The wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair and reveals all their bullying : The representation of parliamentary discourse in Greek newspapers

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1 Available online at Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) The wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair and reveals all their bullying : The representation of parliamentary discourse in Greek newspapers Argiris Archakis a,1, Villy Tsakona b,c, * a Department of Philology, University of Patras, Patra Rio , Greece b Faculty of English Studies, School of Philosophy, University of Athens, Panepistimioupoli, Zographou , Greece c Faculty of Literature, School of Philosophy, University of Ioannina, Panepistimioupoli, Ioannina , Greece Received 27 July 2009; accepted 12 August 2009 Abstract The present paper investigates how journalists create dialogical networks involving parliamentary discourse and newspaper articles via the reproduction of extracts coming from MPs speeches. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and assuming that news is a valueladen construction of facts through language, a comparative analysis of parliamentary proceedings and related newspaper articles is conducted. The articles collected cover a specific parliamentary debate on a particularly hot issue in Greek society, namely a new bill introducing the interview as part of the procedure for the selection and recruitment of civil servants. The analysis shows that the facts reported seem to be selected not on the basis of their political or legal significance, but on the basis of their unusual consequences on parliamentary procedures. Special emphasis is given to the reconstruction of direct speech in newspaper narratives and to the use of metaphor as a conversational resource employed by MPs and reproduced by journalists in an attempt to attract their readers interest and arouse their emotions. Rather than informing the public on the actual parliamentary work, journalists mostly aim at creating and/or maintaining solidarity between readers and newspapers of the same political and ideological orientation. # 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. Keywords: Parliamentary discourse; Newspaper articles; Direct speech; Metaphor; Political cross-discourse; Dialogical networks 1. Introduction The aim of the present paper is to explore the way Greek parliamentary discourse is reported in Greek newspapers. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and the social constructionist paradigm, this study considers the claim that news is not a value-free reflection of facts, but rather a construction of facts through language. In other words, language does not merely reflect human experience, but, on the contrary, it becomes a means of creating social events: what we say and the way we say it are directly related to our personal standpoints and ideology in general (Fowler, 1991; Fairclough, 1995a; Chouliaraki, 2000; Wodak and Meyer, 2001). Journalists seem to create social events not only by selecting, evaluating, and often reframing what political or social actors do or say, but also by acting as mediators: they either connect or multiply the acts and/or words of such * Corresponding author. Permanent address: Salaminas 48, Glyfada, Greece. Tel.: ; fax: addresses: archakis@upatras.gr (A. Archakis), villytsa@otenet.gr (V. Tsakona). 1 Tel.: ; fax.: /$ see front matter # 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi: /j.pragma

2 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) actors by reproducing them in a variety of media events and texts (television or radio programmes, press conferences, newspaper or internet articles, etc.). Journalists may create sequential structures of events out of contributions of individual actors which may be distributed in time and space, thus establishing dialogical networks, namely interactively, thematically, and argumentatively connected texts (Leudar and Nekvapil, 1998; Leudar et al., 2004). In this context, we first present some characteristics of parliamentary discourse (section 2) and newspaper articles (section 3), in order to point out how these two different genres may be connected for the promotion of certain social and political values and ideological standpoints. In section 4, we discuss the criteria used for selecting direct speech extracts from the parliamentary proceedings to be included in newspaper articles. It seems that extracts are selected on the basis of their crossing qualities, so as to create a more conversationalised and personalised account of parliamentary life. In the same section, we also discuss metaphor as a means to the same effect. In section 5, we compare newspaper articles with parliamentary proceedings: the analysis of the data reveals how direct speech extracts coming from parliamentary discourse are employed to create coherent yet often fictional texts in the press. Finally, section 6 includes a summary of our findings and some proposals for further research. 2. Crossing as a persuasion strategy in parliamentary discourse Despite its political importance, parliamentary discourse has relatively recently become the focus of analysis from a linguistic point of view (see, among others, Ilie, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006; van Dijk, 2000; Antaki and Leudar, 2001; Harris, 2001; Christie, 2002; Bayley, 2004; Chilton, 2004; Leudar et al., 2004). Parliamentary discourse is typically formal and predominantly argumentative (van Dijk, 2002:229; van der Valk, 2003:314, 316; Steiner et al., 2004) and is, to a considerable extent, defined by its context. Van Dijk (2004:339) suggests that parliamentary debates are primarily (and rather trivially) defined by the fact that the people engaging in these debates are Members of the Parliament (MPs), that the debates take place in the political institution of Parliament, and that the MPs are doing politics or doing legislation among other contextual features (see also van Dijk, 2002: , 225). MPs are expected to express, negotiate, and justify their political positions and policies, as well as to evaluate, attack, and delegitimise those of the opponent. Persuasion is considered to be one of the most important goals (if not the most important one) MPs have to attain. Their audience includes not only their fellow MPs, the ministers, the government, etc., but most importantly the wider voting public overhearing parliamentary debates (see, among others, Ilie, 2003; Fetzer and Weizman, 2006; Tsakona, 2008a,b). Thus, they resort not only to legal and political argumentation, but also to informal and emotional registers (see, among others, Bayley, 2004; Ilie, 2006; Ilie, this volume). As Ilie (2006) put it using Aristotle s terms, MPs discourse is meant to call into question the opponents ethos, i.e. political credibility and moral profile, while enhancing their own ethos in an attempt to strike a balance between logos, i.e. logical reasoning, and pathos, i.e. emotion eliciting force (see also Charteris-Black, 2005:9 13). More specifically, political cross-discourse appears to be one of the most typical characteristics of parliamentary discourse (Tsakona, 2008a,b). Crossing, in general, refers to the code alternation by people who are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language they employ (Rampton, 1995). Political cross-discourse, in particular, refers to the strategic use of informal conversational resources and themes coming from local social networks in political discourse and oratory (Alvarez-Cáccamo and Prego-Vásquez, 2003). It involves the politicians tendency to often cross the boundaries of their official role, social status, and thus language, by switching towards a more informal style and by drawing on discourse resources which are not considered to be compatible with their context. More specifically, metaphor, metonymy, polyphonic and dialectal speech, humor, narratives, and, to a considerable extent, direct speech are strategically used so as to create a more personalised view of political affairs, hide the unequal distribution of discursive resources along different social groups, avoid political argumentation, and, eventually, de-ideologise discourse. In short, political cross-discourse aims at creating the illusion of involvement cued by discourse devices familiar to the audience. Paraphrasing Ilie s quotation (2006, see above), it could be claimed that politicians eventually forget or at least often neglect their logos and build their ethos on a discourse characterised mostly by pathos. Like MPs, newspaper journalists have to convince their readers that their accounts of reality are the prevailing and the most valid ones, so as to reinforce the solidarity bonds with their readership. In the following sections, we discuss how journalists establish a dialogical network (see section 1) involving a formal argumentative genre (i.e. parliamentary discourse) and a less formal (if not informal) narrative one (i.e. newspaper articles): given that the

3 914 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) narrative format of newspaper articles provides them with the proper framing to project their evaluations and ideology (section 3), they select specific extracts from MPs direct speech, as well as the metaphors MPs devise, in an attempt to create a more personalised version of parliamentary events (section 4). 3. Evaluation in newspaper narratives As previously stated, this study is based on the assumption that news reports are not a value-free representation of reality, but an ideological construct. The reported events are not important by themselves ; on the contrary, they are chosen because they reflect a specific ideological perspective, that is to say, on the basis of certain not always explicitly stated values and beliefs. Their linguistic encoding depends on the reasons and goals of their publication. Hence, different newspapers quite often present the same events in a different way or with a different focus, so that each article reflects the political and ideological stance of the newspaper in which it appears. Bell s (1991) analysis of news stories confirms the view of news reports as ideologically constructed. Bell points out that newspaper articles are narratives based on the selection of specific events and on the suppression or omission of others. Following Labov s (1972) model for oral personal narratives, Bell claims 2 that newspaper articles consist of sentences referring to past events, which (unlike the ones in Labov s data) are not necessarily presented in chronological order (see also Archakis and Tsakona, 2008, 2009). What is most significant for the present analysis is Labov s concept of evaluation, namely the direct or indirect marking of certain events as tellable, which plays a central role in news reports. A newspaper article is practically considered a failure if, after having been read, the editor or the newspaper reader asks so, what s the point of this article?, why is this news?, so what?. In newspaper articles journalists have the implicit obligation to justify their claim of the audience s attention by establishing the significance of what is being told (see Bell, 1991). In both oral narratives and newspaper articles, the narrative material is tellable in case it is breaking the expectations of the audience or violates some widely held norms, values, and beliefs (see Fowler, 1991:13 17; Lorda, 2001:125; Bruner, 2001:30). Furthermore, research on narrative discourse (see, among others, Schiffrin, 1996) has shown that the encoding of past experience and its casting into narrative plots provides the narrator (in the present case, the journalist) with the opportunity to construct and project, from a specific ideological point of view, not only his/her self identity, but most importantly aspects of the surrounding social world. Hence, the narrative format of newspaper articles becomes the most appropriate framing for reproducing parliamentary discourse. Since newspapers with different ideological perspectives express and address different social groups, journalists working for different newspapers do follow what Bell (1984) calls audience design: they strategically adapt their linguistic encoding and meanings to the value system and expectations of their assumed audience. In the present case, from what happened in the Greek parliament journalists select whatever they consider their readers should know. Thus, the represented direct speech becomes a verbal construction serving specific rhetorical purposes related to the political and ideological orientation of each newspaper (cf. Slembrouck, 1992a; Leudar, 1998; Baynham and Slembrouck, 1999: ). Finally, by reproducing the words uttered by MPs, journalists create dialogical networks (see section 1) involving (in the present case) parliamentary speeches and newspaper articles. MPs words are thus distributed and multiplied along different media, while at the same time they are reframed in a coherent narrative text offering an (explicitly or implicitly) evaluated version of parliamentary affairs. 4. The representation of parliamentary discourse in newspaper articles and the conversationalisation of media discourse Bayley (2004:10) suggests that even the major media seem to pay little regard to parliamentary discourse and that many newspapers publish a digest of parliament. This is due to the fact that the speeches produced by MPs are too long and would be too tiresome and boring for the readers. Nevertheless, UK newspapers, for example, do report 2 Bell (1991) is also based on van Dijk s (1988) narrative model, which includes the traditional Labovian narrative schema as well as a more elaborated news schema a series of hierarchically ordered categories that help define the discourse (Cotter, 2001:425).

4 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) on what happens in the House of Commons more or less on a daily basis, without necessarily reporting on unusual or frame-breaking events. 3 While collecting the concurrent corpus 4 used in the present study, it became clear to us that, in Greek newspapers, news reports on parliamentary issues do not appear on a daily basis. On the contrary, the frame-breaking quality of a parliamentary event seems to be the sine qua non of its publication. That is to say, our findings confirm Bell s (1991) findings (see section 3), as well as Bayley s (2004:10) claim that parliamentary news reports tend to focus on the more spectacular events of parliamentary life. Furthermore, there seems to be another reason for reporting on the parliamentary session examined here: the stipulation under discussion is relevant to a much debated and highly controversial issue in Greek society, namely the (criteria for the) recruitment of civil servants who, more often than not, eventually secure a permanent position in the public sector. Moreover, our research reveals that, whenever journalists decide to report on parliamentary issues, they concentrate on the discourse produced in this particular setting. In addition, the political and ideological orientation of each newspaper leads to the selection and highlighting of specific extracts from parliamentary debates (see also Archakis and Tsakona, 2008, 2009). In other words, the narrative construction of events in newspaper articles largely depends on the use of direct speech coming from the official parliamentary proceedings. Previous research on speech representation has claimed that direct speech is assumed to be natural and authentic (Holt, 2000); however, being extracted from its original context, it loses its initial meaning and interpretation and acquires new ones emerging from the new context created by the current speaker (Tannen, 1989). Short et al. (2002) propose a distinction between different degrees of authenticity in direct speech, depending on whether the original discourse is oral or written. If the original belongs to the oral mode, its verbatim reproduction (including intonation and paralinguistic features) is more or less impossible. If the original discourse is written, it is much easier to reproduce accurately. As to the parliamentary data of our corpus, it should be noted that the only material available is the official written proceedings of the debates (see references). Videotaped material from parliamentary sessions is not available either to journalists, citizens, or to researchers. Journalists normally sit in the press room of the parliament, watch the debates live, take notes, and, half an hour after the end of each debate, they are provided with the printed version of the proceedings to use for reference. 5 It is thus highly likely that journalists resort to the written proceedings, especially since their articles have to be ready soon afterwards. In other words, parliamentary proceedings, as an authentic source 6 of discourse events, are available for accurate reproduction in newspaper articles. However, the analysis of the data shows that this is not the case in Greek newspapers (Archakis and Tsakona, 2008; cf. Bayley, 2004:10). The analysis of the data reveals that the criteria for selecting the parliamentary extracts to be reproduced in news stories, are not the political or legal argumentation included in the reported speech, but their crossing qualities (see section 2; see also Archakis and Tsakona, 2009). The events presented in newspaper articles are constructed on the basis of direct speech extracts which add an informal and personalised tone to politics, thus rendering the articles more reader-friendly. In this perspective, political cross-discourse and the conversationalisation of media discourse (see Fairclough, 1995a,b) are directly related and, at the same time, strongly indicative of the symbiotic relations between media and political discourse (Fetzer and Weizman, 2006). Among the different kinds of political cross-discourse, the present study focuses on metaphor. Metaphors attract the attention of journalists reporting political issues in the media and are reproduced by them in an attempt to make problematic political and moral concepts accessible to the wider audience (Santa Ana, 1999:196). At the same time, metaphor is one of the most important (and most extensively discussed) characteristics of political communication used mostly to persuade, but also to create coherence in political texts (see, among others, Kitis and Milapides, 1997; van der Valk, 2003:230; Chilton, 2004:51 52). In his recent study, Charteris-Black (2005) argues that metaphor in political discourse mediates between cognition and emotion to create a moral perspective on political reality. That is to say, the words used to create metaphors in political speeches activate unconscious emotional associations to the 3 We owe this piece of information to one of the anonymous reviewers. 4 The term concurrent corpus is used for a collection of texts on the same subject or news item in several newspapers. In such cases, the date of publication is an important factor for their selection (Maia, 2003). 5 The electronic version of the parliamentary proceedings becomes available online sometime during the following day(s). 6 The degree of authenticity of parliamentary proceedings has been extensively discussed in Slembrouck (1992a) and Elspass (2002) and lies beyond the scope of the present study.

5 916 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) audience, positive or negative ones, thus legitimising or de-legitimising policies by accessing the audience s underlying social and cultural value system. At the same time, metaphors may produce a shift in the conceptual system and encourage the audience to think about political issues in new ways (see also Straehle et al., 1999; Flowerdew, 2002; Luoma-aho, 2004). In a similar vein, Santa Ana (1999) claims that metaphors contribute to the creation of common ground by appealing to a shared cultural frame, while they simultaneously allow for new and easy-to-grasp conceptualisations in the political field, which may eventually naturalise specific accounts of reality. Furthermore, recent research on Greek parliamentary discourse has shown that metaphor is one of the most common creative linguistic features Greek parliamentarians strategically resort to as a means of criticism and identity construction (Tsakona, 2008a,b). It also seems that the institutional particularities of the Greek political system, the degree of topic polarisation of the parliamentary debate, and media broadcasting correlate with the use of such creative language in this particular context and provide parliamentarians with the ideal environment for the employment of creative resources. In the next section, based on the theoretical framework already presented, we provide some contextual information on the data under discussion and then proceed with the comparative analysis of parliamentary proceedings and newspaper articles. 5. The analysis of the data The data under examination consist, on the one hand, of the official parliamentary proceedings of February 9th, 2005 and, on the other hand, of newspaper articles published in Greek newspapers on February 10th, 2005 referring to that particular parliamentary session. 7 They report on the debate about a bill proposed by the ruling conservative Greek party, Nea Dimokratia (ND). The bill introduced the interview as part of the procedure for the selection and recruitment of civil servants. MPs coming from the Socialist Greek party, PASOK, had raised an unconstitutionality objection for the stipulation related to the interview, mostly because the interview is often (believed to be) used for promoting certain candidates by favouritism rather than merit. After voting by sitting and standing, the objection was overruled by the Chair and subsequently the MPs of PASOK left the room protesting against both the stipulation under discussion and the biased results of the voting, because the votes had not been counted. It should be noted here that the reaction of the MPs of PASOK was not formally justified: according to the Rules of Order of the Greek Parliament (2004), in cases of voting by sitting and standing, the Chair does not have to actually count the votes. Instead, the vote of the Majority (namely of the ruling party) is decisive for the results, no matter how many of its MPs are present at that particular time in the Chamber, in that specific session. Therefore, in the present case, the ruling party, Nea Dimokratia, actually overruled the unconstitutionality objection, even though the MPs of the Opposition present were more numerous when the voting by sitting and standing took place. The examples presented here come from V. Polidoras speech in that session. V. Polidoras is one of the two most quoted (by newspapers) MPs of that particular session (the other one being H. Kastanidis; see Archakis and Tsakona, 2008, 2009): 13 out of 20 newspapers quote his words and/or refer to his actions in this particular debate. Most of them (11 out of 13) quote parts of the extract (1) presented here, while only 2 newspapers quote different interventions or parts of his speech. At that time, V. Polidoras was the spokesperson of the ruling party. He suggests that the Opposition should have voted for the bill under discussion and accuses them of acting against the interest of the short-term contract-employees who would (supposedly) secure a permanent post as civil servants, if the bill were passed (see extract 1 from the parliamentary proceedings). Due to space limitations, we have selected the most representative extracts from our corpus that refer to V. Polidoras speech. It is also important to note here that, although V. Polidoras used legal argumentation in support of the bill, newspaper articles focus on and report his accusations against the Opposition and their policies (see extracts 2 6). 8 7 The Greek newspapers included are the following: Adesmeftos Tipos (ed. by Mitsis), Adesmeftos Tipos (ed. by Rizos), Apogevmatini, Apofasi, I Avgi, Avriani, To Vima, I Vradini, Ethnos, Eleftheri Ora, Eleftheros, Eleftheros Tipos, Eleftherotipia, Estia, I Kathimerini, I Naftemboriki, Ta Nea, Rizospastis, and I Hora. Two local newspapers from Patras were also included in this set of data: I Imera and Peloponnisos. 8 All data is translated from Greek by the authors. The original Greek texts are included in in Appendix. In the English version, explanatory contextual information is provided in square brackets, while italics are added to indicate words or phrases to be commented on in the discussion section. Such words or phrases are preceded by a number for ease of reference (e.g. [1b] stands for extract 1, second italicised word/phrase ). Square brackets including dots indicate the passages of the original text which have been omitted.

6 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) (1) Extract from the parliamentary proceedings VIRON POLIDORAS: Dear colleagues, I believe that you are making a mistake. You should have voted for the bill. Because the main issue here is not the interview [as a criterion for recruiting civil servants]. The main issue, which has been repeatedly underlined by Mr. Pavlopoulos [the Minister of Internal Affairs], is that with this bill [1a] we are making an effort to settle your unfinished business.[...] And do you know why I most seriously suggest that you should have voted for the bill? Because the argumentum a contrario is assumed -to offer a fair interpretation- that you don t want to settle things for those [civil servants] who would benefit [from the bill]. And I officially accuse you of this. HARALAMPOS KASTANIDIS [the spokesperson of the Opposition]: That s neither here nor there. VIRON POLIDORAS: It s not at all neither here nor there, if you want to face your responsibilities. This is what I am doing right now. I accuse you of refusing even now, retrospectively, I would say, to settle things in favour of your [1b] ex- hostages. And this accusation is a first class political issue! APOSTOLOS KAKLAMANIS: Mr. Polidoras, is this going to be achieved with the interview [as a criterion for recruiting civil servants]? VIRON POLIDORAS: I will tell you about the interview, Mr. President [A. Kaklamanis had been the Chair of the Greek Parliament for several years]. [1c] So, I am telling you that you refuse even now to bury the dead. [1d] You have committed these people to the dead and you don t even want us to settle the matter in their favour. And you dare tell me it s neither here nor there? The only solid political argumentation is that you don t accept to settle the matter in their favour even now. [Later in the same session, an unconstitutionality objection was raised by the Opposition. The objection was overruled by the Chair after voting by sitting and standing. Then, the Opposition started protesting against the results of the voting, thus questioning the integrity of the Chair.] VIRON POLIDORAS: Mr. President [to the Chair], [...] [n]ever has there been a count of the MPs to establish in which wing there are more and in which fewer. The Greek people should be aware of that. [...] Mr. Kastanidis said that he addresses the [Greek] youth. I am also addressing the youth on behalf of Nea Dimokratia, in order to tell them that the bills proposed by Nea Dimokratia settle things in favour of PASOK s [1e] hostages![...] And I will tell young people that collusion 9 reigned high. Young people were cornered, unemployed, and divided. They had to pass by the headquarters of PASOK to show their support in order [1f] to find a place in the sun. [1g] We were the children of a lesser God! That s what they ve lost now! [...] Third, as to their effort to create impressions by showing total disrespect to the Chair, the Parliament and Democracy, this is the only thing I have to say: Whatever they do, [1h] the wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair, and reveals all their bullying! This is no parliamentary ethics! [...] Neither do we intend to succumb as far as our government policies are concerned, which is reflected in our bill proposals and in our parliamentary ethics, in order to build Greece. Yes, we are going to re-found the [Greek] state of the Constitution and of the laws of Democracy! (2) Extract from the newspaper Adesmeftos Tipos (ed. by Rizos) [2a] The bills proposed by Nea Dimokratia settle things in favour of PASOK s hostages, [2b] underlined the spokesperson [for the ruling party] Viron Polidoras yesterday from the parliamentary podium during the discussion of the bill on the allotment of points to the contract-employees. [...] [2c] I will tell young people that collusion reigned high. They had to pass by the headquarters of PASOK to show their support in order to find a place in the sun. [2d] We were the children of a lesser God, Mr. Polidoras [2e] burst out. [...] V. POLIDORAS: Face your responsibilities. I am accusing you of refusing even now to settle the matter in favour of your [2f] ex-hostages. This accusation is a first class political issue. AP. KAKLAMANIS: Mr. Polidoras, is this going to be achieved with the interview [as a criterion for recruiting civil servants]? V. POLIDORAS: I am telling you that even now you refuse [2g] to bury the dead. [2h] This is what you ve reduced them to. [2i] You who supported this system of fraud, cheating, non-meritocracy, and partisanship in the public domain, you are accusing us now, Mr. Kastanidis, of an act of unselfish modernisation and meritocracy 9 Collusion is here used as a translation equivalent of the Greek word diaplokz close interdependence. In political contexts, diaplokz usually refers to the illegal and secret transactions between politicians and businesses for their mutual benefit (Babiniotis, 2005:490).

7 918 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) effectuated by the bill? [...] Finally, commenting on the [2j] artificial aggravation caused by PASOK during the discussion of the bill, the spokesperson of ND [2k] stated meaningfully: [2l] The wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair, thus revealing all their bullying!... (3) Extract from the newspaper Ethnos Viron Polidoras supported the bill [3a] fanatically, speaking of [3b] werewolves and comparing the shortterm contract-employees to [3c] dead people whom PASOK refuses [3d] to bury. (4) Extract from the newspaper Ta Nea Whatever they do, [4a] the wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair, and reveals all their bullying!, said the spokesperson of Nea Dimokratia Viron Polidoras [4b] in a sharp manner. (5) Extract from the newspaper Vradini During his intervention, the spokesperson of ND Viron Polidoras mentioned: You should have voted for the bill. [5a] We are settling your unfinished business. What you ve left behind. [5b] It s you who made hostages out of thousands of contract-employees; [5c] who have committed these people to the dead. [5d] And now you refuse to vote.... (6) Extract from the newspaper I Hora Polidoras s outburst In a [6a] rightful outburst and in response to the [6b] theatrics of PASOK, the spokesperson of ND Viron Polidoras was [6c] outspoken and said among other things: Never has there been a count of the MPs to establish in which wing there are more and in which fewer. The Greek people should be aware of that. I address the [Greek] youth on behalf of ND to tell them that the bill of ND settles things in favour of PASOK s [6d] hostages and I will tell young people that collusion reigned high. Young people were cornered, unemployed and divided. They had to pass by the headquarters of PASOK [6e] to find a place in the sun. [6f] We were the children of a lesser God! That s what they ve lost now! And Mr. Polidoras added: As to their effort to create impressions by showing total disrespect to the Chair, the Parliament and Democracy, I only have one word: Whatever they do, [6g] the wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair, and reveals all their bullying! This is no parliamentary ethics! Neither do we intend to succumb as far as our government policies are concerned, which is reflected in our bill proposals and in our parliamentarian ethics, in order to build Greece. Yes, we are going to re-found the [Greek] state of the Constitution and of the laws of Democracy! The extracts from V. Polidoras speech appear to be reproduced verbatim, although their comparison with the parliamentary proceedings reveals that, even when they are represented in a dialogue format (see extract 2), many parts of the speech are omitted, other parts coming from different passages in the proceedings are added, while the chronological order of the selected extracts is violated. The comparison between extracts 1 and 2 reveals that V. Polidoras s constructed speech in extract 2 is a compilation of three different interventions of his during this particular debate. The phrases [2a] and [2c] referring to his party s contribution to resolving the unemployment problem and restoring meritocracy in the public sector appear before the reproduction of his exchange with A. Kaklamanis. These phrases are used in the newspaper article as evaluative framing devices, so as to suggest a specific interpretation of the following reported exchange, although they appear nine pages later in the parliamentary proceedings. The phrase You who supported all this system of fraud... [2i] appears two pages later in the parliamentary proceedings than its preceding utterance in the newspaper article, yet there is no indication that parts of the parliamentary proceedings have been omitted in the same extract. In addition, [2h] does not appear at all in the proceedings; it was rather invented by the journalist as a summary of what V. Polidaras actually said at that point. A coherent -yet fictional- text is thus created. The newspaper article may include a summary of the main points of V. Polidoras s long speech. In extracts 3 5, only specific words or phrases are selected for reproduction from the parliamentary proceedings (compare [3b d], [4a], [5a d] to [1a h]), while in extract 5 a paraphrase also occurs: instead of we are making an effort to settle your unfinished business [1a], one reads We are settling your unfinished business. What you ve left behind [5a], and instead of you have committed these people to the dead...[1d], one reads it s you who made hostages out of thousands...[5b d].

8 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) The use of additional evaluative elements and framing devices in newspaper articles should not go unnoticed: for example, the phrase thousands of contract-employees in [5b] in newspaper Vradini (usually supporting Nea Dimokratia) does not appear in the parliamentary proceedings, but it is added by the journalist so as to highlight the size of the problem and PASOK s responsibility for it. In the newspapers Adesmeftos Tipos and I Hora (extracts 2 and 6), usually supporting Nea Dimokratia, V. Polidoras underlined [2b], burst out [2e], and stated meaningfully [2k], while he is assessed as outspoken [6c] and his outburst is rightful [6a]. At the same time, the unconstitutionality objection and the walkout of the Opposition are evaluated as artificial aggravation [2j] and theatrics [6b] by the same newspapers. On the other hand, the newspapers Ethnos and Ta Nea (extracts 3 and 4), usually supporting PASOK, claim that V. Polidoras supported the bill fanatically [3a] and spoke in a sharp manner [4b]. In sum in newspaper articles, journalists do not follow the order of utterances occurring in parliamentary proceedings. Instead, they reconstruct parliamentary discourse by selecting specific extracts, by paraphrasing, and by using evaluative framing devices reflecting their political orientation and audience design. Using Leudar et al. s (2004) terminology, V. Polydoras s speech is multiplied along different texts, thus establishing a dialogical network involving parliamentary proceedings and newspaper articles. Journalists do not strive for accuracy; instead they aim at creating a reader-friendly and reader-attractive account of the specific debate. In all cases, newspaper articles are built on (supposedly) direct speech extracts including political cross-discourse, in this case mostly metaphors (cf. Santa Ana, 1999:196, ). In particular, the MPs of PASOK are presented as werewolves showing their bullying (compare [2l], [4a], [6g] to [1h]). The short-time contract employees are metaphorically presented as hostages of PASOK (compare [2a,f], [5b], [6d] to [1a,e]): if PASOK voted for the bill, the contract-employees would (supposedly) secure a permanent post thus they would no longer need to vote for PASOK to find a place in the sun, namely a job (compare [2c], [6e] to [1f]). The contract-employees have been committed to the dead (compare [3c], [5c] to [1d]), since they are currently unemployed and cannot find a job. Furthermore, since burial is considered to be the proper care for the dead in Greek culture, the bill is presented as a way to settle things for them, namely to bury the dead (compare [2g], [3c,d] to [1c]). At the same time, the voters of Nea Dimokratia, who could not find a job while PASOK was in power, are presented as the children of a lesser God (compare [2d], [6f] to [1g]) who could not find a place in the sun (compare [2c], [6e] to [1f]). As previously mentioned (section 4), metaphor is a form of political cross-discourse creating a more conversationalised style and, hence, an illusion of the involvement and participation of newspaper readers. Most importantly in the present case, political metaphor is essential to persuasiveness, since it offers new and/or simpler conceptualisations for complex or problematic notions and activates positive or negative connotations aroused by the words used in it, thus provoking affective responses and contributing to bonding between the speaker and the audience. The metaphors used here by V. Polidoras clearly contribute to a negative representation and evaluation of the Opposition: he openly accuses them of framing, deceiving, and eventually depriving short-contract employees of a permanent position in the public sector. As a result, newspapers usually supporting the government provide these metaphors in more detail (see extracts 2, 5, and 6), while newspapers usually supporting the Opposition seem to reproduce them as indicative of V. Polidoras s unusual and exaggerated conceptualisation and linguistic use (see fanatically and in a sharp manner in extracts 3 and 4). In either case, journalists aim at reinforcing the solidarity bond with their readers. One of the most common strategies used by politicians in their effort to build a positive self-image is to resort to a negative construction of the adversary. This is often achieved via appealing to the anxieties of the public. In the present case, the source of anxiety is unemployment: the newspapers supporting the ruling party metaphorically represent the Opposition as committing contract-employees to the dead and then refusing to bury them, and as werewolves terrifying the citizens by not allowing them to secure a permanent position in the public sector; at the same time, the contractemployees are hostages in the hands of the Opposition who cannot find a place in the sun, i.e. have no future. Hence, the opponent is represented as a threat to the public interest and to the citizens. 10 By selecting these particular extracts from the parliamentary proceedings, journalists reveal (and confirm) their tendency to prefer those events that can be 10 It is interesting to note here that, in the same parliamentary debate, the spokesperson of PASOK H. Kastanidis also uses metaphors to support his argumentation and attack the adversary (namely the ruling party Nea Dimocratia). In particular, the metaphors he employs aim not only at reinforcing the political myth of PASOK as a socialist party fighting for the benefit of the Greek people and curing social diseases, but also at presenting Nea Dimocratia as a conservative party belonging to the dark forces and leading the country back to the dark ages via a series of political mistakes and failures (see Archakis and Tsakona, 2009).

9 920 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) easily dramatised in their reports, thus offering an emotionally charged account of reality (cf. Bayley et al., 2004:187, 210). On the other hand, if MPs aim at being reported in the newspapers, they seem to achieve this goal by consciously and strategically providing journalists with sound bites to be reproduced therein. To sum up, the present analysis seems to confirm the claim that news reports on parliamentary speech events are constructed on the basis of the political and ideological orientation of each newspaper, namely on the basis of certain - not always explicitly stated- values and beliefs. Newspaper articles reflect (and result from) the different ideological viewpoints journalists and media people wish to project, in order to attract and maintain the attention and support of their readers. The data under examination shows that direct speech and metaphors often become cohesive links that establish a dialogical network involving parliamentary proceedings and newspaper articles. Given that such cohesive features are used to provide an evaluative and ideologically driven account of political affairs, the dialogical networks established seem to reinforce the bonds between politicians and the wider audience, hence journalists mediate both between different media events, as suggested by Leudar et al. (2004), and between the producers and the intended recipients of parliamentary discourse. 6. Conclusions The present analysis confirms the general claim put forward by critical discourse analysis that news reports are not impartial reflections of reality, but rather value-laden representations of it. More specifically, parliamentary speech events are constructed on the basis of the political and ideological orientation of each newspaper. It also seems that, in order to put together their stories, journalists first choose those extracts of parliamentary discourse that suit their needs, namely extracts concerning the violation of parliamentary norms and/or resulting in unusual situations (in this case, the walkout of the Opposition and their accusations against the Chair); then they often rearrange them and add evaluative comments or phrases, so as to reframe them. The concept of dialogical networks allows us to trace and investigate the links between different media events. Even though such events may be distributed in space and time, they are interactively, thematically, and rhetorically connected. The present analysis shows that journalists play a significant role as mediators establishing cohesive links between media events and that the direct speech extracts employed as links by them are selected on the basis of their crossing qualities. Journalists show clear preference for words, phrases, or sentences appealing to the wider public and offering a more personalised and easy to grasp account of parliamentary affairs. Hence, metaphorical conceptualisations are more common in newspaper articles reporting on parliamentary work than legal or political argumentation. Adopting Aristotle s terminology and drawing on Ilie s quotation (see also section 2), the present analysis suggests that journalists actually imitate politicians tendency to capitalise on pathos rather than logos, in order to build their own ethos. As a result, journalists do not necessarily aim at informing the public on parliamentary debates and procedures, but, on the contrary, they aim at reinforcing the solidarity bond with readers sharing specific political views. Given that, at least in Greece, citizens resort to the press rather than the official parliamentary resources (i.e. the official website including parliamentary proceedings or the parliamentary TV channel) in order to get information about parliamentary issues, one of the questions to be asked and further investigated is whether newspaper readers are equipped with the critical skills required to identify the covert or overt intentions of the journalists and the newspaper editors. In addition, it should also be investigated whether the readers critical skills enable them to engage in a process of de-naturalising the authority role of the media and their right to establish a specific meaning representation of the world as the prevailing one (Slembrouck, 1992b:357). It has been suggested that, besides political discourse and the media, school courses and textbooks also influence and shape students political ideas and social values (Kalmus, 2003) and that media texts referring to political issues can and have become part of educational materials used to enhance students critical thinking and to promote critical pedagogy (Mitsikopoulou and Koutsogiannis, 2005). In this context, we contend that the relationship between critical discourse analysis and contemporary education should be further elaborated. In particular, findings of studies such as the present one bring to the surface some of the criteria and practices followed by journalists in reproducing and reframing parliamentary discourse, which could be incorporated in contemporary educational programmes with the aim of helping students (and future citizens) develop critical literacy skills, i.e. realise that media and even parliamentary discourse offer a constructed (and, hence, de-constructable) version of political events (Archakis and Tsakona, 2009).

10 As Singh (1999:30) insightfully puts it, as our understanding that language can manipulate and direct our perceptions increases, so too does our ability to challenge usages and the perspectives behind them. If people get trained and, eventually, get used to comparing different texts referring to the same events, as is the case of the parliamentary proceedings and the rearranged extracts from these proceedings found, in different configurations, in several newspaper articles, they can become able to challenge usages and the perspectives behind them (Singh, 1999:30). Consequently, people could become capable of resisting their exclusion from contributing to the meaningand decision-making social processes (see Clark and Ivanič, 1997:226, 241) and could acquire a critical and active citizenship identity. Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this paper were presented in the 16th Sociolinguistics Symposium (Limerik, Ireland, 6 8 July 2006) and in the 10th International Pragmatics Association Conference (Gothenburg, 8 13 July 2007). The authors wish to thank Eleni Antonopoulou, Cornelia Ilie, and Maria Sifianou for insightful discussions, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on the present paper. Villy Tsakona also wishes to thank the Greek State Scholarships Foundation for funding the research project on which the present paper is based. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi: /j.pragma References A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) Alvarez-Cáccamo, Celso, Prego-Vásquez, Gabriela, Political cross-discourse: conversationalisation, imaginary networks, and social fields in Galizia. Pragmatics 13, Antaki, Charles, Leudar, Ivan, Recruiting the record: using opponents exact words in parliamentary argumentation. Text 21, Archakis, Argiris, Tsakona, Villy, Analysing parliamentary discourse as reported in Greek newspaper articles. In: Politis, P. (Ed.), The Discourse of Mass Communication: The Greek Example. Institute for Modern Greek Studies, Manolis Triantafyllidis Foundation, Thessaloniki, [in Greek], pp Archakis, Argiris, Tsakona, Villy, Parliamentary discourse in newspaper articles: the integration of a critical approach to media discourse into a literacy-based language teaching programme. Journal of Language and Politics 8, in press. Babiniotis, Georgios (Ed.), Dictionary of Modern Greek. Lexicology Centre, Athens (in Greek). Bayley, Paul, Introduction. The whys and wherefores of analyzing parliamentary discourse. In: Bayley, P. (Ed.), Cross Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp Bayley, Paul, Bevitori, Cinzia, Zoni, Elisabetta, Threat and fear in parliamentary debates in Britain, Germany and Italy. In: Bayley, P. (Ed.),Cross Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp Baynham, Mike, Slembrouck, Stef, Speech representation and institutional discourse. Text 19, Bell, Allan, Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13, Bell, Allan, The Language of News Media. Blackwell, Oxford. Bruner, Jerome, Self-making and world-making. In: Brockmeier, J., Carbaugh, D. (Eds.), Narrative and Identity. Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp Charteris-Black, Jonathan, Politicians and Rhetoric. The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Chilton, Paul A., Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice. Routledge, London. Chouliaraki, Lilie, Political discourse in the news: democratizing responsibility or aesthetizing politics? Discourse and Society 11, Christie, Chris, Politeness and the linguistic construction of gender in parliament: an analysis of transgressions and apology behaviour. Working Papers on The Web: Linguistic Politeness and Context. (last accessed ). Clark, Romy, Ivanič, Roz, The Politics of Writing. Routledge, London. Cotter, Colleen, Discourse and media. In: Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., Hamilton, H.E. (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, Oxford, pp Elspass, Stephan, Phraseological units in parliamentary discourse. In: Chilton, P.A., Schäffner, C. (Eds.), Politics as Text and Talk. Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp Fairclough, Norman, 1995a. Critical Discourse Analysis. The Critical Study of Language. Longman, London. Fairclough, Norman, 1995b. Media Discourse. Arnold, London. Fetzer, Anita, Weizman, Elda, Political discourse as mediated and public discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 38,

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12 A. Archakis, V. Tsakona / Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) van Dijk, Teun A., Parliamentary debates. In: Wodak, R., van Dijk, T.A. (Eds.), Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States, Drava. Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Austria, pp van Dijk, Teun A., Political discourse and political cognition. In: Chilton, P.A., Schäffner, C. (Eds.), Politics as Text and Talk. Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp van Dijk, Teun A., Text and context of parliamentary debates. In: Bayley, P. (Ed.), Cross Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp Wodak, Ruth, Meyer, Michael (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage, London. Argiris Archakis is Assistant Professor in Linguistics in the Department of Philology, University of Patras, Greece. His research focuses on discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. His publications in these areas include articles in the Journal of Pragmatics, Narrative Inquiry, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, International Journal of Learning, Stylistyka, and Pragmatics in 2000 (Selected papers from the 7th International Pragmatics Conference). Villy Tsakona is Adjunct Lecturer in the University of Athens and the University of Ioannina, Greece, where she teaches pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and lexicography. She has presented papers and published articles on the pragmatic, text and conversation analysis of jokes and humorous narratives and on the semiotic analysis of cartoons, while she has also edited the bilingualised version of Peter Trudgill s Glossary of Sociolinguistics into Greek (2007, Athens: University of Athens). Having received a post-doc scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, she is currently working on a research project on parliamentary discourse analysis.