IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/qualqt/v48y2014i2p899-910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Language and ideology: quantitative thematic analysis of New Year speeches given by Czechoslovak and Czech presidents (1949–2011)

Author

Listed:
  • Radek Čech

Abstract

The relationship between ideology and language is analyzed by using quantitative linguistic methods to measure the thematic concentration of texts. The assumption is that totalitarianism and democracy represent radically different types of ideology and that this difference will be reflected in different levels of thematic concentration in texts of the same genre. The analysis focuses on the New Year speeches given by Czechoslovak and Czech presidents; these texts were chosen because they represent a relatively clearly delineated genre with a long tradition and because they are one of the most important outlets for the public expression of political opinions by the head of state. The results of statistical tests show that there exist significant differences between the thematic concentrations in the speeches of presidents from the totalitarian period and the period of democracy. The analysis also revealed that the largest differences in thematic concentrations were between the speeches made by the presidents representing the most ideologically polarized positions: the leader of the 1948 communist coup Klement Gottwald and the public face of the 1989 democratic Velvet Revolution Václav Havel. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Radek Čech, 2014. "Language and ideology: quantitative thematic analysis of New Year speeches given by Czechoslovak and Czech presidents (1949–2011)," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 899-910, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:48:y:2014:i:2:p:899-910
    DOI: 10.1007/s11135-012-9811-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11135-012-9811-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11135-012-9811-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:48:y:2014:i:2:p:899-910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.