Certain-uncertain, true-false, good-evil in Italian political speeches

Abstract

The present study aimed at analyzing the communication of Certainty and Uncertainty in a corpus of Italian political speeches (pre-election rallies and parliamentary speeches) broadcast on television. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus shows that 1) in both kinds of speech the communication of Certainty clearly prevails over the Uncertainty; 2) the latter, even if it is at a low level, is slightly higher in parliamentary speeches than in pre-election rallies; 3) in the whole corpus a contraposition constantly occurs also between Good/Evil and True/False: every speaker, regardless of his faction, describes his own party as positive and truthful (Good and True) and the opposition party as negative and untruthful (Evil and False). © Springer-Verlag 2013.