ABSTRACT

This paper combines insights from Deictic Space Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory to analyze the Tunisian President’s inaugural speech following his victory in the October 2019 elections. Detailed critical discourse analysis of the deictic exponents and the metaphorical image schemas employed in the text showed a Manichean opposition between the pure/good people (Us) versus the corrupt/evil ‘elites’ (Them), nostalgia to a pristine revolutionary moment, a pan-Arab discourse which anchors the Israeli-Palestinian conflict close to the local geography and a radical form of populism, which grounds sovereignty within a transcendent theocratic cosmology. It is suggested that the upsurge of populism in Tunisian politics could be explained by the disenchantment with the deficient and rather ‘fake’ Islamo-nationalist consensus politics, the inappropriate neoliberal policies imposed by fund-raising bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) as well as the fragmentation, if not total erosion, of viable public spaces for rational deliberation and decision-making processes as a result of the ‘digital era.’

摘要

本文结合指示空间理论和概念隐喻理论的见解，分析突尼斯总统在 2019 年 10 月选举中获胜后的就职演说。对文本中使用的指示指数和隐喻图像图式的详细批判性话语分析表明，纯/好人（我们）与腐败/邪恶的“精英”（他们）之间存在摩尼教式的对立，对原始革命时刻的怀念，泛阿拉伯话语将以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突锚定在当地地理附近，以及一种激进的民粹主义形式，将主权置于超然的神权宇宙学中。有人认为，突尼斯政治中民粹主义的高涨可以解释为对有缺陷且相当“虚假”的伊斯兰民族主义共识政治的觉醒，