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BOOK REVIEW
Ruth Wodak: The Discourse of Politics
in Action: Politics as Usual
Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2009, vii 1252 pp, Hb $60.18,
ISBN: 978-0-230-01881-6
Ruth Harman
Received: 20 June 2009 / Accepted: 22 June 2009 / Published online: 9 July 2009
ÓSpringer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Politics and media have become intertwined in unprecedented ways in recent years.
Well-known politicians are often treated as celebrities in the media with their
private lives subjected to the same prurient scrutiny as rock stars or actors;
fictionalized versions of political life such as The West Wing or Yes Minister
1
often
generate more public interest than real-life politics. Alongside this ‘‘fictionalization
of politics,’’ disenchantment with the democratic process has steadily increased in
Europe and elsewhere. Recent elections to the 736-seat European Parliament, for
example, generated the lowest turnout in its electoral history. In her powerful new
book about the discourse of politics, Ruth Wodak uses an interdisciplinary
theoretical framework to address some of these issues. She explores the discursive
and social practices of members of the European Parliament (EP) and contrasts their
everyday lives with sensationalized representations of politicians in the media. Her
purpose in writing the book, which draws from 15 years of ethnographic, policy,
and discourse analysis of EU institutions, is to ‘‘throw light on the discursive
construction and representation of politics in action’’ (p. 23). She sees this
demystification as potentially serving as a first step in reducing the so-called
‘democratic deficit’ in Europe.
In her first chapter, Wodak explains key theoretical constructs that guide her
research. She uses Goffman (1959) to articulate how politicians construct and are
constructed by backstage and frontstage identities. In other words, politicians need
to transition frequently from a very carefully orchestrated use of setting, appearance,
and discourse that realizes a particular dramatic and consistent effect in public
R. Harman (&)
Language and Literacy Department, University of Georgia, 125 Aderhold Hall, 30062 Athens, GA,
Greece
e-mail: rharman@uga.edu
1
The West Wing is an American television serial drama set in the White House. Yes Minister, a British
show, is set in the office of a cabinet minister in Whitehall.
123
Lang Policy (2009) 8:323–325
DOI 10.1007/s10993-009-9143-x
appearances, to a backstage world where meetings, casual interactions, and
problems demand use of a contradictory range of genres and conversational styles.
In exploring these transitions, Wodak relies on Bourdieu’s (1989) theory of
professional habitus, Wenger’s (e.g., Wenger et al. 2002) concept of communities of
practice, and Foucault’s (1981) notion of power/knowledge to articulate how
politicians are socialized into their profession.
The second chapter is rather dense and might prove difficult to those without a
background in discourse analysis. Wodak shows how discourse historical analysis
(DHA) allows for an integration of macro-level analysis of political fields of action
with micro-linguistic analysis of situated discursive acts. For example, analysis of
presuppositions highlights the types of organizational, political, or professional
knowledges exhibited in a text and how, in a Foucauldian way, they ‘‘are linked and
connected to power relations in power-knowledge complexes in political organi-
zations’’ (p. 45).
The third chapter presents Wodak’s case study of European Members of
Parliament (MEPs). It begins by outlining the socio-historical context of the EP and
its powerful but constrained role in the European Union. It then discusses DHA
findings from two rounds of interviews that Wodak and her team of researchers
conducted with 14 MEPs in 1997 and 2003–2004. Her DHA analysis highlights
very effectively the MEPs’ identity construction in the texts: How they constructed
and shifted among multiple national, transnational, and personal identities in
negotiating the chaotic political arena in Brussels and Strasbourg and in
conceptualizing their role as transnational MEPs representing national constituents.
The most accessible chapter in the book, Chapter 4, provides a description of a day
in the life of Hans, a busy and successful MEP. The architecture of the EP building in
Strasbourg with its massive network of corridors and floors and the heaps of papers
MEPs have to constantly shuttle from Strasbourg to Brussels already demand
Herculean efforts to stay afloat. Added to this pressure are the continual bureaucratic
glitches in delivering papers to MEPs on time. For three days, one of the team
researchers followed Hans into all parts of his professional life. Wodak provides an
excellent comparative analysis of the shifts in rhythm, tone, identity and genre
between Hans’ interactions in official meetings and his looser and sometimes frenetic
backstage conversations with his assistant and colleagues. What is slightly
problematic on a methodological level, however, is Wodak’s use of the term ‘critical
ethnography’ for the short three-day period that the researchers spent with Hans.
Ideally, the researchers would have spent an extended period of time with more than
one MEP to see how they discursively negotiated their professional responsibilities.
The next chapter, which should prove interesting to fans of The West Wing show,
explores fictionalized renditions of politicians in the media. Wodak mostly focuses
her analysis on The West Wing, which provides viewers with an idealized backstage
where political advisors, despite personal setbacks, are unified in working for the
presidential agenda. Interactions with advisors also depict President Barnett as a
humorous and brilliant politician who manages each situation without serious input
from others. In Wodak’s portrayal of Hans and the other MEPs, on the other hand,
the advisors are invaluable in co-constructing or delivering the required knowledge
needed to accomplish tasks in chaotic overscheduled days.
324 R. Harman
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The final chapter concludes this important book by outlining why discourse
historical analysis helps the field of political science and related fields to examine
the situated practices of politicians in contextualized ways. Wodak states, ‘‘Such
studies bridge the gap between macro-structurally oriented research and analyses
which remain on the micro level’’ (p. 189). Her study certainly deconstructs and
analyzes the discourse of politics in innovative and thought-provoking ways.
One caveat is that her analysis of the fictionalized media portrayals of politicians
is not as developed as the finely tuned analysis of the MEPs. For example, it would
have been more consistent with the DHA approach to have explored media
renditions of European politicians rather than jumping to a different socio-political
context in the United States. All in all, however, Wodak’s book will provide
researchers, students, and political enthusiasts with a very rich study of frontstage
and backstage politics.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1989). The logic of practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. (1981). The history of sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin (translated into English from
Histoire de la sexualite
´. 1976). Paris: Gallimard.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor
Books.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston: Harvard
Business School Press.
Author Biography
Ruth Harman is an Assistant Professor in the Language and Literacy Department, University of Georgia.
She has published on issues related to critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, and
critical performative pedagogy.
Book Review 325
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