (Gruber) and political interviews (Fetzer and Bull) to policy communication (Krzyzanowski), TV election broadcasts (Lauerbach) and meetings (Wodak). It closes with a chapter on methodological reflection discussing psychological contributions to genre theory (Moir). These chapters give much room for the discussion of established approaches to genre, such as Register and Genre Theory (RGT), Conversation Analysis, Sociopragmatics, the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Social Semiotics. Although these contributions largely deal with traditional political genres, they succeed in pointing out breaching points where a reconceptualization of genre is needed, such as a differentiation between situational and social context, or the problematic distinction between register and discourse (Gruber), the impact of hybridity (Fetzer and Bull), the question of macro- versus microstructures (Lauerbach), the influence of prototypical structures in neighbouring discourses (Wodak), or political communication as a performative or persuasive undertaking (Moir).
The need for a revision of genre parameters in political communication becomes even clearer in the second part of the volume. Part II, comprising Chapters 7–12, deals with newly emerging genres and stresses hybridity as their main feature. Features such as multimodal content and reciprocal interactivity make conventional genre features inadequate for the task of defining such genres, requiring adaptations to the nature of the new modes. These chapters are data-driven, deriving their conceptualization of genres from a bottom-up exploration of their materials. The examined corpora include political speeches (Forchtner), TV election night broadcast speeches (Malkmus), presidential TV debate (Boyd), talk shows (Molek-Kozakowska), political online videos (Mackay) and politicians’ weblogs (Kopytowska). Especially in the last three chapters, the pace of change in political genres is clearly visible. Molek-Kozakowska examines the shift from hard facts to soft skill attributes in political communication, while Mackay’s pioneering multimodal analysis shows that the online context has shifted the ‘primacy of text and talk’ to other modes of representation, and Kopytowska convincingly makes mechanisms of mediatization and personality branding in political communication transparent.
Although covering all established and emerging political genres would be impossible, the selection assembled in the volume is broad and balanced, and offers convincing conceptual refinements for the analysis of genre in political communication. Especially in Part II, the book expands the scope of the concept of genre to accommodate hybrid forms and offers innovative avenues for theoretical and methodological reconsiderations in genre analysis, such as a tool for measuring proximization and interactivity between politicians and citizens (Kopytowska), or the direct referral to hyperlinks recommending the simultaneous multimodal comprehension of the analysis while reading (Mackay). The editors suggest that political genre analysis should be approached methodologically rather than thematically and that as a whole its classificatory value is shifting under the pressure of newly emerging hybrid formats and dynamics in political communication, such as higher levels of interactivity, as well as shifts in values, for example from political content to personality branding.
Although the advocacy for method rather than theme might be used as justification for a regionally limited selection from Europe and the United States, the main fault of the book is the lack of contributions from and about the Global South, which would have enriched the range of perspectives, genre formats and languages and possibly pointed at unconventional political genres such as cell phone - mediated communication. Nevertheless, discourse studies can benefit from this revitalizing look on genre, since it brings a stabilizing category of analysis back into focus. Especially relevant are the contributions on Internet-based and TV-mediated genres, as they will increasingly dominate political communication in the future. The innovative data-based analyses serve as valuable stimulation for research into interactive mediatization processes and multimodality. The book is also useful as a classroom resource for graduate students, as it gives contemporary insight into genre theory and provides topical samples of applied analysis from a discourse perspective.
Analyzing Genres in Political Communication does not favour theory or data in the quest for refining genres of political communication, but convinces in giving appropriate space with complementing effects. The book clarifies genre parameters in political discourse and thus enhances the level of comparability among hybrid formats. The art of systematically approaching and classifying hybridity is perhaps the main insight one can draw from this selection. With newly and rapidly emerging media genres, used and partly invented by politics, this agreed-upon systematicity in analysis among researchers of qualitative discourse studies is very welcome.