Forced lexical primings in transdiscoursive political messaging

Lexical priming is a term for the processes by which listeners, by repeated exposure, first internalise and then reproduce the constituent elements of language, their combinatorial possibilities and the semantic and pragmatic meanings associated with them (Hoey 2005). Forced priming (Duguid 2009), on the other hand, describes a process whereby speakers or authors frequently repeat a certain form of words to deliberately ‘flood’ the discourse with messages for a particular strategic purpose. There are many fields where primings can be forced for particular effect, such as education, particularly in the primary school, for example through exercises in rote learning, or advertisements, as in slogans coined to be memorable and repeatable. Advertising combines with politics in the periods around general elections and referendums where professional campaigns are run, employing advertising agencies to put over political messages in a simple way. Here, however, we are not interested in campaign posters or brief messages clearly created to express a party position, but in the linguistic discipline of day to day political communication, where there is the careful studied and strategic preference of a particular form with an associated evaluation, positive for the speaker’s side or negative for the opponents

Published online: 14 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.79.03dug