My research combines insights and methods from cognitive science and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to investigate the links between language, cognition and action in contexts of political communication. It falls into three principal programmes as part of a more general cognitive approach to CDA:
In the first, I use frameworks developed in cognitive linguistics (including cognitive grammar, frame semantics and conceptual metaphor theory) to analyse the conceptualisations evoked by linguistic structures in specific social and political contexts of communication includng their ideological and (de)legitimating functions.
In the second, I use experimental methods to empirically test the effects that semiotic choices have on audience attitudes toward social groups and social/political issues.
In the third, I investigate the multimodal properties of political communication including co-text images and co-speech gestures.
I have worked on discourses in different areas of politics but I am primarily interested in discourses of migration, discourses of political protest, and the discrusive performance of right-wing populism.
I am keen to receive proposals for research projects investigating any aspect of political communication from a broadly cognitive linguistic perspective.
