{"title":"The discursive construction of a new reality in Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech","authors":"Mario Bisiada","doi":"10.1080/17405904.2023.2186450","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article applies Bakhtinian dialogism and the concept of centripetal-centrifugal struggle to critical discourse studies to analyse how powerful and marginalised discourses are brought into competition in political language to justify paradigm changes. I analyse German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) speech, which he gave as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announcing a radical armament programme and change in foreign policy, a paradigm shift that had previously been unthinkable in German politics. Based on a qualitative analysis using the Appraisal Theory strategies Attitude and Engagement, I identify how Scholz aligns himself with particular powerful discourses, centring some powerful ones and marginalising others, constructing an existential threat for Germany, the so-called watershed, a new situation which casts his policies of German armament as without alternative. The paper demonstrates the strength of the analysis of dialogically contractive and expansive strategies in critical discourse studies.","PeriodicalId":46948,"journal":{"name":"Critical Discourse Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Discourse Studies","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2023.2186450","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article applies Bakhtinian dialogism and the concept of centripetal-centrifugal struggle to critical discourse studies to analyse how powerful and marginalised discourses are brought into competition in political language to justify paradigm changes. I analyse German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) speech, which he gave as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announcing a radical armament programme and change in foreign policy, a paradigm shift that had previously been unthinkable in German politics. Based on a qualitative analysis using the Appraisal Theory strategies Attitude and Engagement, I identify how Scholz aligns himself with particular powerful discourses, centring some powerful ones and marginalising others, constructing an existential threat for Germany, the so-called watershed, a new situation which casts his policies of German armament as without alternative. The paper demonstrates the strength of the analysis of dialogically contractive and expansive strategies in critical discourse studies.