War rhetoric of a little ally

Political implicatures and Aznar’s legitimatization of the war in Iraq

Teun A. van Dijk | Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

In this paper we examine some of the properties of the speeches by former Prime Minister José María Aznar held in Spanish parliament in 2003 legitimating his support of the USA and the threatening war against Iraq. The theoretical framework for the analysis is a multidisciplinary CDA approach relating discursive, cognitive and sociopolitical aspects of parliamentary debates. It is argued that speeches in parliament should not only be defined in terms of their textual properties, but also in terms of a contextual analysis. Besides an analysis of the usual properties of ideological and political discourse, such as positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation and other rhetoric devices, special attention is paid to political implicatures defined as inferences based on general and particular political knowledge as well as on the context models of Aznar’s speeches.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Iraq, legitimation, political cognition, political discourse, political implicatures, political rhetoric, war

Published online: 05 June 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.3.05dij

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