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Semiotic Practices in TV Debates

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Meanings & Co.

Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 6))

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological framework to analyze the dynamics of the positioning acts of political actors in dialogic forms of interaction, such as final TV debates for presidential elections, from the perspective of positioning theory (Davies and Harré 1990; Harré and Gillet 1994; Harré and van Langenhove 1998; Moghaddam et al. 2008; Moghaddam and Harré 2010; Harré and Moghaddam 2016). Positioning theory activates a tridimensional semiotic model, which includes positioning acts—semiotic configurations with a certain stability in the communicational practices of the community—storylines and the implicit illocutionary force of any discursive exchange. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach—analysing the positioning complementarily with the Eudico Linguistic Annotator (henceforth ELAN) framework for multimodality research—to capture on the one hand the dynamics of the discursive exchange in the episode we considered, and on the other hand to disambiguate the positioning (and the interpretation thereof) of the political actors involved in the debate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is politically correct to say: “Everything is solved by dialogue”; “Dialogue is holy. Any problem, any crisis can be solved by talking. Dialogue”; “Everything is dialogue, tolerance, opening, dialogue etc” This mythology of dialogue, which has its good reasons, should not be idolised, though. Dialogue is not possible in whatever conditions, and we, in Romania, today, should know it too well. Dialogue needs a certain type of situation to be born lawfully and to be carried out coherently. One cannot have a dialogue with a wall; one cannot have a dialogue with something closed. Dialogue means, on the contrary, availability, opening. Closing is external to the idea of dialogue.

  2. 2.

    In such a paradigm the media rather values the image of political actors to the detriment of the content of messages (Postman 1985; Hellweg et al. 1992: 79). Erickson (2000) calls the media propensity to image to the detriment of the content of messages, the “visual turn” in presidential rhetoric. Eco (1976) sees in this reality a border between neo-television preoccupied with personalization of social actors, public image and relations to public, and paleo-television, focused on the content of messages, the audience being positioned in a generic reference (Beciu 2009: 109), without interactional valences.

  3. 3.

    Cristian Tudor Popescu is a Romanian journalist, essayist and short-story writer. Four years in a row, in 2005–2008, he was designated the best Romanian journalist.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA), Bucharest, Romania

    Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan

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  1. Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan
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Correspondence to Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Semiotics Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Alin Olteanu

  2. International Semiotics Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Andrew Stables

  3. Faculty of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

    Dumitru Borţun

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Drăgan, NS. (2019). Semiotic Practices in TV Debates. In: Olteanu, A., Stables, A., Borţun, D. (eds) Meanings & Co.. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91986-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91986-7_12

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