"Cracking the weasel code of politicians"- Newspeak as a form of political language manipulation

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In this thesis the phenomenon under examination is newspeak -a highly manipulative form of political language. The proposed research, conducted from the perspective of political language, attempts to account for mechanisms that govern the use of newspeak in Anglo-Saxon countries, including Poland. A special emphasis is given to the newspeak of the Polish Fourth Republic - a fictional concept coined by the Law and Justice party (PiS). Firstly, the study explicates the notion of political language and highlights its manipulative nature. Furthermore, key elements of political discourse are presented. In the second chapter, the term newspeak is introduced and thoroughly examined. The author concentrates her efforts on displaying the properties of newspeak in a precise context, before the 2008 US Presidential Elections and during Tony Blair' s rule in Great Britain.

Extraits

[...] Recent findings in cognitive sciences suggest that hidden aspects of speech have enormous impact on our worldviews. With regard to this fact, it seems that “cracking the weasel code of politicians”, as Minette Marrin wrote, should be the goal of all of us who do not want to fall victim to political manipulation. Summary The research in this thesis addresses the question of how newspeak gained relevance in the modern world and how it may considerably influence the course of political events. [...]

[...] Her results were as follows: - Poland, Motherland, state, society-metaphors of: mother, organism, home, ship -Power: son, doctor, builder, steersman - Politics: theatre, war, sport, game Yet it seems that the subject of metaphors is inexhaustible in as much as complete cultural directory of metaphors is not possible. Consequently let us examine metaphors exclusively in terms of their relevance for the analysis of the Fourth Republic's newspeak. In the first position one has to answer the question: why were metaphors so recurrent in newspeak of the Fourth Republic? Why are they so recurrent in politics? Shimko (2004: 201) claims that the use of a powerful metaphor may be helpful for selling a policy to potentially incredulous audience and frame policy debates in ways that favour one's perspective. [...]

[...] Unquestionably it does play a vital role in the concept of political language. In such a discourse listeners are not treated as individuals but as the part of a large entity. Therefore, communicating in such circumstances means that a message must be unambiguous also for a non- demanding listener who is treated as part of an audience and not as a participant in a communication process (Siewierska-Chmaj 2006). Thomson (1995) characterized mass communication as, first of all, comprising both technical and institutional methods of production and distribution. [...]

[...] For him Mr Lipiński and Mrs Beger conducted normal political negotiations which under no circumstances should one interpret as corruption. On the other hand he blamed the media for inaccurately depicting the events: „Każde przekazywanie nieprecyzyjnej wiedzy, nie mówiąc o fałszywej, fałszuje obraz rzeczywisty, więc jest mylnym informowaniem obywateli. Jeśli ktoś jest mylnie informowany, podejmuje mylne decyzje. Inaczej mówiąc to jest zbrodnia wobec demokracji.” (28th September 2006, at the Solidarity Congress). In consequence one may posit that the expression “nadużycie semantyczne” is of highly manipulative character. [...]

[...] For another, they do frequently occur together and create nothing but buzzwords. Notwithstanding the fact that those language properties were presented more than 50 years ago, we have every reason to assume that since then the facet of political language has not changed considerably. Another significant aspect that should not be excluded from any discussion of newspeak's language is neologisms. In the 1970s the drastic change in the meaning of words was noted. The spectrum of meanings has become narrower and the array of meanings has nearly vanished. [...]