ANU Language Teaching Forum

• Monday 3 May 4.15pm
• Topic: 'The Grammar of Political Leadership Instructions' 
• Speaker: Negar Davari Ardakani
• Online delivery via Zoom

Abstract: We are constantly shaping our world through our verbal and nonverbal acts amongst which political leadership communications are specifically crucial. This presentation aims at looking into the grammar of instructions as represented in Coronavirus lockdown speeches delivered by the two prime ministers of New Zealand and Britain and the chancellor of Germany in March 2020. The talk reports part of a broader study of communicational strategies and gender linguistic stereotypes of the speeches in a framework of discourse analysis and language planning and will shed light on the effect of the leaders’ political positions on their grammatical choices for giving instructions. A spectrum of lexical and grammatical elements used for issuing explicit/implicit and convergent/divergent instructions is suggested which could be thought-provoking for the function-based language teaching. The talk could be considered as an implicit support for the idea of the emergence of a new political rhetoric which questions the normative so-called dominant “male” political discourse.

For Zoom link and/or to be added to the email list for these monthly forums, email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au