Lexical priming describes the processes by which listeners, by repeated exposure, first internalise and then reproduce the constituent elements of language, their combinatorial possibilities and the semantic and pragmatic meanings associated with them. Forced priming, on the other hand, describes a process whereby speakers or authors frequently repeat a certain form of words to deliberately ‘flood’ the discourse with messages for a particular strategic purpose (though we need to treat the word ‘deliberately’ with caution, see below). Although there are many fields where primings can be forced for particular effect, such as education, particularly in the primary school, or advertisements, here we are interested in the realm of political communication, where the composer of such insistent messages, may have been a media specialist, the addressers politicians answering questions or making statements, but with a text, pre-prepared and planned some time before, for insertion into other texts, to be used on many occasions, by many addressers, a practice often referred to as ‘singing from the same hymn-sheet’: this metaphor suggests a bringing together of addressers, message, timing, and attribution to produce a choral effect. The process is one of deliberation, composition, selection and orchestration with an attempt to present the language as a response to a question, a reaction to a remark or as a spontaneous choice of words. All this means that it departs from our everyday understanding of communication, resembling more a literary creation, crafted for a particular effect and with particular attention being paid to form and perlocutionary effect. Baker speaks of the ‘incremental effect of discourse (2005:13-14) but forced priming represents an attempt at boosting the incremental to a high frequency of occurrence. IN this chapter we look at some examples from political discourse. We use a variety of sources and corpora: White House press Briefings, A corpus of British broadsheets from 2014 an 2015, a corpus of political interviews from 2015 (the Andrew Marr show) and discuss the features of forced priming in terms of reiterated assertion, evaluation and vagueness.

Duguid, A.M., Partington, A. (2017). Forced lexical primings in transdiscoursive political discourse: How they are produced and how they are received. In K.J.P. M. Pace-Sigge (a cura di), LEXICAL PRIMING. APPLICATIONS AND ADVANCES, (pp. 67-92). Amsterdam : John Benjamins [10.1075/scl.79].

Forced lexical primings in transdiscoursive political discourse: How they are produced and how they are received

DUGUID, ALISON MARGARET;
2017-01-01

Abstract

Lexical priming describes the processes by which listeners, by repeated exposure, first internalise and then reproduce the constituent elements of language, their combinatorial possibilities and the semantic and pragmatic meanings associated with them. Forced priming, on the other hand, describes a process whereby speakers or authors frequently repeat a certain form of words to deliberately ‘flood’ the discourse with messages for a particular strategic purpose (though we need to treat the word ‘deliberately’ with caution, see below). Although there are many fields where primings can be forced for particular effect, such as education, particularly in the primary school, or advertisements, here we are interested in the realm of political communication, where the composer of such insistent messages, may have been a media specialist, the addressers politicians answering questions or making statements, but with a text, pre-prepared and planned some time before, for insertion into other texts, to be used on many occasions, by many addressers, a practice often referred to as ‘singing from the same hymn-sheet’: this metaphor suggests a bringing together of addressers, message, timing, and attribution to produce a choral effect. The process is one of deliberation, composition, selection and orchestration with an attempt to present the language as a response to a question, a reaction to a remark or as a spontaneous choice of words. All this means that it departs from our everyday understanding of communication, resembling more a literary creation, crafted for a particular effect and with particular attention being paid to form and perlocutionary effect. Baker speaks of the ‘incremental effect of discourse (2005:13-14) but forced priming represents an attempt at boosting the incremental to a high frequency of occurrence. IN this chapter we look at some examples from political discourse. We use a variety of sources and corpora: White House press Briefings, A corpus of British broadsheets from 2014 an 2015, a corpus of political interviews from 2015 (the Andrew Marr show) and discuss the features of forced priming in terms of reiterated assertion, evaluation and vagueness.
2017
9789027210760
Duguid, A.M., Partington, A. (2017). Forced lexical primings in transdiscoursive political discourse: How they are produced and how they are received. In K.J.P. M. Pace-Sigge (a cura di), LEXICAL PRIMING. APPLICATIONS AND ADVANCES, (pp. 67-92). Amsterdam : John Benjamins [10.1075/scl.79].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11365/1013204