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Chapter 9 - New Technology, Language and Gesture in Contemporary Indian Political Discourse

from Part II - By the People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2022

By
Rukmini Bhaya Nair
Edited by
Ashley Weinberg
Ashley Weinberg
Affiliation:
University of Salford
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Summary

In the field of language and gesture studies, it is noteworthy that no research-based studies of politicians or other public figures have been undertaken in the Indian context. This absence is particularly striking given that India is the world’s largest democracy, with as much lively diversity in its styles of political campaigning as in its linguistic and cultural structures. This chapter is an attempt to fill this lacuna. The span of time considered in the present analysis is the four-year period dating from before Narendra Modi became Prime Minister to just before he was elected to a second term. My suggestion is that this short period was pivotal in modern Indian politics because a primary tool of human communication, namely language, came to be conjoined with a dazzling set of new technologies. I present results from a study of Modi’s speeches and gestures and show how this has also had a significant effect on a younger generation of Indian leaders and obliged them to define their own styles of technologically mediated leadership, with interesting consequences. I end by offering researchers a putative general framework for the study of political gestures as they influence both national narratives and the personal stances of individual politicians.

Keywords

languagepolitical gesturesIndiapolitical discourseemotionssystematics of gesture
Type
Chapter
Information
Psychology of Democracy
Of the People, By the People, For the People
 , pp. 195 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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