How ‘real’ are Time and Space in politically motivated worldviews?

How ‘real’ are time and space in politically motivated worldviews?1

Bertie Kaal

VU University Amsterdam

[email protected]

Abstract: Given that we all live in the same world, how is it that we can have such very different worldviews? Answers to this question may be found in worldview constructions and their cognitive affordances in text and discourse. This paper discusses why and how worldviews can unfold from a schematic rationale that is grounded in ‘the primacy of spatial cognition’ in perception, thought patterns and their presentations in language. Although worldview frames are selective, and therefore subjective coordinate systems, the spatial organising principle provides a tangible ground for abstract worldview ontologies. Rhetorically, this real-‐world/social-‐world analogy gives worldview constructions an objective epistemic quality that can prime commitment and activate intentions and actions. To operationalise this discourse-‐space theory, a model is proposed to investigate variation in spatial and temporal frames in political texts, involving their scope of attention and point of view. Examples are taken from an election manifesto analysis for Dutch party positioning. The critical question concerns the rhetorical (evidential) nature of time-‐ and space frames of reference in discursive constructions: How ‘real’ are text and discourse worlds and how does this relate to variation in discourse-‐world constructions and (political) stance? Keywords: discourse space; spatial cognition; time; frames of reference; subjectivity; worldview; narrative; political text analysis

1. Introduction

Given that we all live in one physical world, how is it that people have such very different

understandings of reality and such very different motives for their social organisation and

interaction? This article concerns the structural relationship between the real world and

discursive constructions of social worlds. It links traditional epistemology (truth) and

worldview philosophy with the cognitive affordances of time-‐ and space frames of reference

in discourse constructions in the domain of political discourse. The persuasive character of

political discourse and its rhetorical affordances makes it a typical domain in which spatial

cognition is related to constructing “shared intentionality” in language and thought (cf.

Tomasello’s 2014 socio-‐cognitive hypothesis) that is essential to the democratic politics. The

motivation for a spatial approach to political discourse analysis is the cognitive relationship 1 This is a pre-‐print version. Please cite from: Kaal, Bertie (2015). How ‘real’ are Time and Space in politically motivated worldviews? In L. Filardo, Llamas, Chr. Hart and B. Kaal, Special Issue on Space, Time and Evaluation

between the real world and the abstract world. The aim is to find variation in party positions

at the non-‐verbal level of textual coordinate systems that operate in the background of

linguistic and lexical meaning constructions. The analogy between natural phenomenology

and culturally inscribed cognition, language use and worldview construction could account

for the success of language use as a social cohesive. The implications of the primacy of

spatial cognition in thought and language make our reasoning intrinsically political in that

shared spatial reasoning patterns constitute epistemic communities, their identity,

tolerance, commitments and ultimately their actions. Politics as an institution is intrinsically

spatial because its mandatory space (e.g., the nation state) is traditionally a geo-‐space that is

physically delimited by its borders. However, political players will focus on different relations

within the borders, and with other political space (e.g., the EU). It is therefore assumed that

the spatial ground rationale of political discourses could mark variation in party positions.

The goal is to find variation in the spatial coordinate systems of politically motivated texts.

Section 2 discusses the validity and affordances of a discourse space approach.

Section 3 makes a case for critical worldview theory addressing the complementary nature

of time and space and their affordances in worldview construction. Section 4 discusses how

to bring this hybrid theory into practice in political discourse analysis. Section 5 describes the

design of a deictic discourse-‐space model for the analysis of scope and vantage point (based

on Chilton 2004) as markers of variation in worldviews as found in Dutch election manifestos

(Kaal 2012). Some examples serve to illustrate the type of results this can render and how

these could relate to political dimensions. A discussion follows on how discourse-‐space

analysis could contribute to political text analysis and its affordances for other discourse

domains in which variation in coordinate systems indicates similarities and differences in

attitude and identities.

2. From real world to social world in space and time

In principle, space and time are natural phenomena, external to human behaviour. At the

same time, cognitive findings have shown that time and space play a significant role in the

mental organisation of perception for thinking. Furthermore, by sharing a basic spatial

coordinate system, thought can be communicated and negotiated effectively on the basis of

a presumed shared reality, or common ground. Logically and pragmatically, language must

follow a “single unifying principle” (Searle 2010) for it to be instrumental in the social

“process of coordination” toward “shared intentionality” (cf. Tomasello 2014: Introduction).

The logical assumption of this ‘single unifying system’ is supported by neuro-‐cognitive

experiments on perception and thought that provide evidence that they are processed by

the same neural configuration (cf. Barsalou 2008 on mental simulation) that is basically

spatial-‐temporal in nature (see below § 3.1). Cognitive theory on the “overall organising

principle” (Hörnig et al. 2000) finds evidence in empirical research into cognitive grounding

and knowing for action (cf. Pecher and Zwaan 2010). 2 And Levinson, in his cultural studies

on the relationship between language and thought (2003), makes a case for “the primacy of

spatial cognition” as the basic organising principle of human thought, by way of which we

can mentally visualise the world’s complexity, relativise from various points of view and

construct a worldview. These philosophical, cognitive and socio-‐cognitive linguistic theories

jointly confirm the social requirement of a spatial organising principle to facilitate

communication and establish a common ground that forms a basis for social action.

However, an understanding of the entire world does not address our everyday needs,

and it is questionable whether our mental ability stretches to conceptualising and

understanding the global ontology in every detail at once. Making sense therefore requires a

selective compartmentalisation of the world into focus areas, or sub-‐worlds (Werth 1999:

xvi), layered in levels of focus and attention. These interactive fields allow deliberation by

navigation around innumerable scenarios and interactions with other sub-‐worlds so that a

well-‐considered position can be taken (cf. Herman 2003: 172). Deliberation is a process of

making choices so as to find a focus area from which to relativise and make sense of its

intrinsic and extrinsic interactions. The ability to ‘picture’ a worldview, to imagine likely

scenarios of interacting spaces, is facilitated by our mental ability for spatial cognition. On

the basis of existing theories and empirical evidence for spatial cognition in thought and

language, it is reasonable to assume that the ground rationale for sense making is analogical

to human perception of real space and that its systematicity functions as the “primacy of

2 See Chilton (2014, Ch. 11) for an overview of the literature in philosophy and neural cognition in relation to deictic space theory. Support for these claims can be found in experimental neuro-‐cognitive literature, for example Barsalou (2008) on cognitive grounding; and Boroditsky (2000) on world, mind and language, Pecher and Zwaan (2010) on grounding cognition and cognition for action.

spatial cognition” from which social organisation and intentions for action unfold. Time also

plays an essential role in reasoning for action.

2.1 Time and space

Through the primacy of spatial cognition, visual and tangible aspects of space transform

naturally into abstract mental projections. However, space is static and cannot fully

represent experiential, relative processes, such as the speed of change of position, duration

or the experiential reality of transience and distance in time relative to now. McTaggart

(1908) saw ‘time’ largely as a product of the human mind, based in common experience of

external time passing. Time is therefore conceptually more problematic than space because,

unlike space, time has no tangible ground and cannot be explained in its own terms. It is

dissociated from sensory-‐motor experience (Evans 2013: 403). Where space can be

described in its own absolute terms, time needs space as a source domain to construct an

abstract context in which to conceptualise time. Time also needs space to express dynamics

and force direction from one point to another, such as ‘tomorrow’, which is immanent

(force) because it is close relative to now (direction). Another kind of time is timespace that

involves a fixed period, an event with a beginning and an end as well as a presumed

geographic location, like the Second World War. Space and time are both quantifiable, but

time also holds a culturally determined qualifying aspect of meaning, known as transience.

Time and space are do not have the same epistemic, evidential quality when “experience

types that in part underlie temporal representation are inherently temporal, rather than

spatial in nature.” (Evans 2013: 393). The conceptual domain of time is transience and it

activates spatial reasoning. The pragmatic entanglement of real and abstract time and space

in meaning constructions will be discussed in section 3.2.

McTaggart’s (1908) theory that time cannot be explained in its own terms although it

is a domain in its own right, can now be confirmed with empirical neuro-‐cognitive evidence.

Experimental evidence of neural activity shows that time and space activate different neural

pathways that interact, and that they converge when time is represented as a space in

timespace (e.g., Boroditsky 2000).3 These relatively recent insights support an investigation

of variation in the systematicity of spatial organising patterns and manifestations of this

3 See Nuñez and Cooperrider’s (2013) review of literature on cognitive time and space relations.

systematicity in language, discourse, interaction and social behaviour. 4 However, time

complements the conceptualisation of spatial relations by adding a continuity dimension on

which to gauge change as “the subjectively felt experience of temporal passage” (Evans

2013: 408). The experiential certainty of time and space strengthens a sense of epistemic

and deontic certainty with which we ‘know’ and qualify the here and now. But time also

facilitates a sense of certainty about imagined other places and future scenarios, supported

by the schematic analogy between real-‐world and abstract-‐world ontology. 5

The temporal and spatial nature of reasoning allows the construction of intrinsically

coherent worldviews, involving a coordinate system that sustains common knowledge,

values and commitment that can prime social action. The spatial coordinate system is also

equipped to cope with change because it can be reconstructed again and again in different

worldview constellations of time and space frames of reference relative to various points of

view.

3. Worldview: The beauty of the (un-‐) reality of time and space

3.1 Worldview: From knowing the world to changing the world

Worldview concerns the fundamental ontology of existential phenomenological questions by

which we seek to find unity in fragmented experience, as proposed by Heidegger (1927). The

philosophical worldview approach developed by the Flemish philosopher and proponent of

cognitive, communicative worldview ontology, Leo Apostel,6 lists six basic questions about

the nature of worldview:

1. What is? Ontology (model of the present); 2. Where does it all come from? Explanation (model of the past); 3. Where are we going? Prediction (model of the future); 4. What is good and what is evil? Axiology (theory of values); 5. How should we act? Praxeology (theory of action); 6. What is true and what is false? Epistemology (theory of the nature and scope of knowledge).

4 See Chilton (2014, Ch. 11) for an up to date overview of neurocognitive, discourse and cognitive linguistic literature. On congruity in time and space perception see Teuscher et al. (2008). 5 Ontology is a cohesive complexity of elements and their behaviour in a particular context. Because human behaviour and social interaction are not particularly discrete, mental and social ontology requires a schematic approach to account for variation in frames of reference and points of view and their different affordances. 6 Leo Apostel founded the Integrating Worldviews research group at the ULB in Brussels and published, with Jan van der Veken: Worldviews: From fragmentation to integration 1994 [1990]). He was concerned with aesthetic spirituality, communication and cognition.

(Apostel, in Vidal 2008: 4)

His worldview theory involves a mental system based on beliefs, trust and cognitive

affordances of the narrative organisation of our experience of life. If worldview is based on

subjective coordinate systems, values and knowledge schemas, then the next question must

be a meta question (7): “where do we start in order to answer these questions?” (2008:4).

As discussed above, the cognitive ground for reasoning and communication relies on the

Overall Organizing Principle (cf. Hörnig et al. 2000), the logic of a “single unifying principle to

that (worldview) ontology” (Searle 2010: 7) and the “primacy of spatial cognition” as the

basic organising system of worldview construction (Levinson 2003: 24, 39). In each of these

theories, worldviews are ontological sets of dynamic spatial relations that are grounded in

knowledge, beliefs and intuitions about real space (and time) dynamics. But worldviews are

abstract, imaginary ontologies organised by the same spatial principle.

In Apostel’s theory, worldview is a symbolic representational system that “allows us

to integrate everything we know about the world and ourselves into a global picture, one

that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain culture” (Apostel, in Aerts et

al. 2007 [1994]: 9). However, worldview involves more than recognising states of being. It is

primarily about frames of attention and commitment to knowledge, beliefs, values and

desirability. It involves epistemic as well as deontic deliberation, prior to having a worldview,

and prior to having intentions for action (cf. Searle 2010: 31). Worldview deliberation is a

about imagining scenarios and gauging their likelihood and desirability, supported by prior

knowledge of real world ontology, experience, and a sense of social appropriateness. The

answer to Apostel’s meta-‐question is therefore that discourse analysis should start from a

basic understanding of human cognition and its analogical spatial systematicity in linguistics

as well as the pragmatics of interaction and motivation for social action is (cf. Searle 2010).

From a pragmatic point of view, sharing deliberation and complex ideas requires

communication conventions that are likely to function in their social context. By virtue of its

generic spatial (and temporal) organising principle, language use has enough structure and

fluidity to facilitate social interaction in and across cultures. Thus, languages and their

underlying coordinate systems function as a means to co-‐construct meaning and

commitment “in a sociocultural matrix” (Tomasello 2014: 1) that may motivate intentions

for action.

Searle’s theory of a logical “single unifying system” suggests that communities

require a real spatial basis in order to experience the epistemic quality of a worldview.

However, we cannot determine how real time and space frames can or should be to give

enough epistemic quality to abstract ideas because the frames are not discrete and their

illocutionary force is highly context dependent. We do know that there must be a balance

between epistemic certainty and deontic attitude because we need certainty to commit to

attitude. Rather than referring to epistemic and deontic certainty, Wavell makes a

distinction that is perhaps more appropriate to (political) discourse studies and the logic of

‘factual discourse’ (knowledge based) and ‘moral discourse’ (will and conscience based) that

combine in common-‐sense deliberation (1986: 196). 7 He reasons that if a worldview lacks

factual ‘evidence’, there is no evidential ground for moral reasoning. A worldview that is

reduced to facts would still require a deontic, moral quality to prime intentions for action to

change the world.

3.2 The (un)reality of time and space in worldview constructions

The temporal and spatial ground of worldview construction relies on implicature that

emerges from the analogy between spatial real-‐world and abstract-‐world ontology.

Although they are not of the same magnitude, common sense knowledge of real world

ontology satisfies the need to constrain its complexity in selective segments as well as the

social need for common ground. The certainty derived from this analogy provides a sense of

confidence to move from knowing to foreseeing and goal setting.

In this deliberative process, time and space frames of reference form an entangled

cognitive domain in which to relativise and take position (Nuñez and Cooperrider 2013).

While we may be “good at thinking spatially” (Levinson 2003: 16), we are perhaps even

more clever at thinking temporally because it is an intellectual, metaphysical achievement

(Evans 2013: 403) by which we can comprehend the dynamic nature of non-‐factual

phenomena. The basic requirements of the overall organising principle are that it has (1) a

vantage point, (2) a bounded attention space/timespace, and (3) temporality to relativise

and (re-‐) construct experiences. Moral and creative deliberations about the unknown are

imaginable through the ternary nature (time, space and modality) of the coordinate system.

7 Wavell (1986, Ch. 4 and 5) discusses the analogy between the force-‐content structure of factual discourse and moral discourse in common-‐sense logic and concludes that they are interdependent in deliberative reasoning.

Cultural variation in intrinsic, relative and absolute patterns (Levinson 2003) and egocentric,

allocentric or 0-‐centric points of view (Searle 2010) will afford different inferences. For

example, Levinson discusses how speakers of Dutch and Japanese typically use an intrinsic

and relative coordinate system with a high level of abstraction, for instance, using relative

deictic left-‐right positioning rather than cardinal East-‐West. While speakers of other

languages, like Mayan and Bantu, use different reference frames that may also involve

absolute positioning, for instance, when geographic facts such as mountains and rivers are

their dominant relatum (Levinson 2003: 93). This indicates that basic facts affect cultural

coordinate systems and worldview implicature.

Some social facts are cultural assumptions of time, such as in TIME IS MONEY. The

epistemic quality of social facts relies on their status function that relies on common sense.

Social facts loose meaning when the status is no longer supported sufficiently. The fact that

money is essential to the functioning of a community makes it “intentionality relative”

(Searle 2010: 17). Likewise, subjective worldviews can be presented as intentionality-‐relative

spatial constructions (Evans 2013; Jaszczolt 2009). The pairing of physical spatial fact with

abstract moral fact (Wavell 1986), of certainty with deonticity (Jaszczolt 2009: 32-‐37; Searle

2010: 4), leads to the hypothesis that discourse-‐space analysis should lead to finding

variation in the epistemic and deontic ground rationale of a discourse.

The beauty of time and space phenomenology is that it is an open system, based on

one generic spatial organising principle (Levinson 2003). Moreover, the organising principle

of spatial cognition comes in various coordinate systems that are so adaptable that they can

accommodate worldviews in an unquantifiable number of ways. This acrobatic mental ability

is fundamental to human reasoning, language use, social interaction, and adaptation in

other contexts. The coordinate system satisfies the cognitive need to frame worlds into

layered attention spaces and to relativise and understand relational networks from different

vantage points. When fact-‐based spatial logic forms the implicit ground for moral-‐based,

abstract logic (Wavell 1986) by virtue of analogy, the challenge is to find a way to identify

the spatial ground-‐rationale of worldview constructions.

3.3 From time and space frames to politically motivated worldviews

Political discourse is based, not only in a geo-‐space, but also in an institutionally determined

time frame and a narrative continuum of past, present and future perspectives. However,

the narrative is not necessarily from past to future, but various directions can be presented.

The schematic frames of reference of discourse worlds affect the deliberation space and

likely directions of coherent fit, but whatever direction the narrative takes, it presumes a

default past-‐present-‐future real-‐time continuity. As Herman (2003: 165) observes, stories

provide “domain-‐general” tools for thinking that suggest narrative structure as a resource

for thinking. The analogy between worldview construction and narrative structure is in the

domain-‐general spatial coordinate system. However, in narrative it is used in a more formal

way to provide a sense of narrative development. In a discourse world, the coordinate

system functions as a schematic ground upon which various scenarios can be explored

within a given or presumed worldview frame. A worldview frame functions as the context in

which facts and morals have meaning, as a schematic ground for the logic of narrative

development. In political discourse cultural conventions of narrative development are a

significant feature because these conventions are presumed as common knowledge, giving

mainstream political discourse the implicit power of presumption.

The cognitive affordances of narrative strongly suggest a certain direction for reasoning

(Herman 2003: 10, 165-‐166). In political discourse, time and space-‐based narrative structure

coordinates ideological (spatial) stance, direction and modality of force in its intentions for

political action, considering that:

An ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas that provides the basis for organized political

action, whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power.

(Heywood 2007: 11)

Heywood’s sequential coordinate structure of political ideology involves (a) a worldview of

the here and now, (b) a future vision of the ‘good society’ and (c) an explanation for political

action to satisfy or secure the future (Heywood 2007: 12). But this structure for reasoning

may change over time, or be different for pragmatic reasons. In their overview of cultural

influences on the concept of time, Nuñez and Cooperrider (2013: 224) describe how time

has become a conscious organising principle fairly recently in the evolution of mankind. This

change in the conceptualisation of time marked an ‘epistemic paradigm shift’ (Kuhn 1962)

that gained in popularity at the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century, particularly in

industrialising countries (cf. Soule 1956). Considering that this development did not occur in

isolated and non-‐technological cultures it may indicate that time, as a vehicle for reasoning,

coincides with technological advances and the need for the temporal qualification and

quantification of dynamic processes that today seem quite normal in Western societies.

In a similar vein, Dunmire (2011) suggests that political reasoning has shifted from

stability to continuity from known past and present into predictions of the unknown future.

Heywood’s ideology-‐structure also fits in with the epistemic paradigm shift from stable,

value-‐oriented ideology to process-‐oriented ideology. We are witnessing a fundamental

change in politics from post-‐war static ideological motivation to a flexible, pragmatic

motivation in Western (Kirchheimer 1966), particularly in European populism and in Dutch

politics in general (Dittrich 1987; Knippenberg 2003). An example of 21st Century populist

ideology is the metaphor TSUNAMI IS IMMIGRATION that resonated in Dutch parliament for quite

a few years (Wilders 20068). It suggests a scenario of immanent threat that bypasses reason

and appeals directly to the emotion of fear and with it a desire for security.

Space is the factual discourse builder, whereas time facilitates modularity in

reasoning and constructing subjective, normative, worldview-‐based discourse. The ground

on which we navigate in the abstract world to commit ourselves to knowing and believing

must be spatial, simply because that is how we think and make sense of the world.

Worldviews and their suggestive cognitive affordances require a critical assessment of the

epistemic, factual quality of the types of frames by which we construct them. To find

answers to Apostel’s last question about the nature of worldview, we need to address the

basic principles that ground reasoning and find variations in coordinate systems of time,

space and point of view. The hypothesis is that if a worldview construction is cohesively

strong enough and pragmatically viable, it can be adopted as an implicit background

rationale for intentions for action and motivation for ideologically motivated politics. If the

logic of time and space frames of reference functions as the structure of common ground it

makes sense to investigate how their coordinate systems vary.

To illustrate how the theories discussed here can be operationalized, the following

section reports on the development of a discourse space model to find variation in

worldview constructions of Dutch parties. As Evans and Levinson (2009) point out, the

primacy of spatial cognition cannot be understood as a universal practice, but rather as a

mental principle that affords coordinate systems. The theory is applied here to find variation

8 Geert Wilders, reported in De Volkskrant 06/10/06 (last accessed 07-‐06-‐2014)

in the abstract discursive coordinate system of worldview frames of reference, vantage point

and attitude. It is not a linguistic model, but rather takes a more abstract discourse-‐

construction approach. A purely linguistic analysis would not bring out contextual

presumptions embedded in the discursive coordinate system of a discourse.

To make results of discourse-‐space analysis useful for political interpretations,

worldview analysis requires a strong qualitative grounding to identify markers of attitude

that are relevant in the particular political context and to distinguish types of coordinate

systems that relate to the nature of the discourse domain. The resulting frames can then

serve to reveal variation in the ground rational underlying politically-‐motivated texts. The

main questions are: how spatial variation in text-‐internal logic can be extracted; and

secondly on which kinds of political dimensions can they be projected? To illustrate how

theory of spatial cognition could be applied to find variation in worldview frames, Dutch

political texts (manifestos) were analysed for time and space frames of reference and

attitude. Levinson’s observation that speakers of Dutch (and Japanese) typically use intrinsic

and relative frames of reference at a high level of abstraction (Levinson 2003: 93) supports

the relevance of the approach in the Dutch context.

4. A Time-‐Space model for Dutch manifesto analysis

4.1 Time and space in the evolution of Dutch politics

To understand the affordances of spatial reasoning in Dutch politics, we need to consider

some basic changes in the history of modern Dutch politics. I propose to start out from the

biggest political upheaval caused by the Second World War. In the years following the

Second World War, Dutch parties distinguished themselves on ideological and religious

grounds but they had an important common goal: to reconstruct the nation and to regain its

regional and international position (Dittrich 1987). However, this national solidarity and

tolerance between parties developed gradually from consensus to competition into a “catch-‐

all people’s party” strategy that overshadows ideological ideals (Krouwel 1998). The strategy

involves addressing individual, basic desires, rather than collective needs and values. Other

influences on doing politics involve national efforts and external pressure to establish a

European Union, untouchable economic globalisation, and the mediatisation of politics.

These developments have fundamentally changed the power and status function of the

nation state. The Netherlands today faces a decline in national autonomy and parties need

to rearticulate their raison d’ètre and identity. In the past four elections, more than twenty

national parties have been vying for votes and elections have become a fierce competition,

resulting in a pragmatic appeal that reaches beyond national solidarity and ideological

communities. The focus of attention is on change and the unknown future, a development

that Dunmire (2011) describes as typically Western. Worldviews of the present and

projections of the unknown future legitimise urgency for action, as with the Tsunami

example, as if “the future … legitimates the present and its conflicts and sufferings” (Heller

1999: 10, quoted in Dunmire 2011). The current future-‐oriented discourse of Dutch politics

almost reverses continuous time by downplaying knowledge and experience of the past. In

addition, electoral power has diminished as a result of coalition governments that are

formed after the elections. As a result, a vote for a winning party does not mean that their

policies will be realised. Majority governments can only be formed through compromises

laid down in coalition agreements with other, sometimes unlikely partners (e.g., the current

Liberal VVD with Labour PvdA minority coalition). Considering the number of parties, the

lack of electoral influence, transparency, consistency in party attitudes, and the focus on the

unknown future, there is a clear need for reliable estimates of party positions to inform the

public as well as to predict election outcomes at election time (Krouwel and Wall 2014: 277-‐

278). Text analysis for the temporal and spatial ground of worldview constructions addresses

the nature of the ground rationale of party programmes. Rather than analysing what they

are about, discourse-‐space analysis can reveal the scope of attention and point of view from

which issues and policies are framed.

Time and space frames indicate the scope of a party’s worldview and are considered

indicators of conservative (limited scope)-‐-‐progressive (wide scope) attitude. In order to be

able to relate discourse-‐space analysis to political dimensions, the hypothesis is that the

wider the scope of a party’s worldview, the more space and time there is to negotiate

solutions to social problems. And the narrower the scope, the more the focus is on internal

affairs.

4.2 A corpus for discourse-‐space analysis of Dutch election manifestos

To develop the model for discourse-‐space analysis, a stable corpus of like texts was selected

to avoid stylistic and functional text-‐type variations. Election manifestos were selected as

the most stable corpus over time and across parties (cf. Van Elfrinkhof et al. 2014: 301). For

decades, election manifestos have been landmarks of parties’ worldviews around election

time. They form a reliable corpus for cross-‐party analysis and can also be applied in a historic

study of individual parties’ developments. The manifesto is the reference point of a party’s

focus and stance at election time, of its assessment of the current state of affairs, focus

issues, policies and commitment to achieve their goals.

The narrative structure of the manifestos included in the corpus is generally three

tiered. The manifestos begin with an assessment of the current state of affairs, in an

introductory section that sets the temporal and spatial frame of attention for policies and

goals. The second part concerns specific topics, sub-‐issues and policies that ‘fit’ in the

attention field delineated in their introductory paragraphs. The third part is less consistent:

in some manifestos it is absent, in others, it is a list of bullet points or policies that address

the issues mentioned in the second part, or simply summarises them. Because the goal is to

find variation in worldview constructions, the corpus was limited to the introductory

sections.

The model was inspired by Chilton’s Time Space Modality model (2004). Werth’s

(1999) lexical modality scale served as a basis for the analysis of modal force-‐direction that

regulates Attitude relative to the vantage point (Cienki, Kaal, and Maks 2010).9 The resulting

Time-‐Space-‐Attitude (TSA) model is designed to identify real and abstract time and space

references and their complementation. Attitude was annotated relative to time and space

referents that emerged from a close reading of the data, based on Chilton’s modality ranking

(2005: 89). The vantage point is situated in the here and now of the nation state at election

time (Figure 1). Annotation was done manually, using the Kyoto Annotation Format.

9 For detailed description of the model and the Time, Space and Attitude nodes, please see Kaal (2012, and Van Elfrinkhof et al. 2014).

Figure 1. A Time-‐Space-‐Attitude (TSA) model for Dutch manifesto analysis.

On the basis of pilot TSA annotation and reliability tests, a codebook was designed for

further annotation. To illustrate the interpretive potential of results, three parties on

different points in the political landscape are compared. Attitude was annotated on a five-‐

point scale of epistemic and deontic complementation to the annotated time and space

expressions in order to adjust time and space rankings with a +2 to -‐2 factor. Variation in

party positions is not sought in the quantifiable salience differences, but rather in terms of

relative differences. For example if a party mentions “the barbaric Middle Ages” once in its

introduction and other parties do not mention the period at all, then the per cent difference

is significant. The TSA model allows for the visualisation of time and spatial scope, and

vantage point in simple diagrams.

It is not easy to provide samples of relevant text snippets because it is not possible to

catch the temporal and spatial ground of a text in a single sentence, but some examples may

serve as an indication of the kind of annotation applied at the text level. The examples are

taken from the corpus of introductory paragraphs of 2010 election manifestos (EM 2010

Intro), comparing the time and space frames of three very different parties: the populist

Party for Freedom (PVV), the Christian Democrats (CDA) and the Green Left (GL) party

(Figures 2-‐4). In sentence (1) the Party for Freedom (PVV) posits an unspecified period as a

positive national experience. This positive stance contrasts with the here and now location

of sentence (2), strengthening the parties’ dissatisfaction with the local, current state of

affairs and suggesting that the current misery has been brought about by an ‘outside’

influence, ‘Islam’:

(1) NL/Very Past>10-‐Present

“Our ancestors have transformed a boggy swamp-‐delta into something the whole world is jealous

of.” (EM2010 PVV Intro)

(Onze voorouders hebben een zompige moerasdelta omgevormd tot iets waar de hele wereld

jaloers op is.)

(2) Local/Now-‐Near Future process

“Borough after borough, street after street, school after school is being islamified.” (EM2010 PVV

Intro)

(Wijk na wijk, straat na straat, school na school worden geïslamificeerd.)

The contrast connects political stance with the premises of the argument and can be

interpreted as traditional and nationalistic. The contrast in (1) and (2) evokes a sense of

dissatisfaction with the here and now. While holding outsiders (the islam) responsible for

unwanted change, the focus throughout these introductory paragraphs remains on the here

and now (Figure 2). On the other hand, the Green Left (3) and the Christian Democrats (4)

are forward looking into the future:

(3) NL/Now-‐Future process

The GreenLeft wants to look ahead. Politicians must do what is necessary in view of the future of

our children. (EM2010 GL Intro)

(GroenLinks wil vooruitkijken. Politici moeten nu doen wat nodig is en denken aan de toekomst van

onze kinderen.)

This sentence appeals to primary feeling of family protection into the distant future, and

‘must’ and ‘necessary’ connote urgency and inevitability (Figure 3). In terms of their

environmental programme, the broad scope of the GL party’s worldview can be explained in

terms of human responsibility for sustainability. The introductory paragraphs of the Christian

Democrat party focus on measures to be taken here and now (less government, more

society), and responsibilities for the long-‐term (rentmeesterschap -‐ stewardship,

duurzaamheid, bestendigheid -‐ sustainability). But infinite space and time are in the

background as an important secondary attention space that can be interpreted in terms of

religious space: God’s infinite realm (Figure 4).

Figure 2. Time and Space range of primary (black), secondary (grey) and tertiary (white) attention fields (PVV

EM2010 Intro).

Figure 3. Time and Space range primary (black), secondary (grey) and tertiary (white) attention fields (GL EM 2010 Intro).

Figure 4. Time and Space range of primary (black), secondary (grey) and tertiary (white) attention fields (CDA EM2010 Intro).

These graphic representations of the scope and levels of attention in party worldviews

visualise the spatial and temporal frame in which party-‐political reasoning is based. The

resulting relative differences between parties can serve further political interpretations for

party positioning.

Parties have in common that they focus on the here and now, the political mandatory

space. But we find differences between parties in their emphasis (black) and in the

peripheral scope (grey) and beyond the immediate situation (white). Quantitative results

visualise the scope of worldviews but quantification is not directly linked with salience

because the frames operate in the background, as common ground in worldview

construction. However, the diagrams do reveal relative variations. Figures 2-‐4 show that the

vantage point of these manifestos, and in fact of all of the manifestos analysed, is the nation

state at election time, as might reasonably be expected, but the peripheral space shows

significant variation.

A cautious interpretation of variation in the scope of layered attention space onto

political dimensions is that the Christian Democrats are more conservative than content or

linguistic analysis would suggest. Their focus is on past-‐present and internal affairs and the

attention is predominantly in the institutional range of government periods and national

borders. The PVV is rather black and white in contrasting home affairs with international

affairs, often in a negative sense. The GL party has a broad scope within the limitations of

political agency in time and space, but with a main focus on the here and now, and the near

future.

It does not seem possible to measure the ‘reality factor’ of time and space frames

because it is presumed a metaphysical analogy between real space and abstract space in

thought and language. The pragmatic effect of the frames does not depend on quantity, but

rather on their cohesive role and conceptual impact on the construction of meaning.

Salience is not the main issue in the analysis of time and space frames of reference because

they function in the background as an intrinsic worldview grounding throughout the entire

manifesto. However, quantifying time and space references helps to detect differences

between parties’ attention spaces and to identify levels of attention space. It is, however, a

valid distinguishing feature that may best be represented in a comparative ranking to find

salient variation in coordinate systems.

A comparison with linguistic and content analysis of the same texts shows that

worldview analysis links up with the Progressive-‐Conservative dimension, rather than with

Left-‐Right (see Van Elfrinkhof et al. 2014: 316-‐318). This seems to confirm the hypothesis

that the temporal and spatial scope of a worldview is an indicator of conservative (limited

scope)-‐-‐progressive (wide scope) attitude. The TSA approach could therefore complement

content and linguistic analysis in terms of revealing the underlying coordinate systems of

text-‐intrinsic logic, that are not explicit aspects of meaning making in texts.

5. How ‘real’ are time and space in politically motivated worldviews?

Theory of the primacy of spatial cognition provides a key to ‘how’, in the background,

physical and abstract, factual and moral convictions are constructed as if they were all basic

facts (cf. Searle 2010). The analogy between the coordinate systems of the real world and

abstract worldviews supports a sense of reality. The logic of the generic spatial coordinate

system, based in the primacy of spatial cognition, lends illocutionary force and rhetorical,

epistemic quality to abstract worldview constructions, particularly so in political discourse.

TSA analysis may reveal variation in the politically motivated ground logic of discursive

constructions that can reveal differences and shifts in stance.

As discussed above, Levinson (2003) and Nuñez and Cooperrider (2013) note the

importance of recognising the cultural, subconscious cognitive level of conceptual reasoning

as expressed in language. In the framework of critical discourse analysis, a cognitive

discourse investigation of the construction of text-‐ and discourse-‐world logic addresses this

culturally determined aspect of politically motivated discourse. In his pragmatic social

philosophy, Searle claims a logical relationship between material, social, existential and

linguistic structure in layers of making sense of social ontology by way of “a single unifying

principle” and “one formal linguistic mechanism” for “a secure understanding of (…)

ontology” (2010: 7). Furthermore, he makes a critical link between language use (speech

acts) and the construction of intention for action. Where cognitive-‐linguistic approaches to

spatial cognition address the conceptualizing affordances of linguistic constructions of

meaning, a discourse-‐space approach can include basic aspects of cognition, language use

and social behaviour with attention to the cognitive affordances of discursive meaning

constructions and their possible social impact. The basic coordinate systematicity of time

and space frames, as described in cognitive-‐linguistic theory (Levinson 2003), can be

projected on discourse as discursive markers of text-‐world logic, meaning construction in

context and the social function and illocutionary force of a text (Searle 2010). Qualitative

analysis of both space and time frames seems essential to do a process-‐oriented analysis of

constructions of meaning that are subject to change in their volatile socio-‐historical context.

Theory of spatial cognition can then be extended to theories on the power of language to

challenge or uphold institutional power and its knowledge and values.

In critical discourse studies, approaches to constructional affordances of time and

space in political discourse were pioneered in Chilton’s work on Deictic Space Theory (2010),

Evans and Chilton (2010) on language, cognition and space, Cap’s proximisation theory

(2008) and Dunmire’s work on projecting the future in political discourse (2011). These

approaches focus on linguistic lexical-‐semantic and syntactic structures and there is a need

for analysis beyond the sentence unit and semantic networks and to include more context in

the analysis. Text analysis for conceptual constructions also requires a text-‐world approach

to find time and space frames of reference and their intrinsic, non-‐verbal effects on meaning

making (cf. Werth 1999 and Gavins 2007 on text worlds). Another factor to be considered is

the historic context, beyond the text, as exemplified in the case of Dutch politics. Discourse

analysis should address text-‐external cognitive, cultural and genre-‐specific aspects that

contextualise or localise language use and inscribes its patterns of making sense. Text

internal and external factors and their socio-‐cognitive role need to be qualified to be able to

interpret the discursive affordances of spatial constructions, and particularly so in

rhetorically rich political discourse.

The subjective positioning of a point of view in a scope of attention is an interesting

critical approach as knowing the scope and vantage point of the coordinate system of an

argument means that it can be challenged and transformed by moving the vantage point or

changing the scope. In the discourse-‐space analysis for party positioning discussed in this

article, time and space frames of reference give insight into variation in the vantage point

and the scope of attention that support political attitudes and rationalise party programmes.

If the same cognitive principle applies to human reasoning in general, it makes sense to

apply worldview analysis in other investigations of social practice, by first identifying the

spatial logic of the coordinate system of a particular community and its affordances for

meaning making.

To answer the question at the beginning of this article: “Given that we all live in the

same world, how is it we can have such very different worldviews?”, a case has been made

for the analysis of the coordinate system of a discourse and its rhetorical affordances. The

question concerns spatial reasoning and the rhetorical (evidential and persuasive) nature of

time-‐ and space frames of reference in worldview constructions. Worldview analysis is a way

of illuminating the ‘mythical’ (Lyotard 1984 [1979]) aspect of narrative entailment of

discourse spaces as the cognitive ground of discursive constructions of meaning. In this way,

discourse space theory goes beyond the words of a text and addresses subconscious

reasoning patterns that intuitively “connect the dots” (Oakley and Coulson 2008). Worldview

analysis does not per se investigate deliberate manipulation or legitimation, but rather it

investigates the illocutionary power of a more primitive systematicity of worldview

coherence for sense making. The question of “how real are time and space” in the abstract

world cannot be answered with any precision as the reality factor is as fluid as thought,

language and meaning itself. But potentially they are real enough to prime intentions for

action in politics as well as in any other form of communication for social action.

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Biosketch

Bertie Kaal is about to finish her PhD in Political Text Analysis at the VU University Amsterdam (The Network Institute). Her main interest is in discourse-‐space analysis and rhetorical structures in language use for social action. She is also interested in methods for text analysis in comparative political studies to improve public awareness of parties’ ground rationale so that people can cast an informed vote (Kaal et al. (eds), From Text to Political Positions, Benjamins 2014). Email a.r.kaal (at) vu.nl

How ‘real’ are Time and Space in politically motivated worldviews?

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