Hate Speech in Israeli and Georgian Political Discourse

The paper aims to explore the impact of different socio-cultural environment on the political discourse and analyze the place of hate speech in this discourse, the reasons for its use and influence on the society. The issue requires interdisciplinary approach, not only linguistic, but sociopolitical analysis too, so we consider it to be the interest of sociolinguistic research.

Based on the comparative case study methodology, it highlights the similarities and differences between the discourses of Israel and Georgia in terms of using hate speech.Special emphases are made on the use of verbal abuse by the Israeli and Georgian politicians and public officials.

Besides linguistic research methods (data collection, coding, content analysis of social media posts, articles, interviews, pre-election meetings and debates) the paper relies on the theories of Elliot Aronson (developed in his books “Social Animal” and “Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion”) for explaining the possible reasons of hate speech (we will try to explain, which reason seems more applicable and how it’s represented in each research country). The paper refers to Aristotelian Triad (Ethos, Pathos & Logos) in order to analyze hate speakers’ rhetorical appeals and efficiency of means of persuasion used by them.

The paper analyzes those special cases from the modern Israeli history, when freedom of expression is restricted even in this kind of free, developed and democratic state due to national interests and suggests that this kind of legislative regulations on hate speech should be implemented in Georgia as well (we will criticize existing ineffective restrictions from Georgian Legislation).

The paper argues that considering the importance of peace, sustainable development and security and the necessity of protecting specific/minority groups from prejudice and discrimination may sometimes lead to restriction and censorship of political and civil rights, as well as freedom of expression.