Discursive performativity and political moralisation in Indian tv debates

In the contestation of ideologies, the performativity of moral appeals in spoken political discourse is used as the primary instrument for amassing the favourable public opinion. The previous decade has witnessed the rise of anti-immigrant, xenophobic and militaristic nationalism which has been bolstered by the formations of right-wing parties’ governments across the globe from United States’ Republican Party (November 2016), to Western Europe – Swiss People’s Party (October 2015), National Alliance in Latvia (2014), Finns Party in Finland (2015), Belgian New Flemish Alliance (2014), and two consecutive victories of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India (2014 and 2019). The BJP harnessed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s oratory skills (in 2014) to cultivate the emotions of ‘hope’, ‘trust’ and ‘doing the right thing’ among the Indian voters. However, In the last year of Modi’s first tenure as Indian PM, BJP did not have favourable conditions to make a comeback to power due to the slowdown in country’s economic growth, demonetization, and highest rate of unemployment. Although the scenario shifted after a tragic terrorist attack on the convoy of Indian armed force CRPF, in Pulwama, Jammu & Kashmir on 14th February 2019. The social media was full of posts and comments demanding to avenge the deaths of soldiers. This sentiment was largely advocated by the mainstream media particularly in the debates on Indian tv news channels. Where the discourse is upgraded from being the product of contrived public sphere, to being an arena of simulated battle for politicians and parties’ representatives, where they engage in locking horns by advancing emphatic accounts of socio-political and moral legitimacy. These debates emanates from the everyday political episodes, prominence of which are determined by the political economy of media institutions and accessibility of the discussants. This paper is centred on analyzing the role of tv debates in transmitting the moral cues to the audiences after Pulwama attack. With drawing the framework of public sphere (Habermas, 1989) and speech-act theory (Austin, 1962) and making use of the Foucauldian approach of conducting three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010), this paper will analyze the debates of two English language Indian news channels Times Now and Republic World, to find the answers to the following questions: [1] how the issue of terrorist attack was constructed in the debate(s)? [2] which are the elements of ‘performativity’ deployed by the debate moderator and discussants? [3] how the illocutionary power of certain terms – metaphors, simile, euphemism, ellipses, superordinates was harnessed in supplying the moral cues to audiences pertaining to the Modi and his masculine-image? [4] how the moral signals of hyper-nationalism and militaristic revenge were transmitted in the arguments put forth by the moderator and discussants? [5] how the morality of certain discussants was questioned while being superseded by the emotionally charged morals of others? The analysis will highlight conventionally deflated nature of ideology driven and value laden journalistic tv debates that supply the emotional and normative moral cues to the voters during the times of armed conflict with other countries.