Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:6 (2022) ► pp.801–826

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

From more to less ‘Civil’ borderline discourses in mainstream media and government

Reflections on Turkey since 2002

ORCiD logo with link | University of Liverpool
 | Kadir Has University
Published online: 2 March 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21008.way
Abstract
Between the civil and uncivil lie ‘borderline’ discourses where speech that appears civil is laden with uncivil ideas, norms and discourses that normalise anti-pluralist, nativist and exclusionary views. Such discourses are found in videos and websites of far-right groups and in some mainstream media. Here, we argue that Turkey’s government and mainstream media use similar discursive strategies. We examine both speeches and media representations of these that represent capital punishment since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2002 rise to politics. Analysis leans on Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies to expose how Erdoğan, who transforms from a cautious reformist prime minister into an authoritarian-populist president, has always articulated uncivil ideas cloaked in civility, with uncivility increasing over time. Analysis of lexica and imagery in associated news stories reveal how media normalise such discourses. As such, these borderline discursive acts contribute to a decline in civility in a deeply polarised society.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Borderline political discourse
  • 3.Sample
  • 4.Approach
  • 5.Capital punishment in Turkey
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.12002: AKP’s beginnings
      • 6.1.1Politicians
      • 6.1.2Media
    • 6.22007: Parliamentary election campaign
      • 6.2.1Politician(s)
      • 6.2.2Media
    • 6.32012: Öcalan and hunger strikers
      • 6.3.1Politician(s)
      • 6.3.2Media
    • 6.42016–2018: Lead up to the presidential election
      • 6.4.1Politician(s)
      • 6.4.2Media
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
References (50)
References
Abousnnouga, Gill and David Machin. 2010. “Analysing the Language of War Monuments.” Visual Communication 9(2): 131–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bekdil, Burak. 2015. “Erdoğan’s Continuing Crackdown on Gülen is a Message to All.” Middle East Forum accessed 10 August 2019, [URL]
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brooks, Deborah and John Geer. 2007. “Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 51(1): 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cağaptay, Soner. 2019. The New Sultan: Erdoğan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen. 1994. “On reporting: The representation of speech in factual and factional narratives.” In Advances in Written Text Analysis Caldas-Coulthard, M. (ed.), 295–309. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Canyaş, Filiz and Fevzi Canyaş. 2016. “The interplay between formal and informal institutions in Turkey: the case of the Fethullah Gülen community.” Middle Eastern Studies 52(2): 280–294. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dearden, Lizzie. 2017. “German official accuses Turkey of ‘unacceptable’ spying against Gülen supporters.” The Independent accessed on 10 August 2019, [URL]
Durant, Alan and Marina Lambrou. 2009. Language and media: a Resource book for students. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Mattias. 2014. “The dark side of online activism: Swedish right-wing extremist video activism on YouTube.” MedieKultur 561: 79–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1995. Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “The language of critical discourse analysis: reply to Michael Billig.” Discourse and Society 19 (6): 811–820. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flowerdew, John and Solomon Leong. 2007. “Metaphors in the discursive construction of patriotism: the case of Hong Kong’s constitutional reform debate.” Discourse and Society 18 (3): 273–294. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gervais, Bryan. 2013. Incivility in mass political discourse: the causes and consequences of an uncivil public. Published PhD Dissertation. University of Maryland accessed on 26 July 2019, [URL]
Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: EdwardGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kalafat, Haluk. 2016. “İdam Hakkında AKP Dün Ne Diyordu? Bugün Ne Diyor? [What did AKP say about capital punishment yesterday? What do they say today?].” Istanbul Bia News Center accessed on 23 September 2019, [URL]
Köse, Türe. 2018. “Türkiye’nin idam cezası tarihinde neler var? [What is the history of capital punishment in Turkey?].” BBC Turkish News accessed on 20 September 2019, [URL]
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2013a. “From Anti-Immigration and Nationalist Revisionism to Islamophobia: Continuities and Shifts in Recent Discourses and Patterns of Political Communication of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).” In Rightwing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse Wodak, R. et al. (eds.), pp. 135–148. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2013b. “Discourses and concepts: Interfaces and synergies between Begriffsgeschichte and the discourse-historical approach in CDA.” In Critical Discourse Analysis Vol 4 Wodak, R. (ed.), 201–214. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2014. “Values, imaginaries and templates of journalistic practice: A critical discourse analysis.” Social Semiotics 24(3): 345–365. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Recontextualisation of neoliberalism and the increasingly conceptual nature of discourse: Challenges for critical discourse studies.” Discourse and Society 27(3): 308–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał and Per Ledin. 2017. “Uncivility on the web: Populism in/and the borderline discourses of exclusion.” Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 566–581. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał, Mattias Ekman, Per-Erik Nilsson, Mattias Gardell and Christian Christensen. 2021. “Introduction: Uncivility, racism, and populism: Discourses and interactive practices in anti- & post-democratic communication.” Nordicom Review 42(1): 3–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. Oxon: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robyn. 2003. “The new incivility: Threat or promise?” In New Media Language Aitchison, J., Lewis, D. M. (Eds.) (pp. 36–44). London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Machin, David. 2007. Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKernan, Bethan. 2019. “From Reformer to ‘New Sultan’: Erdoğan’s populist evolution.” The Guardian accessed 23 September 2019, [URL]
Mudde, Cas and Cristobal Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana. 2006. Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana and Byron Reeves. 2005. The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust. The American Political Science Review 99(1): 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özbudun, Ergun. 2007. Democratization Reforms in Turkey, 1993–2004. Turkish Studies 8(2): 179–196.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Richardson, John. 2007. Analysing Newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruzza, Carlo. 2009. “Populism and Euroscepticism: Towards Uncivil Society?” Policy and Society 28(1): 87–98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sobieraj, Sarah and Jeffrey Berry. 2011. “From incivility to outrage: Political discourse in blogs, talk radio, and cable news.” Political Communication 28(1): 19–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1998. The Argument Culture: Changing the way We Argue. London: Virago.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1996. “Discourse, power and access.” In Texts and Practices – Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis Caldas-Coulthard, C. and M. Coulthard (eds.), 84–104. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. (1995). “Representing social action.” Discourse and society 6(1): 81–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Texts and Practices – Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis Caldas-Coulthard, C. and M. Coulthard (eds.), 32–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo and Ruth Wodak. 1999. “Legitimising Immigration: A discourse historical approach.” Discourse Studies 1(1): 83–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waldman, Simon and Emre Çalışkan. 2017. The New Turkey and Its Discontents. London: Hurst and Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Way, Lyndon. 2015. “Youtube as a site of debate through populist politics: the case of a Turkish protest pop video.” Journal of Multicultural discourse 10(2): 180–196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2018). Popular Music and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies: Ideology, control and resistance in Turkey sİnce 2002. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Way, Lyndon, Gokcen Karanfil, and Aytunc Erçifici. 2018. “‘See no evil, read no evil’: the failing role of Turkish newspapers in coverage of Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt”. Critical Discourse Studies 15(5): 481–499. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Way, Lyndon and Aysun Akan. 2017. “Coverage of bombings for political advantage: Turkish on-line news reporting of the 2016 Ankara attacks.” Social Semiotics 27(5): 545–566. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, William. 1975. Six Guns and Society: A structural study of the western. London: University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yetkin, Muray. (2018). “Bringing back the death penalty is not a good idea.” Hürriyet Daily News accessed 21 April 2019, [URL]
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Zajak, Sabrina, Anna-Maria Meuth & Fabio Best
2025. The Dynamics of (De-)Normalization of the Far Right: Perceptions in the German Population. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 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