Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Creative language in Greek parliamentary discourse is investigated here in order to show that Greek parliamentarians strategically resort to such language as a means of criticism and collective party identity construction. The proposed microanalysis is combined with a macroanalysis considering linguistic creativity to correlate with the particularities of the Greek political system and the topic discussed in such debates. Taking into account the institutional parameters influencing the properties of parliamentary discourse suggested by political science, it is argued that the conditions and goals of deliberation in the Greek parliament favour the presence of creative language.
This study is part of a post-doctoral research project funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (2007–8). The author wishes to thank Maria Sifianou, Eleni Antonopoulou, Argiris Archakis and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions on the present article.
1 See, among others, Negus, K. and Pickering, N., Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value (London 2004)Google Scholar.
2 Carter, R., Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk (London 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodman, S. and O’Halloran, K. (eds), The Art of English: Literary Creativity (Basingstoke 2006)Google Scholar; Maybin, J. and Swann, J. (eds), The Art of English: Everyday Creativity (Basingstoke 2006)Google Scholar; Maybin, J. and Swann, J., ‘Everyday creativity in language: Textuality, contextuality, and critique’, Applied Linguistics 28.4 (Dec. 2007) 497–517 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Widdowson, H. G., ‘Language creativity and the poetic function: A response to Swann and Maybin’, Applied Linguistics 29.3 (Sept. 2008) 503-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Carter, Language and Creativity. See also J. Maybin and M. Pearce, ‘Literature and creativity’, in Goodman and O’Halloran (eds), The Art of English: Literary Creativity, 3-48.
4 See, among others, Jakobson, R., ‘Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics’, in Sebeok, T. (ed.), Style in Language (Cambridge 1960) 350-77Google Scholar; Mukařovský, J., ‘Standard language and poetic language’, in Freeman, D. C. (ed.), Linguistics and Literary Style (New York 1970) 40–56 Google Scholar; Babiniotis, G., #Γλωσσολογία και λογοτεχνία: Από την τεχνική οτην τέχνη τον λόγον (2nd edn) (Athens 1991)Google Scholar; Politis, P., ‘О λογοτεχνικός λόγος’, in Πύλη για την ελληνική γλώσσα (Thessaloniki 2006)Google Scholar.
5 See, among others, Beard, A., The Language of Politics (London 2000)Google Scholar; Chilton, P. A. and Schaffner, C. (eds), Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse (Amsterdam 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chilton, P. A., Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice (London 2004)Google Scholar; Charteris-Black, J., Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Basingstoke 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fetzer, A. and Lauerbach, G. E. (eds), Political Discourse in the Media (Amsterdam 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Okulska, U. and Cap, P. (eds), Perspectives in Politics and Discourse (Amsterdam 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also section 2 of the present study.
6 Carter, Language and Creativity, 147 ff.; Maybin and Pearce, ‘Literature and creativity’, 8-9; Maybin and Swann (eds), The Art of English: Everyday Creativity; J. Thornborrow, ‘Poetic language’, in Goodman and O’Halloran (eds) The Art of English: Literary Creativity, 49-93; J. Swann, ‘The art of the everyday’, in Maybin and Swann (eds) The Art of English: Everyday Creativity, 7, 40-1; Coates, J., ‘Talk in a play frame: More on laughter and intimacy’, Journal of Pragmatics 39.1 (January 2007), 29–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maybin and Swann, ‘Everyday creativity in language’; North, S., ‘The voices, the voices’: Creativity in online conversation’, Applied Linguistics 28.4 (Dec. 2007) 538-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pomerantz, A. and Bell, N. D., ‘Learning to play, playing to learn: FL learners as multicompetent language users’, Applied Linguistics 28.4 (Dec. 2007) 556-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Only neologisms do not appear to be common in this context. Proverbs are not attested in the extracts presented here, but they are quite common in Greek parliamentary discourse: see Tsakona, V., ‘Linguistic creativity, secondary orality, and political discourse: The modern Greek myth of the “eloquent orator”’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27.1 (May 2009) 81-106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Steiner, J. et al., Deliberative Politics in Action: Analysing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge 2004)Google Scholar.
9 T. A. van Dijk, ‘Political discourse and political cognition’, in Chilton and Schaffner (eds), Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse, 229; van der Valk, I., ‘Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France’, Discourse and Society 14.3 (May 2003) 314 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 316; Steiner et al., Deliberative Politics in Action.
10 See, among others, Kitis, E. and Milapides, M., ‘Read it and believe it: How metaphor constructs ideology in news discourse. A case study’, Journal of Pragmatics 28.5 (November 1997) 557-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. A. Chilton and C. Schaffner, ‘Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse’, in Chilton and Schaffner (eds), Politics as Text and Talk, 28-9; Van der Valk, ‘Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France’, 230; Musolff, A., Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe (Basingstoke 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Santibáñez, C., ‘Metaphors and argumentation: The case of Chilean parliamentary media participation’, Journal of Pragmatics 42.4 (April 2010) 973-89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric. See also Ana, O. Santa, ‘“Like an animal I was treated”: Anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse’, Discourse and Society 10.2 (April 1999) 191–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stradile, C. et al., ‘Struggle as metaphor in European Union discourses on unemployment’, Discourse and Society 10.1 (Jan. 1999) 68–99 Google Scholar; Flowerdew, J., ‘Rhetorical strategies and identity politics in the discourse of colonial withdrawal’, journal of Language and Politics 1.1 (2002) 149-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zinken, J., ‘Ideological imagination: Intertex-tual and correlational metaphors in political discourse’, Discourse and Society 14.4 (July 2003) 507-23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luoma-aho, M., ‘“Arm” versus “pillar”: The politics of metaphors of the “Western European Union at the 1990-1991 Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union’, Journal of European Public Policy 11.1 (Feb. 2004) 106-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Sornig, K., ‘Some remarks on linguistic strategies of persuasion’, in Wodak, R. (ed.), Language, Power and Ideology. Studies in Political Discourse (Amsterdam 1989) 95-113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Whaley, B. B. and Holloway, R. L., ‘Rebuttal analogy in political communication: Argument and attack in sound bite’, Political Communication 14.3 (July 1997) 294 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Gadavanij, S., ‘Intertextuality as discourse strategy: The case of no-confidence debates in Thailand’, in Nelson, D. (ed.), Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 9 (2002) 35–55 Google Scholar.
15 Van der Valk, ‘Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France’; Flowerdew, ‘Rhetorical strategies and identity politics in the discourse of colonial withdrawal’.
16 Miller, D. R., ‘“Truth, justice and the American way”: The APPRAISAL SYSTEM of JUDGEMENT in the U.S. House Debate on the Impeachment of the President, 1998’, in Bayley, P. (ed.), Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse (Amsterdam 2004) 276 Google Scholar.
17 Fairclough, N., Media Discourse (London 1995)Google Scholar; Alvarez-Cáccamo, C. and Prego-Vásquez, G., ‘Political cross-discourse: Conversationalization, imaginary networks, and social fields in Galiza’, Pragmatics 13.1 (March 2003) 145-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Chilton and Schaffner, ‘Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse’, 7; Carter, Language and Creativity, 22-3, 147 ff; Bakakou-Orfanou, A., ‘Προφορικότητα και πολιτικός λόγος’, in Moser, A. et al. (eds), #Γλώσσης χάριν: Τόμος αφιερωμένος από τον Τομέα Γλωσσολογίας οτον καθηγητή Γεώργιο Μπαμπινιώτη (Athens 2008) 389–401 Google Scholar; Frantzi, K. and Georgalidou, M., ‘Στρατηγικές συγκρότηοης γραπιού πολιτικού λόγου: Μια προσέγγιοη με τη χρήοη τεχνικών της γλωσσολογίας σωμάτων κειμένων’, in #8o Διεθνές Συνέδριο Ελληνικής Γλωασολογίας, Icoáwiva, 30 Avyovaxov-2 Σεπτεμβρίον 2007 (Ioannina 2009) 1248-62Google Scholar; Tsakona, V., ‘Humour and image politics in parliamentary discourse: A Greek case study’, Text and Talk 29.2 (March 2009) 219-37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Chilton and Schaffner, ‘Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse’, 22; Flowerdew, ‘Rhetorical strategies and identity politics in the discourse of colonial withdrawal’; Dedaić, M. N., ‘Political speeches and persuasive argumentation’, in Brown, K. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn) (Oxford 2006) 700-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fetzer, A. and Weizman, E., ‘Political discourse as mediated and public discourse’, Journal of Pragmatics 38.2 (February 2006) 143-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fetzer and Lauerbach (eds), Political Discourse in the Media.
19 C. Sauer, ‘Christmas messages by Heads of State: Multimodality and media adaptation’, in Fetzer and Lauerbach (eds), Political Discourse in the Media, 227-73. See also J. Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric, 12.
20 Ilie, C., ‘Histrionic and agonistic features of parliamentary discourse’, Studies in Communication Sciences 3.1 (Winter 2003) 25–53 Google Scholar; Tsakona, V., ‘Κοινοβουλευτικός λόγος: Мш πρώτη προσέγγιοη’, in Studies in Greek Linguistics 30 (Thessaloniki 2008) 391–401 Google Scholar; Archakis, A. and Tsakona, V., ‘Parliamentary discourse vs. newspaper articles on parliamentary issues: The integration of a critical approach to discourse into a literacy-based language teaching program’, Journal of Language and Politics 8.3 (2009) 359-85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; V. Tsakona, ‘Linguistic creativity, secondary orality, and political discourse: The modern Greek myth of the “eloquent orator”’; Archakis, A. and Tsakona, V., ‘“The wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair and reveals all their bullying”: The representation of parliamentary discourse in Greek newspapers’, Journal of Pragmatics 42.4 (April 2010) 912-23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Van der Valk, ‘Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France’, 316.
22 J. Steiner et al., Deliberative Politics in Action.
23 Cf. Gadavanij, ‘Intertexmality as discourse strategy’.
24 The data under scrutiny include solely written material. At the time this study was conducted (2007-2008), videotaped material coming from parliamentary sessions was not available to the public, unless one recorded the sessions broadcast on the Greek parliamentary TV channel by one’s own means. Recently short videotaped extracts have been uploaded on the official website of the Greek parliament, but they come exclusively from recent debates (2010 onwards).
25 See Tsakona, ‘Κοινοβουλευτικός λόγος’.
26 Ibid.
27 According to the Rules of Order of the Greek Parliament (Athens 2008), the Leader of the Opposition always speaks before the Prime Minister in budget debates.
28 To quote his exact words in Greek: #‘H οήθεν απογραφή σας είναι η μεγαλιπερη πολιτική απάτη, μετά τη Μεταπολίτευση ’.
29 The Greek parliamentary discourse extracts presented here are translated into English by the author. Italics are used in both versions to indicate linguistic creativity. The interlingual transference of such features has not always been a simple task and may have had undesirable stylistic effects in the target version. Thus, glosses and additional pragmatic information are provided in the analysis, wherever necessary. Square brackets in the English version include additional contextual information and square brackets including dots in both versions indicate omissions, mostly of paralingual information appearing in the written proceedings (e.g. ‘applause from PASOK’s wing’), which were not deemed relevant for the present study. The year of publication of each speech from which the extract was taken appears in parentheses at the end.
30 Tannen, D., Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (Cambridge 1989) 12 Google Scholar; Kakridi-Ferrari, M., Επανάληψη: H λειτονργία της ως βασικού μηχανιαμον οτη γλώσσα, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Athens, 1998, 71-7Google Scholar; Coates, ‘Talk in a play frame’, 40-4.
31 ‘Enormous budget deficit’ is here used as a translation equivalent of #‘βαρύτατα ελλειμματικοί προϋπολογισμοί’ (lit., ‘budgets with the most heavy deficit’), where hyperbole occurs in the Greek superlative adverb βαρντατα ‘most heavily’.
32 Nunberg, G., Sag, I. A. and Wasow, T., ‘Idioms’, Language 70.3 (Sept. 1994) 491–538 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Langlotz, A., Idiomatic Creativity. A Cognitive-Linguistic Model of Idiom-Representation and Idiom-Variation in English (Amsterdam 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Cf.Marmaridou, S. A. S., (1994) ‘Conceptual metaphor in Greek financial discourse’, in Philippaki-Warburton, I., Nicolaidis, K. and Sifianou, M. (eds), Themes in Greek Linguistics. Papers from the First International Conference on Greek Linguistics, Reading, September 1993 (Amsterdam 1994) 247-52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Duszak, A. (ed.), Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses and Cultures (Amsterdam 2002) 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K., ‘Language and identity’, in Duranti, A. (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (Oxford 2003) 368-94Google Scholar; Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K., ‘Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach’, Discourse Studies 7.4/5 (Oct. 2005) 584–614 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benwell, B. and Stokoe, E., Discourse and Identity (Edinburgh 2006)Google Scholar; Archakis, A. and Tsakona, V., Ταντότητες, αφηγήσεις και γλωασική εκπαίδευση (Athens 2011)Google Scholar.
35 Lo, A. and Reyes, A., ‘Language, identity and relationality in Asian Pacific America: An introduction’, Pragmatics 14.2/3 (June/Sept. 2004) 118-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archakis and Tsakona, Ταντότητες, αφηγήσεις και уХаюоіщ εκπαίδενση.
36 Cf., among others, Labov, W., Language in the Inner City (Oxford 1972)Google Scholar; Kakridi-Ferrari, #Επανάληιρη, 108-26.
37 Archakis and Tsakona, ‘Parliamentary discourse vs. newspaper articles on parliamentary issues’; Archakis and Tsakona, ‘“The wolf wakes up inside them”‘.
38 Cf. Lo and Reyes, ‘Language, identity and relationality in Asian Pacific America’, 118-19.
39 T.A. van Dijk, ‘Text and context of parliamentary debates’, in P. Bayley (ed.), Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse, 339 (emphasis in the original). See also Van Dijk, ‘Political discourse and political cognition’, 216-17, 225.
40 Carter, Language and Creativity.
41 Eideneier, H., ‘Οψεις της ιστορίας της ελληνικής γλώσσας από τον Όμηρο έως σήμερα: Από τη ραψωοία οτο ραπ (Athens 2006)Google Scholar.
42 Goutsos, D., ‘#Μόρια, δείκτες λόγου καί κειμενικά επιρρήματα: H ορίοθέτηοη των γλωσσικών κατηγοριών με τη χρήοη ηλεκτρονικών σωμάτων κειμένων’, in So Διεθνές Σννέόριο Ελληνικής Γλωσσολογίας, Ιωάννινα, 30 Αυγονοτου-2 Σεπτεμβρίον 2007 (Ioannina 2009) 754-68Google Scholar.
43 See, among others, C. liie, ‘Insulting as (un)parliamentary practice in the British and Swedish parliaments: A rhetorical approach’, in P. Bayley (ed.), Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse, 45-86; Dedaić ‘Political speeches and persuasive argumentation’.
44 Tsakona, ‘Linguistic creativity, secondary orality, and political discourse’.
45 See, among others, Tziovas, D., ‘Residual orality and belated textuality in Greek literature and culture’, in Georgakopoulou, A. and Spanaki, M. (eds), A Reader in Greek Sociolinguistics: Studies in Modern Greek Language, Culture and Communication (Bern 2001) 119-34Google Scholar.
46 Negus and Pickering, Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value, 29.