Political Linguistics

"As the Soviet Union began to collapse, my research turned to developing the emerging field of political linguistics. Just as political psychology imports ideas from the discipline of psychology to study politics, political sociology imports sociological ideas, and political economy imports economic ideas, political linguistics borrows from the discipline of linguistics, and particularly the subfield of pragmatics -- the study of how people use language to affect each other's behavior. I turned to political linguistics because I noticed how social and economic conditions in Russia were obstructing rather than fostering progress toward democracy, yet Russia seemed to be establishing democracy anyway. Successful conduct of the 1999 parliamentary election and the victory of pro-democracy parties are the latest evidence of this steady trend. Suspecting that political communications might be responsible for the paradox of political change counter to social and economic conditions, I began to investigate whether Russian political communications were changing and what effects the new language of politics might be having."