Cognitive maps of discourses of British conservative and Australian liberal political manifestos

Abstract

The research endeavors to study and determine the influence of cognitive maps on production of political manifestos discourse. The research has been conducted in the framework of Sociocognitive Discourse Studies. The results show that discourse cognitive structure of British Conservative Party and Australian Liberal Party manifestos is characterized by different sets of cognitive maps on the level of communicative strategies and somewhat similar sets of cognitive schemas on the level of communicative tactics. Applying the method of interpropositional semantic analysis, the communicative strategy and communicative tactic of comparison was identified in Australian Liberal Party manifesto. Despite the close affinity between political discourses of the UK and Australia, there are significant differences in patterns of information organization in online manifestos of the ruling parties to engage the community and enhance persuasion.

Keywords

• cognitive maps
• discourse analysis
• information processing
• political communication
• strategies of discourse production
• tactics of discourse production