Irony and the Face(s) of Politeness. A Linguistic Approach to Contemporary Political Discourse
Political discourse may be approached as “discourse in action” because much of the political act is done by means of linguistic expressions, and so the link between linguistics, discourse and politics is quite clear. However, political discourse often varies according to the utterer, the context and the audience, and so the involved language is rich in rhetorical figures of speech; irony, in particular, seems to have certain peculiarities with a great effect on contemporary political discourse. Moreover, verbal irony, in its many approaches, seems to be preferred over linguistic politeness in the recent years’ rushed struggle for political power
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