Political Discourse and Discarding the Rights of Minorities

(Refugees, immigrants)

Submitted to: Dr. M. Babar Jamil.

Submitted by: Naveed Zafar, Sami ullah, Yasir Liaqat.

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Abstract.

This study intends to explain the term Political Discourse and its manipulation in the
society by the social agents for the enactment of political power and dominance. The study tends
to prove that how the process of political discussions in a society plays an important role for the
enactment of political power and social inequality in the society. This study also intends to
explore the ideas of objectivity, ideology and action of politics in a society for the production of
political dominance. The speech of a member of French parliament (Mr. Le Pen 1986) is taken as
a sample in this study to analyze that how a political discursive practice marginalizes the position
of minorities in the society.

Key Words: Politics, Inequality, Dominance, Power, Ideology.

Introduction:

Discourse is generally known as a set of ideologies of shared knowledge present in a

community in the form of truth. It is due to the discourse that the community believes what to
consider intelligibly right and wrong. Discourse constitutes society and is constituted by the
society because of the discursive practices in the society. Discourse works on the basis of ideas
of knowledge and power which are interrelated to each other. With the use of power the elites in
a society have an access to a general form of knowledge or discourse and make it a prominent set
of beliefs in that society. But the major concern of discourse analysts is to know that how a
discourse does work in a society. For this purpose the term critical analysis is used to explore
that how a discourse does enact power and inequality in a society. Usually these are enacted in
the form of soft power or natural actions taken for granted by the members of community, which
are only possible with the powerful access to any form of knowledge.

Political Discourse:

Political Discourse is a social discourse similar to educational, medical or scientific

discourse. It is different to other discourses in the terms of action of its actor and authors. The
politicians take part as authors or actors in the Political Discourse, and Political Discourse is all
about the text and talk of professional politicians or political institutions such as ministers, other
members of government or parliament and political parties both at the local, national and
international level. Political Discourse needs the clear positions of subject and object for its
complete formation. A Politician takes the place of an actor in this discourse, but his object is
necessarily to be presented in the form of public, citizens and masses. If a Politician engages
himself in a conversation with his family members or friends, his conversation cannot be
recognized as a political discursive practice.

On the other hand for the formation of Political Discourse a politician must act in the
form of Member of Parliament, governing person over public or taking part in legislation and
voting. It is crucial in Political Discourse that the politicians are not presented only as
participants, but the public as recipients also in communicative events. So once an aspect of
politics is introduced in public, it takes the form of a Political Discourse. In a simple term this
discourse may be defined as Institutional Discourse because it involves the political discursive
practices observed only in institutions for its complete formation.

Review of Discourses:

The discourse is divided into two types in a society as powerful and marginalized
discourse. The powerful discourse in a society strengthens its roots and marginalized the weaker
one. Here the Question arises that how the powerful and weaker discourses are differentiated? It
may be answered that the element of access is the key point, which makes any discourse
powerful in a society. The powerful people in the society have an easy access to any discourse
and thus they may make any discourse a popular discourse. The discourse which is not accessed
and propagated is marginalized by the elites in the society.

Every society possesses some ideologies as its general and believed episteme. This
episteme is commonly shared by the people living in the society and discourse in the society is
accessed and propagated with the observation of ideologies. The elites in the society with the use
of power control the discourses in the society and may make the discourses prominent and
marginal. But the control is always seem to be in soft form over the public discourses. The elites
present the powerful discourses in such a natural form that the people take these discourses or
ideas for granted and normally no resistance is observed against these discourses. This
hegemonic idea in the form of soft control drives the public opinion to make the discourse
powerful.

The elites and powerful groups in society have control over the mind of public, if they
have control over the discourses which are result of ideologies shared by public. This control of
mind may be termed as the contextual control. Context is defined as the living conditions are
behavioral patterns of a society i.e. their thinking. The contextually control or mind control can
be observed in education where teacher controls the opinion of students, in Judiciary where
judge controls the opinion or authority of accused. They control the actions of their objects and
get the answer or opinions from them what they desire to get by controlling the text and talk.
Objectives:

With the general presentation of Political Discourse and the sources on which it thrives
in the society, the study intends to prove that how the powerful discourse in the form of Political
Discourse enacts the political inequality in the society. The study includes the manipulated and
cognitive structures present in a society to make the analysis more intact and targeted. The
following statements are presented in this study to explore the critical position of Political
Discourse in a society.

• Political Discourse always works on the basis of personal and social ideologies.
• Political Discourse enacts power and inequality on the basis of top-down relations.

Analysis of Power Enactment through Political Discourse:

Political Discourse with the action of its authors and participation of recipients enacts the
political inequality and abuse in the society. It may be observed in the form of legislation, voting,
electoral campaign and governing. There are two types of ideologies working behind the power
enactment through Political Discourse. The first one is the political ideology, which is possessed
by the politicians and the second one is socio-political ideology which is observed by a politician
being a member of a political party.

The political ideology of politicians with the use of power becomes their prominent
discourse. They utilize the public cognitive process to influence their minds and have opinions as
favorable to political ideologies. The political ideologies may be termed as the advocacy of
labor, superiority and criticism on opposition. On the other hand the socio-political ideologies
involve the ideas of racism, nationalism and patriotism. A politician makes his political ideology
prominent and enacting tool while he exploits the public opinion in the form of nationalism e.g. a
politician dislikes the refugees on his land and in the parliament describes the presence of
refugees as a threat to the national security. In this way the national ideology being exploited by
the politician threats the public and people take his speech natural against the refugees.

A common speech of a member of parliament about the racism is only a personal opinion
or ideology, but if it takes the form of legislation the use of public cognition makes the racism
legislation natural and demands the superiority of Whites over Blacks. The politician at the
expense of public cognition enacts the political and social inequality with the use of power while
having a prominent access to discourse. The element of cognition connects the micro and macro
process of understanding, in which the personal ideology or experience are connected to the
society. A politician in cognitive process may justify his speech or action about the racism in his
Political Discourse by applying the two terms i.e. the positive representation of own and the
negative of others. This can be taken as the superiority of own nationality and the threat to
nationalism by others i.e. foreigners.
 Hence, the critical analysis of Political Discourse is based on the expression of political
power by the special access to discourse, which is common for elites and member of parliaments
in a society. So the power relations in a society especially in the form of Political Discourse are
arranged in the top-down structure. Many politicians with the powerful access to media and
public cognition introduce the bills to subjugate the minorities in the society which conform to
the top-down relations of power in a society. The enactment of political power and prejudice
against the minorities is always observed at the expense of public cognition. The politicians
utilize the public ideology i.e. the nationalism or right of access to resources, which are
considered in danger if the waves of refugees or immigrants hit the country. To strengthen our
theoretical frame work and to present more concrete precision of our assumptions regarding the
title of this assignment we have selected two extracts from a political speech delivered by Mr. Le
Pen in 1986(a French politician and parliamentarian).We will observe and analyze how through
the particular use of linguistic constructions a political speaker first prepares the ground to reject
the rights of immigrants, how in a more natural way he exploits social cognition against
minorities, how he being a power elite of a powerful social group enacts power and dominance
and ultimately by legislating his personal or party views makes it an ‘immigration law’ and
discards the rights of minorities specifically of immigrants permanently in a quite natural way
where such power structure fears no resistance. For this purpose we have tried to apply TODA to
analyze linguistically the two chosen extracts from Le Pen’s political speech. But our linguistic
analysis of the extracts is not in strict sense of the terms used in TODA for text analysis rather
this analysis has been conducted in a general way to make it less complex and easy to understand
even for the students of CDA with a little knowledge of such practice.

Following are the extracts from Le Pen’s speech:

“We are neither racist nor xenophobic. Our aim is only that, quite naturally, there be a
hierarchy, because we are dealing with France, and France is the country of the
French”.(France, M. Le Pen,7 July 1986

Now we are going to analyze this statement sentence by sentence under three levels of linguistic
activity to see how a particular use of language in a political discourse can reproduce power and
dominance and marginalize immigrants:

Lexical level

Syntactical level

Phrase level

First sentence:

“We are neither racist nor xenophobic”

Lexical level: We, racist, xenophobic.

Deliberately used word ‘We’ here refers to Le Pen and his people (French people) as a separate
unit clearly discriminating the natives from ‘they’ (immigrants).This can be regarded as the first
intentional attempt to manipulate ‘French cognition’ against immigrants and separating them
from the body of ‘we’. The second word ‘racist’ has been used here a ground maker to enact
racism under the cover of antiracism. The third one ‘xenophobic’ is something more interesting
in dealing with power enactment. Xenophobic is a psychological term which refers to a person
who fears strangers and outsiders. By using this term the speaker is trying to establish the notion
that there are some outsiders or strangers (immigrants, minorities) but we are not afraid of them.
He assures his people in an indirect way that people of different ethnicities are not from us and
actually don’t belong to this land and therefore don’t deserve equal rights of a real French man.
Furthermore, in a much concealed manner he, by using this term xenophobic, is referring to the
immigrants as something to be feared and establishing them as a social outcast.

Syntactical level: neither –nor.

This syntactical structure is usually used to reject ideas very strongly. And in this
sentence we see Le Pen strongly rejects the idea that he and his people are racist and xenophobic.
But actually such a strong rejection of being racist and xenophobic is a ground on which he will
enact social inequality afterwards. This is an interesting fact that almost all the countries in the
world which claim to be more humanitarian and democratic are indeed the opposite ones.

Second sentence:

“Our aim is only that, quite naturally, there be a hierarchy, because we are dealing with France
and France is the country of the French”.

Lexical level: Our, aim, only, hierarchy.

The first word of the second sentence ‘our’ is a personal pronoun and possessive case of
‘we’ which is once again showing Le Pen and his people as a separate body different from all
other social minorities. The next word ‘aim’ is surely indicating towards the seriousness and
intense focus of Le Pen on the matter of immigration. This word could have been replaced easily
with ‘desire’ ‘wish’ etc which usually refers to the capacity of doing something not so much
resolutely and the conditions over which one has no complete control. But the usage of ‘aim’
shows here the determination to fulfill the speaker’s demand of the exclusion of the immigrants
from the main stream of French society. The next word ‘only’ has been used here as ‘avert
marker’ to take a soft and deceptive turn away from the previous statement of the speaker and a
ground maker to assert something contrary to the previous claim of not being racist and
xenophobic. The next word ‘hierarchy’ is providing full expression of a racist’s intense wish of
establishing a top to bottom order of superiority and inferiority. The dictionary meaning of
‘hierarchy’ are ‘arranging things and persons according to their ranks’ and being native Le Pen
and his people obviously rank themselves far above from the other minorities therefore they are
of the view that they must be at the top of the hierarchy.
Phrasal level: quite naturally.

The phrase ‘quite naturally’ is signifying the speaker’s trick of naturalizing his demand
giving it the color of a natural phenomenon through claiming that what he is going to put on the
table isn’t something intentional or scheming rather it happens in every society therefore
everyone should accept it. The next part of the sentence ‘because we are dealing with France and
France is the country of the French’ is showing clear and solid rejection of the rights and
existence of other ethnicities. Once again we see the use of ‘we’ in this sentence which shows the
French dealing with France in fact holding and governing it which simply means if they are the
governing power there, ‘others’ surely are the governed. And last part of the sentence ‘France is
the country of the French’ finalizes the idea that no other people can live in this country accept
the ‘real French’ because France is the country of the French. The above classic denial of not
being racist and xenophobic goes slowly through highly politicized and particular use of
language in the spoken text towards being racist and xenophobic and this ultimately intends to
enact power, dominance and social inequality which a speaker like Le Pen can reproduce
through his socio-political ideology regarding immigrants or the people of different ethnicities.
This was the French’s xenophobia that forced them to think if they let the immigrants come in
and other minorities thrive in the country with equal citizenship, lest they should farm their own
social and political body to claim their share in national structure as natives with equal rights.

Conclusion:
While putting our final comments, we want to say that wherever in every society in the world
when racism and any type of social inequality is enacted, it is done under the garb of anti-racism
and equality. A racist can never change his mind but the ways to present it before the world. To
support our statement, we would like to quote Brenda Cherry who is of the view:

“You can create laws to change a racist’s actions but you can’t change a racist’s mind.
That’s why fighting racism is and always will be a continuous battle.”

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