5 - Viewpoint

Summary

The chapter explores viewpoint across various topics and genres of political discourse. Viewpoint is defined as a pervasive property of language and conceptualisation which is exhibited across a broad range of linguistic and conceptual phenomena. The chapter starts by looking at deixis and deictic shifts in media discourses of immigration and political protests. The ideological role of viewpoints evoked by transitive versus reciprocal verbs is also considered in the context of media coverage of political protests. Subjective versus objective construal is further analysed as a viewpoint phenomenon and the role of objective construals in official communication around Covid-19 is highlighted. Viewpoint as an inherent feature in the mental spaces networks configured in response to modal and conditional constructions are considered in the context of Brexit discourse. Finally, conducted within the framework of discourse space theory, an analysis is given of distance and proximity (relative to a deictically specified viewpoint) in the discourse of the far-right organisation Britain First.