Mrs Goldberg's rebuttal of Butt et al.

Abstract

This Article consists of two attempts to ‘turn language back on itself’ and ‘examine the very reality’ created by an ‘elite’, in the customary way of critical discourse analysis. But the ‘elites’ examined are academic researchers, in their own research into CDA. The first such academic researchers are Butt et al., in their article ‘Grammar - The First Covert Operation of War’, published in Discourse & Society. In examining their article, I suggest that the authors are guilty of the same rhetorical excesses of which they accuse George W. Bush - although more flagrantly and unjustifiably so. Where it is at least possible to argue that demonization and self-righteousness are legitimate as rhetorical tools for leaders, surely they do not belong in academic research? The second such academic researcher is Paul Chilton, whose article ‘Do Something! Conceptualising Responses to the Attacks of 11 September 2001’, published in the Journal of Language & Politics, also criticizes President Bush. My analysis of this article relates the metaphors that Chilton criticizes in Bush's rhetoric to the metaphor-based theory of political discourse proposed by George Lakoff in Moral Politics. It concludes that CDA, while worthy of praise for striking out into interesting new domains of research, neglects the full spectrum of political belief at its own peril.