Political cross-discourse

Abstract

Through the analysis of political rallies and parliamentary speech in Galiza, it is shown how conversationalized forms of political discourse enter into ideological manipulation and hegemony-building by professional politicians. The overall resulting phenomenon, cross-discourse, draws from habitual, daily and traditional forms of speech. Political cross-discourse consists of the tactical texturing of traditional political oratory templates through select informal conversational forms and themes. Three main forms of cross-discourse found in the data are exemplified. Cross-discourse indexes and constructs social spaces and networks at several levels of generality: From those of daily interactions to an imaginary supranetwork of common citizens. This form of cross-discursive circulation (from daily speech to politics) gives the illusion of fluidity between social fields in formal democracies, while it hides the very unequal nature of the distribution of discursive resources.