Slogans,political discourse and education: An interview with Ruth Wodak

Abstract

This interview with Prof. Ruth Wodak discusses some of the most pressing issues associated with slogans, political discourse an education. The introductory section of the interview touches on Prof. Wodak’s work in critical discourse analysis. The central part of the interview examines slogans as one of the main vehicles of political propaganda and policy-making. In the concluding section of the interview, Prof. Wodak lays out her plans for future research.

As one of the leading global scholars in critical discourse analysis, you have written extensively on various issues associated with language and politics, for example, in your books The Politics of Fear, Right-Wing Populism in Europe, Discourse and Discrimination, Analysing Fascist Discourse, The Discursive Construction of National Identity etc. How you became interested in this intersection of language and politics?

Actually, I inherited a strong interest in politics and political communication from my parents: politics were always talked about at home. Not only because of my father’s profession (he was a high-ranking diplomat) but also because of my parents’ personal biography. They were forced to flee Austria in 1938, after the so-called Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-Germany, and survived the war as refugees in the United Kingdom. Hence, I grew up with a strong sense of ‘Never Again’. Raising the awareness about the currently emerging dangers of undemocratic actions, and fascist, xenophobic, racist, sexist and antisemitic attitudes has always been salient for my work.

I started investigating political communication in the 1980s at the University of Vienna. For example, in a seminar, we analysed election campaigns and TV-talk shows, in a first funded project a team investigated the media reporting about a large ecological grass-root protest movement in 1983 (Wodak, Gruber, Lutz & Menz 1984). 1986, I was asked by the then vice-major of Vienna to analyse the emerging antisemitism during the so-called Waldheim-Affair in Austria. During this interdisciplinary study, we developed the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) which was then elaborated during many other subsequent projects (Wodak et al., 1990, 2009; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; De Cillia et al., 2020). After having been awarded the Wiitgenstein Prize in 1996, I was able to hire a fantastic international and interdisciplinary team of researchers, and we started fieldwork in the European Parliament and European Commission. Many publications were the result (f.ex., Muntigl et al., 2000; Weiss and Wodak, 2003; Wodak, 2011, 2016). The books which you mention in your question are all the result of these research interests, especially The Politics of Fear. The shameless normalisation of far-right discourses (2021).

In The Discourse of Politics in Action you also write about the corporatization of politics. Interestingly enough, one of the important aspects associated with this phenomenon is the use various rhetorical ‘devices’ including slogans. In fact, their usage has overcome historical periods, cultural barriers, ethnic affiliation, political systems, party allegiance or personal taste. Why have slogans remained one of the central elements of political discourse to this day?

Slogans, that is, ‘a short and striking or memorable phrase used in advertising’ (Oxford Dictionary of English) have been used for advertising (of goods, beliefs, ideologies, political parties, politicians) since many centuries. Thus, elements of advertising are used, for example, flag-words, positive adjectives, rhymes, catchy metaphors, and so forth. Slogans have to be short, easy to memorise and to be repeated, they thus have to be worded in attractive, creative, simple and appealing ways. When used by political parties, they are part and parcel of campaigning, appearing on posters, in video clips, in social media and so forth, apart from speeches, interviews, press conferences, party programs and demonstrations; thus quasi branding the respective political party and its program. In this way, they can be used for all genres in the field of politics, and frame the party agenda. Indeed, they quasi ‘sell’, condense and essentialise the program of the respective party. In managerial terms, we would speak of the summary of a mission statement. Accordingly, the boundaries of advertising, branding, spin, political communication and political campaigning become blurred.

One of the most pressing issues arising out of the use and application of slogans has been that of ‘sloganization’, i.e. making appear complex or controversial issues as simple, self-evident, unquestionable, self-explanatory or uncontroversial. As you write in the Introduction to Right-Wing Populism in Europe, ‘[…] politics becomes simplified and dumped down to a few slogans apparently comprehensible to the broad public at large’. What problems and dilemmas arise out of the various simplifications slogans bring along?

In our globalised world of polycrises, much insecurity and uncertainty are evident. Slogans and other rhetorical devices such as metaphors, personifications, synechdoches, etc. provide simple condensed narratives, realised in slogans or other rhetorical tropes. The latter allow for many projections of one’s own beliefs and interpretations, they support simple explanations, and distract from complex issues, and also, for example, allow for simplistic scape-goating (shifting blame to ethnic, religious, and other minorities). This is ever more the case, as differentiated messages require more space and time – and these are not available in the most frequented media channels. In this way, politicisation and mediatisation support brief, condensed and poignant messages. In Austria, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), for example, was quite skilful in inventing ever new rhymes, metaphors and slogans to abuse and insult their opponents (Wodak and Forchtner 2018). Donald Trump provides another good example of sloganization: MAGA has become the trademark and brand of the Grand Old Party (GOP) and of Trumpism, one does not even use the full slogan anymore, the acronym suffices as slogan and brand, in all genres, and available on-line to be bought, printed on bags, t-shirts, caps, cups, etc.

Perhaps more than any other rhetorical ‘device’, slogans deliver a clearly recognizable message with as little complexity as possible. In fact, their overall effectiveness—at least at the level of implementation—can be evaluated against clarity as the single most important measure of how successfully a particular message has been delivered. What are the most important questions research on slogans should tackle?

It should be made perfectly clear what functions slogans fulfil in the political field; and what the limitations of slogans are. That repeating slogans actually does not allow for differentiated opinions or debates; other written, visual and spoken genres should receive more attention, depending always on the respective context. In other words, specific genres are adequate for specific contexts! Moreover, teaching critical literacy already in primary schools, teaching how to challenge critically what is said or written to children, adolescents and students would allow de-essentialising such messages. Understanding and deconstructing media and political communication should most certainly become an inherent and necessary part of school curricula.

From antiquity onwards, political discourse has been imbued with slogans. Being easily recognizable, slogans have been associated with phenomena as diverse as electoral campaigns (and political rhetoric in general), foreign policy, marketing and advertising, military strategies, social movements (e.g. the ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’ slogan of the 1960s counterculture) etc. Do you see any difference in the use and application of slogans on the political spectrum, e.g. between the right-wing or the left-wing political discourse?

As already mentioned above, slogans have been created and used for centuries, in different modes, from the right-wing and left-wing spectrum. Slogans are one of many elements of political propaganda with specific contents and functions. Thus, slogans are used in grass-root movements such as FFF (Fridays for Future) or BLM (Black Lives Matter) as well as in far-right, conservative, liberal and left-wing parties. As always, one has to analyse form and content and not only focus on the form but on the dialectic between form and content. If well-worded, recognizable, repeatable and easily memorised, then slogans will probably be successful, especially if picked up and recontextualised in various media channels. The visualization is, of course, also important, via posters, memes, etc. In this way, as already mentioned above, slogans serve to condense political and programmatic agenda. Condensation implies simplification and allows for projection of one’s own beliefs, wishes and visions. Simplification thus leads to a range of possible interpretations; everybody could use a slogan in whatever way it suits their purpose.

Along side metaphors, buzzwords and other though-terminating clichés, slogans have also been at the forefront of various educational initiatives. For example, the 1980s educational slogan ‘Back to Basics’, ‘Opportunity for All’ during Tony Blair’s premiership, George W. Bush’s initiative ‘No Child Left Behind’ to a more recent ‘Aspiration Nation’ slogan by David Cameron, are just some of the most visible educational slogans. Do you see any particular connection between slogans and education policy (or education in general)?

Of course, slogans are instrumentalised in all political fields and for the propagation of policies. Political parties specifically create slogans for agenda which are salient at a specific time and in a specific context. If education is important for a political party and resonates with their voters, then slogans for furthering and investing in education will obviously be highlighted as well.

Research on slogans figures as an important topic in disciplines and areas of research as diverse as linguistics, policy analysis, advertisement and marketing, security studies, anthropology, social psychology, literary studies, political science, historiography, international relations, philosophy and education etc. What is the added value in this interdisciplinary research on slogans?

Political communication and discourse about politics (in all contexts) is a very complex social field, and hence, also a complex field of research. Such complex phenomena are best analysed in interdisciplinary ways – looking at the programmatic agenda, at the politicians themselves, at the audiences, at alternative proposals, at socio-political, glocal, regional, national and global contexts, etc. Thus, interdisciplinary research suggests itself: media studies, discourse studies, pragmatics, history, multimodality, ethnography, audience studies, political science and so forth.

A follow-up question: what has been the most important contribution of critical discourse analysis to the study of slogans?

Critical Discourse Studies and studies on political communication have delivered much research on many aspects of political communication. Slogans have always been part and parcel of studies of election campaigns, identity politics and politics of the past (see literature mentioned above; Flowerdew and Richardson 2017; Wodak and Meyer 2015).

Is there any phenomenon associated with the intersection of language and politics that remains ‘below the radar’ of existing research? If ‘yes,’ which one(s)?

One aspect which deserves more attention is the staging and performance of politicians and the continuous discursive co-construction of – what is frequently labelled as – charisma (see Wodak 2021). Moreover, grass-root movements remain under investigated; probably so because much detailed sociolinguistic fieldwork would be necessary as well as transcription of visual and verbal data, etc. This is why much research still focusses on the analysis of newspapers (quality and tabloids) as well as diverse political speeches because the data are easily available although, of course, one should not reduce media studies on traditional media. The analysis of the entire range of social media must be included in our research nowadays. There is also little work on the ‘everyday lives’ of politicians – something I started by investigating the European Parliament’s backstage (Wodak, 2011). But much remains to be studied, specifically the influence of social media and digitalisation on our daily political lives.

For several decades now, neoliberalism has been at the forefront of discussions not only in the economy and finance but has infiltrated our vocabulary in a number of areas as diverse as governance studies, criminology, health care, jurisprudence, education etc. What has triggered the use and application of this ‘economistic’ language associated with the promotion of effectiveness and efficiency?

In the UK, neoliberal ideology and thinking have entered scholarship in the 1990s. Managerial discourse became ubiquitous in describing and especially in evaluating research: for example, by furthering competition on all levels; by ranking universities, departments, scholars and publications globally, regionally and nationally; by ranking and measuring the impact of journals in specialised areas; by highlighting grants and the acquisition of project monies, and so forth. Thus, more traditional criteria of success such as writing monographs or editing relevant volumes or publishing handbooks became less important as such endeavours take much time and are usually not part of the measurement of success in international competition (see Jessop et al., 2008). Due to such huge changes in the educational field, it is not surprising that the discourse has changed as well; many studies in Critical Discourse Studies and Discourse Studies in recent decades have traced these enormous transformations, also due to the implementation of the so-called Bologna Process in Higher Education in the European Union, and have focussed on the quite radical change of brochures, websites and curricula at universities where strategies of advertising and management are employed to attract more students. New hybrid genres have thus emerged. Managerial criteria, discreet measures, the acquisition of grants, journal publications, high impact numbers, competition, etc. have frequently substituted the more traditional emphasis on interdisciplinary debates and in-depth writing projects.

While the analysis of the neoliberal agenda is well documented, the analysis of the language of neoliberalism is only gradually becoming an important area of scholarly research. In particular, the expansion of the neoliberal vocabulary with egalitarian ideas such as fairness, justice, equality of opportunity, well-being etc. has received [at best] only limited attention. Why is language such an important part of the process of neoliberalization?

Much research in Critical Discourse Studies has documented changes in discourse, in text, talk and image, due to neoliberal policies. For example, the important book by Norman Fairclough (2000) New Labour, new language (2000) was able to illustrate the discourse of the so-called ‘third way’ in much detail. Many other studies, for example, by Jane Mulderrig (2009), have also documented the impact of neoliberalism on the field of education in the United Kingdom. Many comparative studies followed some of which are part of the edited volume by Jessop et al., (2008) mentioned above.

One final question: what are your research plans in the future? Does your future research agenda also includes any research on slogans?

Right now, I am focussing – again – on the rise of illiberalism and the undermining of pluralist democracies. I am also very interested in the revival of traditional elements of political propaganda (Wodak 2022; Wodak and Rheindorf 2022). Obviously, (leaders of) far-right populist parties instrumentalise the media and intervene into processes of mediatization in significantly different ways, depending on socio-political contexts, their position of power, their role in government or opposition and – related to the latter – their specific access to media. In fact, far-right populist leaders and their parties continuously seek to delegitimise independent media altogether (such as Donald Trump) or they might – as owners of the (all) relevant media – directly influence media’s content (such as Silvio Berlusconi); some enforce new laws forbidding critical investigative journalism and close independent media tout court (such as Viktor Orbán, Jarosław Kaczyński and Vladimir Putin). Or they might implement a step-by-step control of media (and thus of mediatization) via bribery, manipulated opinion polls and other illegal means (such as the former Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz).

In my recent research (Wodak, 2022), for example, I focussed on one of the many ways propagandistic tools are employed to control the relevant agenda and information being disseminated by both traditional media (broadsheets, tabloids, public TV and radio) and online (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, blogs and so forth), in other words message control. The concept of ‘message control’ emerged from the specific propaganda tool developed by Sebastian Kurz and his followers and implies launching and thus controlling select information via weekly press conferences, briefings, personal conversations, back-room debates (Hintergrundgespräche), and text messages, and to financially subsidise only those media that reported favourably about the activities of Kurz’s government.

Thus, a new media logic based on favouritism, nepotism and clientelism was established and normalised in Austria. This stands, as I was able to illustrate in detail, in contrast to Trumpism, which delegitimised all investigative journalism without explicitly attempting to control it. Trump extensively used Twitter to spread systematic disinformation.

Of course, slogans and other rhetorical tropes as well as many elements of advertising continue to be employed in political propaganda and in efforts to delegitimise independent media. Moreover, in authoritarian regimes such as in the Russian Federation, we encounter censorship and traditional methods of propaganda, like the construction of second realities (Barthes). These developments would certainly lend themselves for important in-depth analysis to understand and explain the success or failure, and the resonance of such old and new propaganda tools.