Open AccessThe Emerging Parties' Manifestos for the 2015 Spanish General Elections: a Comparative Analysis of Lexical Choices
Author(s) -
Hanna Skorczynska
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
epic series in language and linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
ISSN - 2398-5283
DOI - 10.29007/dqlp
Subject(s) - manifesto , focus (optics) , politics , ideology , sketch , general election , political science , sociology , linguistics , computer science , law , philosophy , physics , optics , algorithm
The study looks into the lexical choices made in the political manifestos of two new political parties participating in the 2015 Spanish general election: Ciudadanos and Podemos, which share similar programmatic goals and aim to reach voters dissatisfied with the dominating two big parties: the conservative PP and the socialist PSOE. The two manifestos are compared using the ‘compare corpora’ tool of Sketch Engine, and the keywords and their collocational patterns are analyzed with a special focus on evaluative adjectives. Finally, the two manifestos are also compared to the Spanish presidents’ inaugural speeches. The results suggest that the manifestos rely on distinct lexical choices, pointing to differences in the ideological stance. The manifesto of Podemos clearly breaks away from the traditional political discourse in Spain, while Ciudadanos is more conventional in this sense.