The paper discusses the development of rhetorical analyses of political addresses from classical antiquity to modern political communication. A specific genre, the ‘epideictic address’, is described in detail. It concerns addresses by representative persons. Most epideictic addresses turn out to be ‘hybrid’ texts because they combine an orientation towards (rhetorical-political) persuasion with...

Nicholas Barbon’s A discourse of trade presents, in its construction, substance, and rhetoric, an early outline of a new science of the legislator for the new politics of commerce. Barbon drew together economic and political arguments, applying insights from the latter to a new understanding of the political potential of the former. His accounts of the aspect of infinity in economic growth, his...

As it is known, on the political scene the success of a speech can be measured by the degree in which the speaker is able to change attitudes, opinions, feelings and political beliefs in his auditorium. We suggest a range of analysis tools, all belonging to semiotics, from lexical-semantic, to syntactical and rhetorical, that integrated in the exploratory panoply of discursive weapons of a poli...

The Internet and online forums such as Reddit have become an increasingly popular medium for citizens to engage in political conversations. However, the online disinhibition effect resulting from the ability to use pseudonymous identities may manifest in the form of offensive speech, consequently making political discussions more aggressive and polarizing than they already are. Such environment...

We identify general trends in the (in)civility and complexity of political discussions occurring on Reddit between January 2007 and May 2017 – a period spanning both terms of Barack Obama’s presidency and the rst 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. We then investigate four factors that are frequently hypothesized as having contributed to the declining quality of American political discourse ...

Concern that donations to political campaigns secure preferential treatment from policy makers has long occupied judges, scholars, and the public. However, the effects of contributions on policy makers’ behavior are notoriously difficult to assess. We present the first randomized field experiment on the topic. The experiment focuses on whether contributions facilitate access to influential poli...

Political power and its exertion by the various agencies of politics (i.e. politicians, civil servants, political institutions) can be described as a kind of symbolic action (cf. Edelmann 1964, 1971). Social and political reality, its perception or constitution by the participants of politics (politicians and citizens), is shaped and determined by communication and its means. That is, it is sha...