Language & Power: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of Protest Slogans

Abstract

The paper explores both discursive practices of power, resistance and collective identity in internationally recognised protest slogans inspired by global movements such as Black Lives Matter, the Climate Justice Movement, the Feminist Movement and anti-authoritarian protests in South Asia. Using the theoretical framework of Norman Fairclough as the Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995), the study focuses on the analysis of protest slogans as three interconnecting levels of analysis using the textual, discursive practice and the social practice levels. Sixty protest slogans of data were gathered and coded into a customised corpus and tagged with TagAnt software (part-of-speech tagging) and AntConc (version 3.5.9) with frequency and concordance analyses of keywords. The methodology of the corpus allows conducting a systematic, repeatable analysis of lexical patterns, grammar structure, and rhetorical techniques, implementing an ideological work done by such texts. It is concluded that the protest slogans always use imperative mood, binary opposition, and evaluative lexis to create a clear moral aspect of contrast between the oppressed groups of people and dominant power structures. The slogans used serve as intertextual points that replicate both in the digital and the physical spheres and increase the influence of the idea. The results add to the ongoing corpus-aided critical discourse literature and highlight the analytical significance of short-form political texts to the understanding of the relationship between language, power and social change.

Keywords: Language, Power, Identity, Slogans, Discourse