"Positive" Strategies in Political Discourse
"Positive" Strategies in Political Discourse

Summary/Abstract: The present article starts from the premise that, generally speaking, political discourse relies on a set of invariable rules, and that political actors behave in the same way, regardless of their nationality or of their immediate purpose. The long-term goal of any politician is access to power; therefore, his / her behavior is always oriented along given lines. For the purpose of this paper, I have used the situation of a direct confrontation between two political actors; I start from the assumption that there are three main categories of strategies that politicians resort to: positive strategies (where the protagonist appeals to self-assertion), negative strategies (where they prefer to criticize the opponent(s)), and "neutral" strategies, which play on the emotions of the audience (potential electors). In the following pages, I shall focus mainly on the positive strategies. As an illustration of the theoretical background, I shall use extracts taken from two major electoral confrontations: the first Bush – Kerry presidential debate in the USA and the Nastase-Basescu debate in Romania, both taking place in 2004 with a view to winning the presidential elections.

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