Language, Image, Gesture: The Cognitive Semiotics of Politics

by Christopher Hart

Politics is an inherently symbolic practice. This innovative book advances a framework for the critical analysis of political texts and talk based in cognitive linguistics. Through detailed analyses of attested semiotic practices, it provides a current, comprehensive and authoritative statement on the paradigm of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (Cognitive CDA). The ideological effects of dominant conceptualisations and their implications for the legitimation of social action are explored with reference to political topics that have defined the last decade, including immigration, the rise of nationalism, the right to protest, Brexit and Covid-19. A range of conceptual phenomena are addressed, including image schematic patterning, attentional distribution, viewpoint and metaphor, as they feature in various contexts, genres and modes of political discourse. In a major advancement of the paradigm, the book extends Cognitive CDA to images and gesture to consider the role played by multiple semiotic modes in the discursive performance of politics.

Provides a comprehensive and up to date description and illustration of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (Cognitive CDA)
Extends Cognitive CDA to multimodal data, with analyses of semiotic modes beyond language, namely image and gesture
Analyses the discursive dimensions of issues that have defined the last decade of politics, such as immigration, the rise of nationalism, the right to protest, Brexit and Covid-19

298 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2025

About the author

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Please see: Christopher Hart


Christopher Hart is Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University where he teaches courses in cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis. His research investigates the link between language, cognition and action in social and political contexts of communication. He is author of “Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse (Palgrave, 2010) and “Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2014).