A Critical Discourse Analysis of Philippine Political Advertising

Heherson P. Valdez Isabela State University Cauayan City, Isabela, Philippines hehersonpasionvaldez@gmail.com Jayson Mark G. Colcol Isabela State University Cauayan City, Isabela, Philippines jaysonmark14@yahoo.com A Critical Discourse Analysis of Philippine Political Advertising Abstract The growing number of studies in Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly advertisements, highlighted how a particular discourse or group of discourses change or alternate society’s traditions, cultures, values, beliefs, norms, and ideologies. Incorporating the framework of Fairclough (2001) and by adopting the transdisciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, wherein the theories in sociology were integrated into the analysis of texts, this study examines the forty (40) political campaign advertisements from Facebook and YouTube. It analyses the interrelationship of text and context, identifying their underlying sociological and political ideologies. More specifically, this paper examines the Philippine political campaign ads focusing on rhetorical tools, capitals, and representations. There are seven (7) rhetorical tools identified in this study: the use of taglines, testimonials, catchy lines and slogans, the use of humor, figures of speech such as simile and hyperbole, repetition, and ad hominem. The use of two types of capital, social and cultural capital, was also observed in the ads. On the other hand, three (3) representations of politicians’ positionality are identified: politicians as our only hope, politicians as a savior, and politicians as people who grew up in poverty. The samples that had been analyzed show hegemonic features of Philippine political advertising. This study proposes that the creation of political campaign advertisements in the Philippines, as supported by the theory of Bourdieu (1986) and Gramsci (1978), needs to reassess and evaluated. Introduction Political discourse analysis (PDA) is concerned with the study of political discourse. PDA is a critical enterprise as well as an arena for political discourse. This would indicate that critical-political discourse analysis, in the vein of contemporary approaches in critical discourse analysis (CDA), focuses on the reproduction of political power, power abuse, or domination through political discourse, including various types of discursive dominance. Such an examination focuses on the discursive circumstances and repercussions of social and political inequality that arises as a result of such dominions (Fairclough, 1995; Van Djik, 1993). CDA is an interdisciplinary form of analysis as what Fairclough (1995) shall prefer to call a transdisciplinary form of research. This term entails is that the ‘dialogues’ between disciplines, theories, and frameworks that take place in doing analysis and research are the source of theoretical and methodological developments within the particular disciplines, theories, and frameworks in dialogue, including CDA itself. In this study, CDA was used as the main method of analysis. It also integrates Bourdieu’s (1986) Theory of Capital and Gramsci’s (1978) Concept of Hegemony. Discourse analysis includes more than just text analysis. Fairclough (2001) recognized three parts of discourse: text interaction, social context, and the corresponding distinction of Critical Discourse Analysis: description of the text, interpretation of the text- interaction relationship, and explanation of the interaction-social context link. The description refers to the stage concerned mainly with the formal properties of the text. Interpretation is the …

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