Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to critically explore the use of debasing and ridiculing discourse by Australia’s most prominent far-right populist politician, Pauline Hanson. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this chapter analyzes four case studies that demonstrate the strategic use of debasement as a discursive strategy. This chapter argues that Hanson’s frequent use of debasement and ridicule throughout her political communication is emblematic of what Ruth Wodak (The politics of fear: The shameless normalization of far-right discourse. Sage, 2021) calls shameless normalization, to describe the phenomenon where traditional rules of “politeness and respect are deliberately broken…without any negative sanctions or consequences,” (Wodak in The politics of fear: The shameless normalization of far-right discourse. Sage, p. 1, 2021). This chapter argues that the pervasiveness of debasement in contemporary discourse is the result of the decades long process of mediatization, and the interrelated logics that govern commercial media. It is argued that media organizations reward political actors who engage in scandalous, provocative, debased, and antagonistic rhetoric through disproportionate coverage. It is further argued that the communication and performance style of the modern far-right aligns with this media logic. The chapter concludes by arguing that debasement and ridicule are now core elements of the far-right populist communicative toolkit aiming to exploit the contemporary mediatized political landscape.
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Sengul, K. (2023). The Shameless Normalization of Debasement Performance: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Pauline Hanson’s Australian, Far-Right, Populist Communication. In: Feldman, O. (eds) Debasing Political Rhetoric. The Language of Politics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0894-3_7
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