earticle

영어

This study deals with “stimulus words” in political communication with special reference to the semantic-pragmatic political language use. In particular, we look into the types of strategic languages that are employed in the political discourse to build up negative images of the opposition parties. Of particular interest is the emotional aspect of the vocabulary exhibited in a party spokesperson's expressions asserting his or her party's position on specific portfolio against the opposing party. The stimulus words a spokesperson uses are often indexes of the party's interpretation and evaluation of an issue at hand, attesting to its political reaction, to the social condition and to its political determination. Such political vocabularies, therefore, have the function of achieving communicational simplicity, making the political language readily available through “decreased power” and the concomitant strengthened “emotional appeal.” The present study analyzes the language of party spokespersons to illustrate how they capitalize on stimulus words--or rather “stigmatic” words--to the advantage of, or to the detriment of, a political position as the case may be.