Age-Based Marginalization in Political Discourse about Crisis
The paper raises the issue of age-based marginalization reoccurring in political discourse produced by political elites in the time of the pandemic crisis. Discursive identity of the elderly population in a central European post-election spacetime is under focus, within a framework of theories of discourse in crisis. Lexicometric analysis of core media coverage of political discourse in Slovakia carried out upon the corpus of mainstream electronic press and a reading of its results is the objective of the empirical part of the study. The scope is to put forward a critical insight into short-term evolution of dominant vocabulary item series and into collocation patterns stressing the connotative features of prominent elements of discourse co-created by political and mediatic actors. The results show recurrent denomination practices with a strong tendency towards negative connotative load of dominant label words. Individual and group identities deserve to be further studied as socially undermined discursive constructs accessible through selected discrete elements.
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