Democracy: Quo Vadis? Use and Meaning of 'Democracy' in the Taiwanese English-Language Press at Electoral Times of Power Transitions

Democracy has been a consistent public diplomacy tool for the Taiwanese government to establish an ideological connection with and obtain international acceptance by democratic nations. But as a catchword of contemporary political discourse, what exactly does it mean? The present paper assesses the meaning and usage of the signifier ‘democracy’ in the op-eds of the Taiwanese English-language press. To examine whether electoral period and poll results condition attention and use of the term ‘democracy’, the selected periods of investigation (Dec 2007-June 2008; October 2015-April 2016) include two key moments in recent Taiwan history when national elections democratically resulted in a power transfer. Two ideologically divergent newspapers, the China Post and the Taipei Times are selected as units of analysis for a corpus-linguistic study, exploring the collocational profile of the term ‘democracy’. Additionally, a content analysis maps thematic hierarchies and constitutive components of the ‘democracy’ to understand the notion’s conceptualization. This is complemented by a discourse analysis probing into argumentation patterns and framing processes. Findings show that the assessments of the overall democratic functioning largely depend on the political context of the electoral times. But they also reveal a partisan nature of the newspapers in the way their op-eds steer voter behavior before the polling day and engage in damage control, when their preferred party loses the election, while all the same lauding the electoral democratic process.

Publication year:2023

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