This and the next chapter deal with a number of notions and forms of which the linguistic or semantic status is or can be disputed, but which in the present analysis are considered non-attitudinal. The present chapter deals with the notions of directivity, volition and intention, which are argued to be action related, hence to pertain to the cognitive domain of communication planning. It also reanalyzes the concept of evidentiality, arguing for a very different cognitive status of inferentiality, as an attitudinal category, on the one hand, and on the other hand of the traditional categories of hearsay and experience, as well as of a less traditional category called ‘memory.’

This and the next chapter together offer a reanalysis of the semantic domain covered by the traditional notion of modality. On the basis of a scrutiny of the characteristics of the individual qualificational categories involved, they propose a view of the organization of the field that differs from earlier analyses in the literature. The present chapter focuses on the definition of the traditional modal subcategories: dynamic, deontic and epistemic modality. It discusses the differences of the present approach with classical conceptions of the categories in the literature. The chapter moreover critically reviews alternative divisions of (parts of) the field proposed earlier, and it surveys and deconstructs the most important traditional arguments for covering the three semantic categories in one (super)category of modality.

In Chapter 1, we provide an introduction for the present book. First we present our take on language and politics, by outlining how and why our bottom-up, strictly language-anchored and replicable analysis contributes to previous inquiries in the field. Here we also outline the elements of our framework and the ways they are interconnected, as well as the analytic pitfalls that our approach helps to avoid. Following this, we present the contents of the book.

In Chapter 10, we revisit the problem that certain politically relevant, culturally embedded notions are very difficult to translate. A key issue that such a difficulty of translating causes is the following. Often, when we talk about a politically relevant issue in two linguacultures by using English as an academic lingua franca, we may be comparing apples with pears. Such a comparison leads to the previously mentioned problem of ethnocentrism, and so it is important to consider how to resolve it by merging politics and translation studies. As a case study, we examine the problematics of translating the sociopolitically relevant Chinese expression wenming (‘civilised’) into English. Following the translation framework of House, we argue that untranslatability can be overcome by House’s notion of ‘cultural filtering’.

In Chapter 11, we summarise the contents of the book and propose vistas for future inquiries. This conclusion is followed by a glossary, which provides a summary of technical terms used in this book for early-career readers.

In Chapter 8, we consider how sociopolitical ideological convictions impact on how social members such as political activists use language outside political institutions. Due to the popularity of social media, such non-institutionalised language use is becoming important and needs to be studied on a par with institutionalised political language use. Haidt insightfully argued that sociopolitical ideologies manifested through political conviction divide social members, and we believe that it is an important task for the pragmatician to capture this global dividing effect with the aid of strictly linguistic evidence. As a case study, we examine a clash between a radical animal rights protester and the organisers of a children’s party featured in social media. We show that the organisers of the party and the protester put moral oughts representing sociopolitical ideological convictions against one another in an irreconcilable way. Due to this irreconcilability, in their interaction they completely lack alignment with each other. In this case study, we also follow a contrastive view, by considering how clashes driven by sociopolitical convictions differ from more ‘mundane’ clashes.

In Chapter 7, we discuss how best to analyse mediated political monologues. As news and other forms of media present political events, they are important to study, and for the pragmatician a key issue is how to tease out the dynamics of such monologues, making them pragmatically relevant. We believe that it is important to consider how such monologues gain interactional effect with the public because gaining such effect is the goal of these monologues. Thus we focus on textual features through which a monologue covertly interconnects the readers with politicians and political entities. Here we will refer to the concept of alignment, proposed by Goffman, arguing that many seemingly ‘innocent’ phenomena in political monologues aim to trigger the alignment of the public with politicians or political entities represented by the monologue. As a case study, we examine a corpus of political monologues published in Chinese newspapers in the wake of a national crisis. Following our cross-cultural pragmatic contrastive view, we will compare various types of political monologue, in order to tease out the interactional dynamics through which they trigger the alignment of their readers.

In Chapter 2, we first discuss what we regard as three major pitfalls in the field: (1) following an ethnocentric view of one’s data, (2) uncritically associating values with political actors and entities, and (3) using one’s research to prove a pre-held conviction. We argue that these analytic traps are interrelated and reflect a typically top-down view of political language use. Second, we discuss the three key pragmatic units of expressions, speech acts and discourse in detail. In studying political language use with the aid of these units, it is recommended to look at conventional pragmatic patterns, which allow us to conduct replicable analyses. Further, we argue that political language use can be effectively interpreted if we look at its ritual manifestations. Ritualised political language use imposes a frame on the participants; that is, in many political contexts the rights and obligations of the participants are defined and language is generally used according to such rights and obligations. We finally discuss how our analytic units can be brought together with a contrastive view of language and politics.

In Chapter 5 we present the pitfall of using one’s research to prove a pre-held conviction. As a case study, we present historical diplomatic correspondence between representatives of China and the US in the time of colonialism. We argue that it is not productive to attempt to demonstrate how evil colonialism was, which is a frequent research goal in spite of the fact that the evil nature of colonialism is an accepted truth. Rather, we believe that it is more productive to look at exactly how the coloniser used language in order to coerce representatives of the colonised country to fulfil their demands.

In Chapter 6, we turn to the difficulty of studying sensitive data. In studying politically relevant issues, one may unavoidably encounter phenomena which are sensitive to talk about because they are painful for many. We point out that such data can best be studied if we distance ourselves from the object of our inquiry, by taking a contrastive look at our data. As a case study, we examine political apologies realised after the Second World War by representatives of the Japanese and German states, following war crimes perpetrated by their respective countries. Japanese and German war apologies are highly controversial and have often been described with sweeping overgeneralisations. We believe that it is important to venture beyond such overgeneralisations and examine in a bottom-up and contrastive way – relying on both qualitative and quantitative evidence – exactly how representatives of these countries realised their apologies.

In Chapter 4 we discuss the pitfall of associating positive and negative values with political actors, including both individuals such as Trump or Biden, and political entities such as the US and the EU. In our view, such an association is problematic and dangerous because it precludes approaching language and politics in a more neutral way. As a case study, we analyse the transcript of an unofficial tape recording in which representatives of the EU – which is often regarded as a democratic organisation – attempted to prevent the newly established Slovenian and Croatian states from declaring independence following plebiscites. We use strictly linguistic evidence to illustrate the rather undemocratic procedure through which representatives of the EU – who were supposed to be the upholders of democracy – aggressively persuaded Slovenians and Croatians to temporally suspend declaring independence, hence opposing the results of valid plebiscites.