Since 1994, when media mogul Silvio Berlusconi entered Italian politics, political communication in Italy has proved particularly interesting from a linguistic point of view. The last two election campaigns in 2006 and 2008 were often compared to those in the United States. In 2008 one of the main reasons for drawing parallels between Italian and US candidates was to highlight the way in which the democratic candidate, Walter Veltroni, was inspired by Barack Obama. This aspect was noted both in the Italian and US news media. Throughout both elections in Italy, though, the most favoured foreign politician amongst Italian democrats has been José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Since 2004, Zapatero and his new laws have often been presented to the Italian public as the touchstone to show what reforms he was able to pass while Italian politicians, especially those from left-wing parties, lagged behind. By analyzing three comparable corpora of speeches and press releases available on their websites (respectively in Italian, English and Spanish), the goal of this paper is to establish what influence the two foreign politicians have actually had on Veltroni’s discourse strategies. The comparison carried out searches for analogies and discrepancies in their linguistic choices and framing. This work eventually tries to establish whether or not the idea - promoted by the Italian media - that Veltroni’s campaign was inspired and/or constricted by Obama’s and Zapatero’s matches what can actually be found in his corpus.
Veltroni, Zapatero and Obama. Inspirations and constraints in the 2008 Italian political campaign
CAIMOTTO, Maria Cristina
2010-01-01
Abstract
Since 1994, when media mogul Silvio Berlusconi entered Italian politics, political communication in Italy has proved particularly interesting from a linguistic point of view. The last two election campaigns in 2006 and 2008 were often compared to those in the United States. In 2008 one of the main reasons for drawing parallels between Italian and US candidates was to highlight the way in which the democratic candidate, Walter Veltroni, was inspired by Barack Obama. This aspect was noted both in the Italian and US news media. Throughout both elections in Italy, though, the most favoured foreign politician amongst Italian democrats has been José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Since 2004, Zapatero and his new laws have often been presented to the Italian public as the touchstone to show what reforms he was able to pass while Italian politicians, especially those from left-wing parties, lagged behind. By analyzing three comparable corpora of speeches and press releases available on their websites (respectively in Italian, English and Spanish), the goal of this paper is to establish what influence the two foreign politicians have actually had on Veltroni’s discourse strategies. The comparison carried out searches for analogies and discrepancies in their linguistic choices and framing. This work eventually tries to establish whether or not the idea - promoted by the Italian media - that Veltroni’s campaign was inspired and/or constricted by Obama’s and Zapatero’s matches what can actually be found in his corpus.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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