Greek Parliamentary Discourse in the Years of the Economic Crisis

Abstract

The present chapter deals with impoliteness and aggression in a parliamentary discourse. It is a corpus-based study and the language material examined consists of the Minutes of all Plenary Sessions of the Hellenic Parliament for the years 2011 to 2016. Impoliteness in the Parliament is defined as offensive verbal behavior contextualized by temporary breakdowns of formal procedures, intense protests by immediate recipients, the House Speaker and fellow parliamentarians and even the walkout of the sittings of offended parties. Reactions such as the aforementioned ones serve as markers of the unacceptable use of linguistic forms perceived as abusive which exceed the limits of politic speech in contexts of expected political rivalry. Detailed analysis of excerpts of discourse addressed to politicians reveals linguistic items that can serve as markers of aggression and facilitate analysis via corpus linguistics technologies and the statistic processing of findings which in our case confirms a shift towards more aggressive forms of speech in the Greek parliament after 2011.