engleski

Tropes as Rhetorical Devices in Croatian Parliamentary Debate

Political discourse is primarily focused on persuading people to take speci􀀀ied political actions or to make crucial political decisions. Language has a signi􀀀icant role in conveying political messages and ideologies. Political discourse is the language produced in institutional settings, such as: parliamentary debates, government deliberations, party programs and conferences, and speeches by politicians (van Dijk, 2001: 212). Common rhetorical devices in political discourse are rhetorical tropes. According to Reisigl (2006) tropes ful􀀀il many different purposes in political discourses, especially in regard to positive political self-presentation and negative political other- presentation. This paper is an attempt to expose and examine the use of rhetorical tropes as rhetorical devices in the speech of members of Croatian Parliament. As this research intends to analyze selected rhetorical devices applied in this particular political discourse, it focuses on the discussion of the cases of three of “four master tropes“: metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche (division by Burke, 1969: 503-517). The methodology of this research has applied general principles of qualitative and quantitative analysis, and it has been based on the Critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the authentic source materials. The corpus for analysis includes transcripts of several randomly selected sessions of the seventh Parliamentary assembly. The results show that the members of Croatian Parliament use rhetorical tropes as rhetorical devices in their speeches in order to persuade the audience of the rectitude and forthrightness of their policies and ideologies.

political discourse ; Croatian Parliament ; metaphor ; metonymy ; synecdoche

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