Political Semiotics and Rhetoric: A Preliminary Note
摘要
The idea of political semiotics strikes relationalities of various sorts between Linguistics and Social Sciences, and more particularly between language and politics. It draws and thrives upon fields of discourse analysis, hermeneutics, contextual relativism, semantics, rhetoric, pragmatics, semiology, and communicational theories of various sorts. In this essay, I intend to locate and expand the idea of the political within the semiotic hegemony expressing itself in the social and cultural sign system at a particular historical time frame. A world of communication expressed through symbols, satires, signs, parodies, humour, rhetorics, etc. unfolds not just the pluralities of communicative actions and reactions but the meaning system inherent in the given power structure of the society at large. The field of political semiotics proposed here posits the primacy of language in the world as a political one showing the interpellation of politics of semiotics and semiotics of politics. It is about the signification processes and practices whereby signs are used to convey meanings which further shape perceptions of life in general. It indicates an intimate relationship between speaker and the listener or between the user and the intended audience. I think such a relationship between production of politics or a particular kind of politics and its presentation exhibits the domain of political semiotics.