Emotional Framing of Emotional Deviants as a Political Strategy for Strengthening Collective Emotional Resilience

Abstract

This article examines how leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom used rhet oric to frame emotional deviants and strengthen collective emotional resilience during two crises in 2024. Drawing on emotion management theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), we analyze House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to the Columbia University protests and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s address during the Southport riots. Both leaders framed dissenters as emotional deviants, deployed emo tional dichotomies, and constructed “others” to consolidate solidarity. We demonstrate that emotional framing functions as a political strategy used to foster cohesion within the dominant group, suppress dissent, and narrow the boundaries of legitimate political expression. Our comparative design reveals cross-case convergence in the use of discursive mechanisms (feeling rules, othering, and surface/deep acting) despite divergent institutional roles and rhetorical situations. This convergence underscores the structural nature of emotional framing and reveals that it is part of the governance toolkit that leaders use in mass-mediated democracies. We contribute to political sociology by showing that collective emo tional resilience is not only discursively constructed to facilitate cohesion but is also employed as an exclusionary practice that marginalizes dissent and reinforces existing power hierarchies. In doing so, we highlight the ethical dilemmas of emotional governance, including the risks of inequality, alienation, and the foreclosure of authentic political expression.