Religious vs. Secular Discourse and the Change of Political Power in Montenegro

This paper explores the two opposing ideologies represented in the public discourse of their actors, religious and secular leaders, after the introduction of the Law on Religious Freedom in Montenegro. The paper addresses discourse in a complex social and political scenery that affected Montenegro in the period January–August 2020. There is a standpoint shared by diplomatic bodies that, for the first time in Montenegrin history, the Church has impacted the outcome of secular elections. In this paper, we have examined the linguistic exponents in ad litteram statements of two leaders revealing the peculiarities of the two opposing, yet intertwined, discourses. We have selected readers’ comments to show how part of the Montenegrin people reacted to the events that have permeated Montenegro’s reality. We have used a critical discourse approach, more precisely van Dijk’s we/they opposition, to show how actors achieved a rhetorical strategy of glorifying us and criticizing them. Finally, we interpret abstract notions in the leaders’ statements through the prism of van Dijk’s categories of ideological discourse. The findings of the papers show how abstract notions such as religion and politics in a specific part of Montenegrin history have become linguistically embedded in the two leaders’ discourses.