Using a discursive lens, we argue that politicians rhetorically construct categories, storylines, and moral fields. We further claim that such discursive products are action-oriented toward gaining popular support in a public sphere that is politically fault lined along similar moral orders. As a case in point, we analyze speeches delivered during congressional voting on a Reproductive Health bill (RH bill). Employing a mixed methods strategy, we first implement a quantitative lexical analysis of frequently used words, followed by a qualitative detection of cohering storylines on both sides of the debate. Results show that oppositionists mark their speeches with a deployment of the word God, while bill supporters use the word access conspicuously. One storyline claims that The RH bill stands against God, while the other purports that The RH bill advocates rights and access. Although both storylines assert moral righteousness, they invoke two different moral orders backed by power blocs and the public at large. The God story appeals to a Catholic discourse and the moral order loudly supported by the politically powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. The rights/ access narrative references a liberal morality frame maintained by social liberals and Philippine President Aquino. We end our paper by introducing the idea of an intrastate discursive lens to analyze moral fields constructed by politicians, oriented toward winning support from the public at large.We propose a way of understanding legislative debate through a discursive lens by considering political categorization, storylines, and moral fields as action-oriented constructions aimed at mobilizing political support from the public at large. Our argument moves forward in five steps. First, we clarify that political categories in the public sphere are discursively constructed. Second, we elucidate on the political nature of categorization in the public sphere. Third, we show how political categorization is context laden, as categories are discursively employed to mobilize one's power in political 853 0162-895X

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Using the lens of positioning theory and a mixed methods strategy, we investigate domestic media’s production of nationalism during an international conflict. Philippine and Chinese news accounts of the Scarborough Shoal conflict are text mined by RapidMiner software. With almost 100% accuracy, mathematical models successfully classify sets-of-words that belong to each domestic newspaper. Principal components analyses show that Philippine Daily Inquirer reports revolve around words related to local fishing and livelihoods. News accounts in China’s People’s Daily uphold national sovereignty. A complementary qualitative analysis of the news reports gives our mathematically derived themes more meaning. Philippine maritime claims cite recent Philippine history and international law. China’s story references lost sovereignty and ancient rather than recent history. Positioning analysis demonstrates how each newspaper claims its own country owns Scarborough Shoal and is the victim of the other country. Our findings show how two contradictory and nationalistic versions of an international conflict may be linguistically constructed by domestic media. Our research also highlights the illuminative power of positioning theory in the field of international relations and media analysis.

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