Political discourse as institutional communication

This chapter approaches political discourse as a type of institutional communication. Accordingly, it foregrounds some specific dimensions of political language use: its task-relatedness, the extent to which individuals represent formal organizations, the specialized nature of the communication, and the notions of power and inequality. In this context, it argues that politics does not stand on its own but finds itself in a constant and exciting interaction with other institutional domains and players like the news media, research organizations, NGOs, educational bodies, art institutes and businesses. Drawing on selected case studies on the discursive practices at the intersection between politics, science and news, the chapter demonstrates that it is in studying this very interaction between wide-ranging institutional actors that some of the key discursive features of political discourse can be explored. In particular, it shows how the institutional communication perspective on political discourse can bring added value to the study of communicative genres, discourse processes of identity construction, as well as emerging issues of cross-institutional discursive mediation and participation.