The Dimensions of Political Speech – Conceptualising the Origins of Political Hostility

This paper introduces a novel theoretical framework to analyse the increasing polarisation and hostility within US politics. The framework categorises political speech into three interrelated dimensions: locutionary, perlocutionary and illocutionary. By conducting an analytical review of the literature on political behaviour and polarisation and conceptualising the debate within this framework, the paper concludes that the increasing hostility is predominantly influenced by transformations within the illocutionary dimension rather than by changes occurring within the locutionary one.