Discourse in Statecraft

Push and pull are more hazardous than negative information.

US is number one economy of the world, militarily strongest nation and sole proprietor of information industry. Hegemony of US over global news has been its greatest strength. The noise erupting from America becomes the voice of whole world.  Right after the 9/11attack, President Bush delivered a speech. On the fifth anniversary, President Bush addressed the whole nation again.One salient linguistic feature of both speeches is classification. A critical discourse analysis of Bush’s two speeches reveals Bush’s deep-rooted ideology that America is the most powerful and dominant country in the world.
Parshan Vikar, an Indian carried out discourse analysis of Modi' speeches and other 35 documents of BJP leaders' speeches. BJP leadership articulate "Islamophobia" in their speeches, interviews and podcast. They also articulate Indian's economic supremacy and label Pakistan with extremism.

Discourse is lead instrument  for persuasion of  masses for attainment of internal and external policy objectives. Discourse is a conceptual generalization of conversation within each modality and context of communication. A political discourse is the totality of all speech acts used in political discussions, as well as rules of public policy, sanctified by tradition and proven by experience. The text and talk of  politicians or political institutions and other members of government constitute a whole discourse.

Our national Discourse is fraught with many loopholes. There is no unanimity of thought, it is meaningless and mostly rhetoric, prepared by PR officers without solid input from leadership.

Nations are victim of post modernism. Ideas, narratives, policies, PR strategies has been  deconstructed. Modern societies are tackling issues through reconstruction of narrative but fragmenting main narrative into sub-narratives. Human attention has been diverted to small penny pockets of social media. In a world of social media people communicate in echo chambers. Stake holders deal separately with each area.

Main stream media is lacking behind due to this particular reason that it can not create so many rooms which are readily available on social media platforms.

Missing information creates entropy which increases load on system. This load ,coupled with lack of understanding the communication cycle on part of officials, compels government to adopt measures which are detrimental to democratic norms.

Push and pull are more hazardous than negative information.

The flow of information is similar to extracting water from well. Bull plough the buckets, Each bucket carries a water and put it in a a vessel. Flow of water is regulated through khalas.

Everything is connected to everything. That's the theory of everything which is spread over  four quadrant: individual internal (Q1), individual external(Q2), collective internal (Q3), and collective external (Q4) which is society. Collective internal (Q3) is culture and language. It is Q3 which influence , Q1 and Q4. Language/ discourse is main stay of formation of society and individual traits. Q3 defines how should individual think. This is where the political leadership and media operates to set the tone of individuals and society as a whole.

Information is geo-political resource. Zero sum contest is going on for control of data & technology and human resource to convert data into information.

4 key areas of Info has been revolutionized; to influence the political and economic environment of other actors; to create economic growth and wealth; to enable a decision-making edge over competitors; to communicate quickly and securely. History teaches us that, almost every chaotic political situation across the world is born out of unprintable and insulting languages.To avoid a situation of political chaos, we must move away from unnecessary trivializations, personality attacks and most of all; irrational twist of words to generate insults. Politics and governance is a serious business. Weak minds are not expected to venture into this business. But empty statements are equally hazardous in a world which is deluged with billions of bits. According to a rough estimates, 4 billion posts are made daily on digital platforms. There is no room for hollow statements and meaningless words. Every word should carry a message.  

The world will understand us only as our story reaches them.  A  story that is repeated over and over again, the world begins to accept it as truth.

The number of Urdu alphabets  is 36 and English 26.  The number of alphabets of other languages ​​will also be close to them.
Every story in the world revolves around these alphabets.

How big a country is and what is its place in the world depends on the story of that country and nation. The development of science, the extent of industry, the stability of the economy, the place of culture, all of them need a story. Your story is everything and the onus of making a state's story is on its political leadership.

The writer is a political and defence analyst based in Islamabad and holds a PhD in International Relations. He can be reached at atiquesheikh
2000@gmail.com.

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