Ruth Breeze

University of Navarra, Spain

About the keynote speaker

↗️ Professor Ruth Breeze is the Principal Investigator of the Public Discourse Research Group at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra.

↗️ She has published widely on political discourse, legal discourse and specialised communication.

↗️ Her most recent books are “Imagining the Peoples of Europe: Populist Discourses across the Political Spectrum” (with Jan Zienkowski, John Benjamins, 2019), and “Pandemic and Crisis Discourse: Communicating COVID-19 and Public Health Strategy” (with Andreas Musolff, Sara Vilar-Lluch and Kayo Kondo, Bloomsbury, forthcoming).

Keynote presentation Researching Emotion in Discourse

↗️ This presentation focuses on the basis for researching emotion in language and explores some applications to (political) discourse. Starting from current theories of emotion/affect,  a series of examples from the UK, Germany, Spain and the USA will be presented, showing how emotions are represented, invoked and exploited by political figures, particularly those considered “populist”.

↗️ Some examples will illustrate the key role of anger and resentment in driving the radical impulse for change: politicians use subtle discursive techniques to invoke anger and condone violence without taking responsibility for such provocations. Other examples show how positive emotions associated with in-group identity are harnessed by political leaders in this context.

↗️ The important role of (false) dichotomies and end-scale gradations will be discussed, and linguistic and discourse analytical methodologies that can be used in this context will be suggested.