Pseudo-parliamentary discourse in a Communist dictatorship: Dissenter Pârvulescu vs. dictator Ceauşescu

This article presents a case study of an unprecedented political event that occurred in Romania during the Communist dictatorship. In 1979, at the 12th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, Constantin Pârvulescu, a high-ranking party official, took the floor unexpectedly and attacked the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. We examine the contrasting interaction patterns displayed during the open confrontation that occurred between Pârvulescu's accusatory anti-Ceauşescu discourse and the subsequent anti-Pârvulescu discourses of three of Ceauşescu's close political allies glorifying Ceauşescu and the Communist party.In order to enable a better understanding of the political and socio-cultural setting of the Communist party congress proceedings, as well as of the concrete implications of sequencing and simultaneity of speech, interpersonal behaviour and shifts in speech targeting, a multimodal approach has been integrated with a discourse-analytical approach. These two combined approaches were used to examine the videotaped event and to account for the overall picture of the interaction, which consists of verbal interaction, kinesic behaviour (such as gestures, facial expressions, body posture), as well as the use of space. The analytical focus has been on the challenging and aggressive uses of multiple audience-targeted illocutionary acts and perlocutionary effects, the strategic uses of personal pronouns and the manipulative uses of semiotic metaphors.