Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 18:3 (2019) ► pp.323–345

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Negative Discourse Analysis and utopias of the political

ORCiD logo with link | University of the Sunshine Coast | Queensland University of Technology
Published online: 19 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.18052.gra
Abstract
This paper puts forward an argument about the relation between utopian thought and political discourse. It demonstrates how utopias frame normative discourse in general and political discourse in particular. The argument is informed by Kenneth Burke’s theory of the negative command and its place at the basis of all human language. I argue that utopias are necessarily based in the hortatory negative and are, in literary terms, like religious texts in general being ‘words about words’ designed to coordinate “the tribe”. Burke calls such texts ‘logological’. The argument I put forward here points to a rapidly crumbling utopia that has beset much of the world and all of the West since at least the Reagan-Thatcher era in which a new corporatist political economy was given global impetus.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Burke, dramatism, and the negative
    • 2.1A brief note on the semantic range of negativity
  • 3.Utopian theory as political criticism
  • 4.Negative Discourse Analysis of More’s Utopia
    • 4.1Informational negatives
    • 4.2Dramatistic negatives
    • 4.3Utopian rules and laws
    • 4.4The Utopian “No”
  • 5.Conclusion: The Utopian negative and implications of NDA
  • Notes
  • References
References (47)
References
Adorno, Theodor. 1973. Negative Dialectics. Ernst B. Ashton (trans.). London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Ben. 2002. “A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia.” Geografiska Annaler 84 (3–4): 211–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bartlett, Tom. (2012). Hybrid voices and collaborative change: Contextualising positive discourse analysis. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloch, Ernst. 1959/1995. The Principle of Hope Vol 11. Plaice Stephen, Neville Plaice, Paul Knight. trans. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. (1935/1984). Permanence and change: An anatomy of purpose. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1945/1962). A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1952a. “A dramatistic view of the origins of language.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38 (3): 251–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1952b. “A dramatistic view of the origins of language: Part two.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38 (4): 446–460. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1952c. “A dramatistic view of the origins of language: Part three.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 39 (1): 79–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1961. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1967. Language as symbolic action: Essays on life, literature, and method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1985. “Dramatism and logology”. Communication Quarterly 33 (2): 89–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Sa, Alexandre Franco. 2012. “From modern utopias to contemporary uchronia.” In Marder, Michale and Patricia Vieira. eds. 2012. Existential utopia: New perspectives on utopian thought. London: Continuum: 46–60.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Frances. 1992. The end of history and the last man. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garforth, Lisa. 2009. “No intentions? Utopian theory after the future.” Journal for Cultural Research 13 (1): 5–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graham, Philip. 2001. “Space: Irrealis objects in technology policy and their role in the creation of a new political economy.” Discourse and Society 12 (6): 761–788. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Hypercapitalism: New media, language, and social perceptions of value. New York, NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Halliday and Lemke: A comparison of contextual potentials for two metafunctional systems.” Critical Discourse Studies 13 (5): 548–567. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Strategic communication, corporatism, and eternal crisis: The Creel century. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. in press. Neoliberalism, Globalisation and Militarism. In Taylor, Brian and Hamilton Bean. eds. in press. ICA Handbook of Communication and Security. London: Oxford University Press.
Graham, Philip and Alan Luke. 2003. “Militarising the Body Politic: New media as weapons of mass instruction.” Body and Society 9 (4): 149–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Havelock, E. A. 1978. The Greek concept of justice: From its shadow in Homer to its substance in Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herzler, Joyce O. 1923. The history of utopian thought. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kellner, Douglas and Harry O’Hara. 1976. “Utopia and Marxism in Ernst Bloch.” New German Critique (9): 11–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levitas, Ruth. 2009. ‘The imaginary reconstitution of society: Utopia as method’. In Tom Moylan and Raffaela Baccolini. eds. Utopia, method, vision: The use value of social dreaming. Bern: Peter Lang: 47–68.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. The concept of utopia. New York, NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Utopia as method: The imaginary reconstitution of society. London: Palgrave McMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mannhein, Kurt. 1954. Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manuel, Frank E. 1965. ‘Introduction’. In Frank E. Manuel. Utopias and utopian thought: A timely appraisal. New York, NY: Beacon Press. vii–xxi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, James Robert. 2004. “Positive discourse analysis: solidarity and change.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 491 [Special Issue on Discourse Analysis at Work: Recent Perspectives in the Study of Language and Social Practice]: 179–200.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKenna, Bernard and Philip Graham. 2000. “Technocratic discourse: A primer.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 30 (3): 219–247. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
More, Thomas. 1516/1901. Utopia. Henry Morley. ed. Gilbert Burnet. trans. London: Cassell and Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis. 1922/2008. The story of utopias. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muntigl, Peter. 2000. Dilemmas of individualism and social necessity. In Peter Muntigl, Gilbert Weiss, & Ruth Wodak. eds. European Union Discourses on Unemployment: An interdisciplinary approach to employment policy-making and organizational change. London: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nancy, J. 2012. In place of utopia. In Marder, M. and Vieira Eds. 2012. Existential utopia: New perspectives on utopian thought. London: Continuum: 22–35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noble, David. 1999. The religion of technology: The divinity of man and the spirit of invention. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Beyond the promised land: The movement and the myth. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nālanda Translation Committee of Tibet. 1980. The Sūtra of the heart of transcendent knowledge. Nālanda Translation Committee of Tibet. Available online at: [URL]
Nordensvard, Johan. 2014. “Dystopia and disutopia: Hope and hopelessness in German pupils’ future narratives.” Journal of Educational Change (15): 443–465. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Propp, Vladimir. 1984. Theory and history of folklore. Martin, Adriana and Richard P. Martin trans. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rogers, Rebecca and Wetzel, Melissa M. 2013. “Studying agency in literacy teacher education: A layered approach to positive discourse analysis.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 10 (1): 62–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sargisson, Lucy. 2012. Fool’s gold? Utopianism in the twenty-first century. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. 1914. The instinct of workmanship and the state of the industrial arts. New York, NY. B. W. Heubsch.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wells, Herbert George. (1905). A modern Utopia. London: Thomas Wells and Sons.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Meyer, Michael. 2009. “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology.” In Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, eds. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. 1–33.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Dunmire, Patricia
2025. Phil Graham: critical insights into the futurity of discourse and the discourse of futurity. Critical Discourse Studies 22:2 ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Ekström, Hugo, Michał Krzyżanowski & David Johnson
2025. Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’? Proxy discourses and public implicatures in the normalisation of the politics of exclusion. Critical Discourse Studies 22:2 ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Luke, Allan
2025. Phil Graham and axiological discourse analysis: after neoliberalism. Critical Discourse Studies 22:2 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Ward, Andy, Briony Luttrell & Lachlan Goold
2025. Music education as symbolic action: critiquing Western music education rhetoric. Social Semiotics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Krzyżanowski, Michał, Ruth Wodak, Hannah Bradby, Mattias Gardell, Aristotle Kallis, Natalia Krzyżanowska, Cas Mudde & Jens Rydgren
2023. Discourses and practices of the ‘New Normal’. Journal of Language and Politics 22:4 ► pp. 415 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Jiayu & Mingfeng Yang
2023. Interpersonal-function topoi in Chinese central government’s work report (2020) as epidemic (counter-)crisis discourse. Journal of Language and Politics 22:2 ► pp. 185 ff. DOI logo
Graham, Phil & Harry Dugmore
2022. Public pedagogies in post-literate cultures. Discourse & Society 33:6 ► pp. 819 ff. DOI logo
Krzyżanowski, Michał
2019. Brexit and the imaginary of ‘crisis’: a discourse-conceptual analysis of European news media. Critical Discourse Studies 16:4 ► pp. 465 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue