If we define politics as the inevitable and authoritative regulation of controversial issues that concern and bind the whole of society in conditions of uncertainty, competition and precarious equilibrium, then both the path of politics (= solution) and its stakes (= controversial issues) can only have a purely linguistic character. . And this is because decision-making and the determination of political issues require verbal and non-verbal communication at the interpersonal and collective-mass level.

Claiming for state power, parties in elections represent, organize and aggregate social and economic interests. But this can only be done with the help of language. Thus, competition in the party field is symbolic and verbal, in the sense that the power of each party is not limited to its electoral percentage, but is based on interactive relations within and through which the “us-them” distinction is made. In these respects, political discourse is leading and absolutely necessary. From this point of view, in political life, political language is and carries political reality.

The pre-election period, by definition, is the peak of the activation of the political and party field. This activation occurs (also) in the interweaving of power and language. Of course, in election campaigns, the interweaving of political power and language finds its privileged expression in the main (but also secondary) slogans of the parties, which are broadcast by all available means of communication: posters, TV spots, debates, social networks, interviews, etc. Campaign slogans are symbolic condensations of ideologies, programs, values ​​and attitudes, each time delimiting and classifying separate political and party identities (us and others). Party identities, which are usually formed on the basis of socio-political divisions, political divisions and political differences (concepts that do not coincide in political sociology). However, at the same time, these identities are formed, reproduced or changed in the larger context of the “mediation” of politics, the components of which are personalization and infotainment under the auspices of, of course, the soft ideology of the image.

Limit sensationalism in favor of consultations on controversial political issues rather than narcissistic politicians.

Especially in the context of programmatic convergence, the communication headquarters of the ruling (and not only) parties prefer to emphasize stylistic differences at the level of rhetoric. This is where the aestheticization of politics manifests itself in the sense that in the society of the spectacle one cannot invent and practice authoritarian strategies without turning them into aesthetic and verbal constructions. Thus, the spectacular/theatrical transformation of the electoral struggle extends inexorably to the repatriation of old and the attraction of new voters from the pool of undecided even in periods of less programmatic convergence, such as the one we are experiencing. Thus, over the decades, public consultation on issues during election campaigns has increasingly been replaced by face-to-face politics, and this is reflected in the content and style of political messages, which converge – and are accordingly framed by news reports – in the confrontation between the protagonists political scene: Papandreou – Mitsotakis in the past, Karamanlis – Papandreou a little later, Mitsotakis – Tsipras now, and so on.

Logo designers, advertising executives, and political marketers are “creative” in developing the most appropriate slogans in accordance with the position of each party in the “political market”. Of course, one cannot avoid repeating the spatial and temporal grammatical patterns and speech acts of previous campaigns, even if they were used in the past by rival party organizations. And since political discourse exhibits a kind of “indifference to contradiction,” slogans often have obscure addressees and obscure goals. Thus, for example. “first”, “together”, “forward” and “backward”, “exit”, “future” and “hope” – which are either already here or to come – “new”, “better”, “truth”, “reliability ”, “tomorrow” and “yesterday”, “experiments”, promises, promises, guarantees, assurances and agreements with the people are processed into positive and negative political advertising with the development of rhetorical and stylistic solutions that necessarily oscillate between uniformity and difference.

The same will happen in the upcoming elections. Since politics does not exist without communication, it would be desirable, in the pre-election period that has officially begun, that voters have the opportunity to judge on political, and not on non-political issues, to limit the sensation in favor of consultations around controversial political issues, and not around narcissistic politicians. In the face of often artificial emotional polarization and inter-party tribalism, the return of politics and the return to politics is the big stakes of our day.

Mr. Nikos Demertzis is Professor of Political Sociology and Communications at EKPA.