Piotr Cap

• University of Łódź

The present paper employs conceptual tools of critical cognitive discourse studies (discourse space research, metaphor analysis, proximization) to explore patterns of legitimization discourse used by top Polish political parties to claim state leadership in the years 2015—2023. The first part studies the discourse of Law & Justice, a far-right cons...

The present paper employs conceptual tools of critical cognitive discourse studies (discourse space research, metaphor analysis, proximization) to explore patterns of legitimization discourse used by top Polish political parties to claim state leadership in the years 2015–2023. The first part studies the discourse of Law & Justice, a far-right cons...

This paper explores the discourse of the Russia-Ukraine war to outline and tentatively characterize the dominant narrative schemas anchored in the spatial geopolitical representations of globalness and localness. It employs a collection of analytical tools from the domains of critical cognitive discourse studies and narrative research to distinguis...

This paper explores the discourse of the Russia-Ukraine war to outline the dominant narrative schemas anchored in the spatial geopolitical representations of globalness and localness. It uses tools from the domains of critical cognitive discourse studies and narrative research (alternative futures, discourse scenarios, deictic space, proximization)...

This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing different policy options in terms of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidenti...

This paper gives a critical overview of analytical approaches dominating the field of discourse studies in the last three decades, from the perspective of their philosophical and formative bases: social constructionism and linguistics. It explores different conceptions of the theoretical nexus between these two bases leading to the emergence of thr...

This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing different policy options in terms of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidenti...

The present paper explores the current nexus between Cognitive Linguistics ( CL ) and Critical Discourse Analysis ( CDA ), focusing on theories of conceptual positioning, distancing and perspective-taking in discourse space. It assesses the strengths, limitations, and prospects for further operationalization of positioning as a valid methodology in...

This paper gives a critical overview of analytical approaches dominating the field of discourse studies in the last three decades, from the perspective of their philosophical and formative bases: social constructionism and linguistics. It explores different conceptions of the theoretical nexus between these two bases leading to the emergence of thr...

This paper gives a critical overview of the analytical approaches dominating the field of discourse studies in the last three decades, from the perspective of their philosophical and formative bases: social constructionism and linguistics. It explores different conceptions of the theoretical nexus between these two bases leading to the emergence of...

This short paper makes a tentative attempt to capture the most salient of persuasion strategies engaged in the construction of leadership in three different yet apparently interrelated domains of public life and public policy, political communication, management/business discourse, and academic communication. It explores the cognitive underpinnings...

The socio-discursive landscape surrounding the migration debate is characterised by a growing sense of crisis in both personal and collective identities. From this viewpoint, discourses about immigration are also always attempts at reconstructing the threatened ‘home identity’ of the respective host society. It is such attempts at reasserting ident...

This article explores the discursive patterns of legitimization of anti-immigration policies adopted by the Polish right-wing government which has been ruling the country since October 2015. It argues that legitimization of anti-immigration policies is essentially threat-based and coercive, involving a specific selection of rhetorical tools deploye...

The present paper analyses the anti-immigration discourse in Poland in terms of Proximization Theory (PT). PT [Cap, P. (2008). Towards the proximization model of the analysis of legitimization in political discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 17–41; Cap, P. (2010). Axiological aspects of proximization. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 392–407; Cap, P. (...

The focus of this chapter is on proximization strategies in today’s environmental discourse, especially the discourse of climate change. It is claimed that threat construction in climate change discourse possesses a strategic character, constituting a prerequisite for legitimization of environmental policies. The strategies of proximization involve...

This chapter outlines the main tenets of Proximization Theory (PT). It defines proximization as a discursive strategy of presenting the apparently remote events and ideologies as increasingly consequential to the speaker and her addressee. Working with examples from the discourse of the War on Terror, it reveals how threatening visions are invoked...

The focus of this last chapter is on immigration, a theme that has been salient in public discourse of the modern UK, especially the ‘Brexit’ rhetoric, where it encroached on issues of national sovereignty, democracy and economic prosperity. The chapter shows that the British immigration discourse is to a large extent a discourse of uncertainty and...

Initiating a series of four case studies, this chapter explores the applicability of Proximization Theory in health discourse. It demonstrates that fear-inducing proximization strategies are widely present in the discourse of disease prevention and health promotion. Picturing disease as ‘aggressive enemy’ which ‘invades’ the patient, the speaker (m...

This chapter demonstrates that the original terrain of Proximization Theory, anti-terrorist discourse, has expanded to blend with other domains, such as discourse of cyberspace. Originally a mundane technological discourse, the discourse of cyberspace has changed dramatically after 9/11, incorporating fear-inducing alerts to the possibility of cybe...

This chapter briefly summarizes the main findings of the book and outlines analytical prospects. It reflects on the growing popularity and effectiveness of threat-based rhetoric in legitimization discourse. It provides a positive assessment of Proximization Theory as a critical-linguistic tool of analysis of threat-based discourse in various themat...

This opening chapter contains an interdisciplinary discussion on the nature of threat and fear and how they affect the audience in public discourse. It introduces relevant theoretical concepts, such as coercion, legitimization and delegitimization. It demonstrates that threatening visions and anticipations appeal to the public as long as they are c...

My paper discusses the current nexus between spatial cognition and critical discourse analysis (CDA), assessing its strengths, limitations, and prospects in the area of political/ideological discourse studies. In the first part, I review the models of spatial cognition that have made the most significant contribution to CDA. Discussing Deictic Spac...

‘Cap’s book establishes Proximization Theory firmly as a central methodological and theoretical focus of Critical Discourse Analysis. It provides a coherent framework and exemplary case studies for the analysis of persuasion through intimidation, which go far beyond traditional approaches to this crucial area of public discourse. It is essential re...

W tym krótkim artykule sygnalizuję ograniczenia teorii aktów mowy postrzeganej jako element porządkujący analizy pragmatycznej. Przyznając, że pojęcie aktu mowy pomaga w usystematyzowaniu i uogólnieniu analizy na poziomie danego, pojedynczego wypowiedzenia, wskazuję, że potencjał ów jest znacznie mniejszy na poziomie dyskursu. Powodem tego jest wzg...

Follow-ups have been routinely considered a dialogic/conversational phenomenon. In this article, I demonstrate that the concept of follow-up could be extended to cover monologic discourses as well, especially those in which the speaker realizes a macro-goal over a number of texts produced in different contextual conditions. These dynamically evolvi...

This paper shows how an apparently abstract, ideologically loaded, evaluative rhetoric can be applied, legitimization-wise, to compensate for diminishing effects of fear appeal rhetoric based on material premises. The paper draws on proximization theory, which accounts for the construal of relations between entities within the Discourse Space (DS),...

This paper is a tentative attempt to identify some basic-level conceptual and theoretical problems underlying the mainstream genre theory, which adversely affect the analysis of rapidly evolving, complex and hybrid genres in the modern communicative space. Having discussed these problems, I go on to I argue that the space of contemporary public com...

The goal of this paper is to show how proximization theory, a recent cognitive-pragmatic model of crisis and threat construction, can be applied in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). It is argued that the rapidly growing, intergeneric field of CDS is in need of new, interdisciplinary methodologies that will allow it to account for an increasingly br...

Building on our diverse research traditions in studying reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates different disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Crafting methodological program and establishing organisational in...

Featuring contributions by leading specialists in the field, the volume is a survey of cutting edge research in genres in political discourse. Since, as is demonstrated, “political genres” reveal many of the problems pertaining to the analysis of communicative genres in general, it is also a state-of-the-art addition to contemporary genre theory. T...

The goal of this paper is to show how proximization theory, a recent cognitive-pragmatic model of crisis and threat construction, can be applied in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). It is argued that the rapidly growing, intergeneric field of CDS is in need of new, interdisciplinary methodologies that will allow it to account for an increasingly br...

Pragmatics, Micropragmatics, Macropragmatics The paper addresses the distinction between micropragmatics and macropragmatics. It is postulated that this differentiation, a consequence of a number of controversies surrounding the core field of pragmatics, does manifest a number of conceptual merits and methodological feasibility. The article also ai...

One of the most effective strategies in accomplishing legitimization effects in political discourse is proximization. It involves the speaker's presentation of events on the discourse stage as directly affecting the addressee, usually in a negative or a threatening way. Once the addressee has construed such threats as personally consequential, he o...

The goal of this methodological-critical paper is to pave the way for a new cross-disciplinary model of analysis of political discourse. The model evolves gradually as the paper looks at the multi-faceted phenomenon of legitimization of actions sought by politicians in front of their audiences. To describe this phenomenon, the paper integrates a va...

Andreas Musolff provides an analysis of the function of metaphor in political discourse, based on material from an extensive corpus of British and German press coverage of EU politics between 1989 and 2001.The analysis of distributions of "metaphor scenarios" in the two corpus samples reveals differences in attitude and argumentative tendencies and...