Political discourse and mobility of worlds: Arguments for methodological narrative\institutional dualism

Abstract

Methodological narrative\institutional dualism was developed as an epistemological strategy to facilitate an approach to the study of political discourse that incorporates figures of disorder into the construction of order. The symmetrization of various theories of narration and argumentation and related analytical research approaches enables an examination of how discursive world-making engages syncretically narrative and argumentative repertoires of rhetoric and hermeneutics to ensure interconnected discursive and organizational interventions. Actors strive to occupy a strategically important position in discourse-worlds as the prelude to their occupation of influential power positions in organizational fields. Such a two-fold – textual and pragma-dialectical – interventionism can be uncovered by a ‘perspective interplay’ between complementary research strategies, one based on a narrative\routine duality (focused on communicability by studying the textualized sequencing of speech acts), the other on a duality of the pragmatic use of plot\argument (focused on the pragmatic implications of speech acts by studying the political claim-making accompanying strategic maneuvering). Our efforts at theory-building are illustrated by an empirical probe into a moment in a Czech election campaign (a three-day media dialogical network) in which the metaphor of dinosaurs was deployed as a powerful trope by candidates, opponents and journalists in credibility and consistency tests with respect to qualification for political office.