“Maintain Your Hope and Know That You Are Loved.” Mr. Anthony Albanese’s Discursive Construction of Collective Emotional Resilience

Aleksandra Zubrzycka-Czarnecka

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.20.3.04

Authors

Aleksandra Zubrzycka-Czarnecka University of Warsaw, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7765-1907

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.20.3.04

Keywords:

Emotional Resilience, The Voice Referendum, Empathic Policy Analysis Framework, Australia, Emotional Discourse

Abstract

This paper employs Stephanie Paterson’s empathic policy analysis framework to explore the discursive construction of emotional resilience. The research conducted for the paper focuses on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s notion of emotional resilience during a press conference he delivered on October 15, 2023, in the context of the Voice referendum. Mr. Albanese discursively frames the concept of emotional resilience as emotional stability that builds the community’s resistance to crisis situations, enables progress, and avoids division. The study identifies two emotional discourses influencing this portrayal of emotional resilience: (1) a discourse of emotional stability among opponents of the Voice referendum and (2) a discourse of emotional stability among supporters of the referendum. The article analyzes the assumptions underlying this representation and the silences—that which has been left unspoken or implied—associated with it.

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Author Biography

Aleksandra Zubrzycka-Czarnecka, University of Warsaw, Poland

Aleksandra Zubrzycka-Czarnecka, Ph.D., habilitation in political science, is a political scientist, a researcher in public policy, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies. Her research areas include emotions in public policy, housing policy, public participation and deliberation in public policy, comparative and international social policy, interpretive policy analysis, and qualitative research methods (especially discourse analysis).

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