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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 22:2 (2023) ► pp.145–162

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Visions of the good future

Temporal comparisons and ideological modalities of time in Swedish election campaigns, 1988–2018

ORCiD logo with link | Linköping University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the author.

Published online: 4 November 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22030.fri
Abstract
The relationship between time and politics is complex and multilayered, especially in issues such as global warming. This facilitates political playing with and about time; political actors use and frame time in various ways. Drawing upon the work of Reinhart Koselleck, this article examines temporal statements about the environment and the climate in Swedish election campaigns 1988 to 2018 and shows how political rhetoric has been constituted by several competing modalities of time. However, these modalities can become problematic for political thinking about the future. To resolve the climate crisis, we need a politics that acknowledges both historical and political contingency. Engaging with the past, without seeking to extrapolate a unified narrative of historical progress, explores the past from various perspectives and shows how the present is contingent. This could enable a renegotiation of possible futures and a politics for the future that facilitates both understanding and action.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Politics and time
  • 3.Framing time in Swedish election campaigns
    • 3.1Debating the uniqueness of the present: The campaigns of 1988 and 1991
    • 3.2The need for a new start: The campaigns of 1994, 1998, and 2002
    • 3.3The past as a successful time or a dead end: The campaigns of 2006 and 2010
    • 3.4Debating historical lessons and worrying about the future: The campaigns of 2014 and 2018
  • 4.Ideological modalities of time in Swedish election campaigns
  • Disclosure Statement
  • Endnotes
  • References
References (95)
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