Projections of the self in Romanian political discourse

Abstract

Communication in institutional settings is a specific form of dialogic interaction, subject to patterns and restrictions through which active participants may assert their own individuality reflected within discourse. The present paper identifies instances of authorial self in sub-genres of political discourses e.g. Parliament, the Great National Assembly, and this type of data is collected through the analysis of three political speeches belonging to former Romanian leaders King Mihai and Nicolae Ceauşescu. I analyze the linguistic components that stand for authorial stance e.g. relational markers, personal pronouns, hedges, attitude markers, and emphatics in order to observe the expression of “internal psychological states of an individual speaker”(Krakkainen,2006:700). This form of discourse is used as a strategy of creating a strong cohesive relationship with the audiences and, as a direct consequence, improve the communicative effect of the speech. The research demonstrates that stance is an important feature of public communication and may significantly contribute to the rhetorical craftsmanship of political discourse.