Abstract (eng)
The research topic of this dissertation comprises two aspects: on the one hand, how politicians argue in parliament during a debate, and on the other hand, how these events were translated into the language of the media.
The priority objective is to find out whether there are firm patterns of argumentation which are followed by the politicians in their speeches in which they deal with different topics, and whether there are differences of argumentation between the political parties.
Within a further step it is pursued in which forms the media reported the debate and how people observed the information: in the form of reports, interviews, comments and poems.
What is the structure of the examination of the debate and the subsequent reporting?
In the first step the status quo is described, which means the connection between language and politics. The first part of the analysis is dedicated to the subject “Discourse and Politics” (features of political language and language use) and the second one to the subject “Discourse and Media” (with regard to history, media data, editorial concept and the readership of the newspapers “Die Presse” and “Kronen Zeitung”).
Chapter 3 covers familiar patterns for the investigation of political argumentation strategies. With the help of these models an individual hypothesis is offered in response to the question “What constitutes a parliamentary speech?”.
The subject of the fourth chapter is the representation of political debates in the print media: Which criteria do the journalistic text types show in the reporting of “Die Presse” and “Kronen Zeitung” of January 17th, 2007? To round off this chapter thought is given to journalistic quality assurance in the print media.
Chapter five explores political backgrounds, history and concepts of the parties represented in parliament in 2007 and also the textual corpus of the thesis: the debate about the swearing-in of the government of January 16th and the reporting in the newspapers “Die Presse” and “Kronen Zeitung” of January 17th, 2007.
In the empiric part (chapter 6 - 8) the argumentation strategies of the SPÖ, the ÖVP, the FPÖ, the Grünen and the BZÖ are analysed and compared in connection with the hypothesis put up in chapter three (“What constitutes a parliamentary speech?”).
It was asserted that the growing complexity of the environment at present does not make the task of politicians any easier: they have to reduce this environmental complexity in order to provide understandable and logical solutions for common life in Austria for everyone. This is why decisive action is rather transferred to the political background (party committees/parliamentary committees). The front stage is for one person only who has to give messages or solutions of problems by a microphone speech. This happens in six steps according to a precast pattern: to fix a basic subject – to provide this basic subject with “linguistic coding” – to justify the basic subject – to delineate one’s own group or to make the demarcation of one’s own party recognisable to others – to demonstrate examples from the past – to show possible results.
Within the subsequent investigation of the media coverage in the newspapers “Die Presse” (a high-quality newspaper) and the “Kronen Zeitung” (a tabloid) it is observed that only a small fraction of the most important contents of the debate was covered. Both newspapers presented their coverage in a form which was tailor-made for their target groups. “Die Presse” offered several persons involved, subjects and opinions; therefore the readers themselves could form an opinion on the basis of the information offered. “Kronen Zeitung” tried to make the reading of the newspaper easy by giving their readers a quick overview of complicated issues by the use of a familiar vocabulary.
The final chapter nine summarises the results of the investigation which was carried out: although the debate of January 16th and 17th, 2007 lasted for 16 hours only a few of the persons involved (Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, chairman of the SPÖ Josef Cap, vice-chancellor Wilhelm Molterer, chairman of the ÖVP Wolfgang Schüssel, chairman of the Grünen Alexander Van der Bellen, chairman of the FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache and chairman of the BZÖ Peter Westenthaler) and a few of the topics which were dealt with (private lessons, Eurofighter) were presented in the coverage of the mass media.