Aggressive rhetoric in Croatian post-election political discourse

Abstract

Aggressive rhetoric in Croatian political discourse became particularly prominent during the parliamentary election in 2015. A deep polarization of society yielded a new political option, one of the strongest since the beginning of Croatian independence in 1990. After the great election success, MOST got the opportunity to form the new Croatian Government either with HDZ or SDP, the two most influential parties in Croatia. This situation caused enormous tension in the postelection period and consequently intensified the politicians’ aggressive rhetoric. The aim of this study is to describe, interpret and explicate linguistic and rhetorical devices which contributed to the aggressiveness, and ultimately conclude which of the political options listed above is the most aggressive.

Keywords

• aggressive rhetoric
• hate speech
• linguistic devices
• political discourse
• rhetorical devices