Amidst Homeland and State: Wording Spain. A Journey thought PSOE and AP-PP Electoral Manifestoes Between 1977 and 2011

Abstract

Political parties choose words to label reality carefully. The words they select to label Spain reveal their deepest conception of such a community, ranging from its conceptualization as a mere political structure to more affective or communitarian visions of it as a group. In this article, we analyse the discourse on Spain by the main governing political parties in this country between 1977 and 2011 (PSOE and AP-PP). We deliver a computer assisted content analysis of electoral manifestoes, mixing techniques of key-words automatic codification and secondary manual re-codification. Assuming that ideological preferences on Spanish nationalism are reflected in the preferred use of particular words and lexicons, we analyse language frequencies in both parties. Our results show a steady renounce by PSOE to make explicit the communitarian or affective dimension of Spain, while increasing its interest in the territorial organization of the state. Both tendencies result in a general decrease of the discourse devoted to Spain by the Socialist party in its electoral manifestoes, especially since year 2000.  At the same time, the increase in the references to Spain as a political community by the Poplar Party, especially noticeable since 1996, brought a change in trends especially conspicuous since 2004.