Chapter 5

Discourse and policy

Discourse is a reflection of ideological underpinnings regarding “what ought to be.” It is sometimes too fabulous to be practiced. It is, in one way, among many others, a perspective into a rhetorician’s utopia. It is sometimes wholly emancipated and produced independently from the real world, where policy is the outcome produced, or “what it is.” The relationship between political discourse and policy is complicated and dependent on various conditions. The preceding chapters have shown how discourse systematically deconstructs the dominant ideology and reconstructs its own as an alternative and situates the self as the appropriate teller and doer. However, no investigation has been directed to how reconstructed political discourse is translated into policy. This chapter illuminates the modus operandi that underlies the relationship between discourse and policy and that can be applied in the study of other case countries and politicians with respect to domestic and foreign policy. The chapter introduces the following terms to explicate the association: incremental discourse, avulsive discourse, incremental policy, avulsive policy, normative/moralist realm, realpolitik realm, and structural limits of power and domination.