Language And Politics Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Anthropologists, social psychologists, and linguists have long known that language is not usefully thought of as a mechanism that conveys meaning all by itself. Meaning, political and otherwise, is always a function of the context from which it springs. It is as dependent on the various needs, desires, myths, and legends that inform the society interpreting it as it is on the literal meaning of the words used to articulate it.

In Doing What Comes Naturally (1989), Stanley Fish targeted the political actor’s ambitions by stating in the preface that “the realm of the probable—of what is likely to be so given particular conditions within some local perspective—is the only relevant realm of consideration for human beings.” Given this abrogation of absolute truth, a political scientist, in the full majesty of the scientific project, might question the prominent role language has historically maintained in the political maneuverings of actors in the allocation of goods and values. One might assert that appropriation backed up by the credible threat, or actual application of violence, is the most measurably direct way to power, whereas nothing is directly appropriated by talk. What has been overlooked in such a stance is the cost of the opposition to one’s appropriations, and it is to limit these costs that rhetoric has found its place in the political game.

The use of language to morally justify an action is precisely what makes politics distinct from other methods of allocating values. Not only is such language useful in homogenizing the reactions of one’s allies to an action, but it can win the acquiescence of others whose lasting support is needed to reduce the possible opposition to one’s own plans. In this way discourse has become the measure of long-lasting political effectiveness as opposed to the more immediately satisfying, but ultimately unstable, outcomes resulting from violent conquest. As Fish (1989) notes, it is not that the categories of the true and the good have been abandoned, “but that in different contexts they will be filled differently and that there exists no master context . . . from the vantage point of which the differences could be assessed” (478). Fish goes on to state that “truth itself is a contingent affair and assumes a different shape in the light of differing local urgencies and the convictions associated with them” (481).

Most pragmatists locate the origins of rhetorical, as opposed to philosophical, truth in the rise of democracies in fifth century BCE Greece. In 1907 Ferdinand C. S. Schiller wrote that “the rise of democracies rendered a higher education and a power of public speaking a sine qua non of political influence— and what acted probably as a still stronger incentive—of the safety of the life and property, particularly of the wealthier classes” (31). Language is an important catalyst for political action, because without it leaders could not serve the groups seeking political favors while encouraging spectators to abstract reassurances from a complex environment. Democracies have long realized that unmediated force equals weakness in politics just as it does in marriage. Because democratic politics is primarily about nonviolent persuasion and language is the least violent means of political persuasion we possess, the symbiotic relationship enjoyed by language and politics is crucial to effective democratic life.

A strong example of the subliminal nature of much political language is the speech act. John L. Austin is credited with describing, if not naming, the speech act in his 1962 book How to Do Things with Words, in which he introduces an illocutionary (or speech) act as the idea that “by saying something, we do something,” as when a minister joins two people in marriage by saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” (1975, 108). In law, and by extension therefore in politics, certain phrases have all the import of acts, as when a person says that “I nominate Hillary Clinton to be president,” “I sentence you to life imprisonment,” or “I promise I’ll pay you back on Thursday.” In these examples the implicit authority or promises confirmed by such statements carry with them meaning significant enough to garner respect or raise expectations that should the speakers fail to follow through with their declaration or should they be made by someone without authority to speak, then there are real consequences in the world.

The Language Of Politics

Political language is at its most efficient when it is reifying an abstraction, a valuable asset in a contemporary political culture that deals in abstractions to a remarkable degree. Despite being an abstraction, the “state” for example has become a potent and obsessively protected symbol entirely on the basis of the language that describes it. It is part of a movement that has developed that encourages citizens to focus their political imagination on the quantitatively remote and symbolic aspects of urban life and away from the qualitatively personal relationships of family and community. This trend has magnified the possibility of people being manipulated through vague symbols that still engage them emotionally, albeit with less and less conscious comprehension over time. This becomes an even greater problem when cultural assumptions clash in heterodox social groupings.

Every culture contains a uniquely parochial system of values in its understanding of linguistic values. As Edward Sapir (1949) notes,

distinctions which seem inevitable to us may be utterly ignored in languages which reflect an entirely different type of culture while these in turn insist on distinctions which are all but unintelligible to us. . . . It would be difficult in some languages . . . to express the distinction which we feel between ‘to kill’ and ‘to murder’ for the simple reason that the underlying legal philosophy which determines our use of these words does not seem natural to all societies. (36)

Even within a single society, there are subtle distinctions in word use that resonate at a different pitch for different audiences. The word freedom tends to be favored by those George Lakoff describes in 2004 as employing “strict father” principles to the world. It suggests a “freedom from” removal of constraints so that the actor can engage in self-improvement and familial protection “free” of the interference of dangerous liberals and their ideas. The word liberty, on the other hand, speaks to those who favor a “nurturing parent” approach who see civil liberties as a protection that offers citizens the “freedom to” bring out the best in people.

A recurrent problem with political language is its relatively short shelf life. The chronic repetition of stale metaphors evokes only conditioned and uncritical responses in one’s supporters, who are grateful for the opportunity to lapse into a mentally restful state while old clichés wash comfortingly over them. On the other hand, such language produces no material proposals for the opposition to critique. This situation forms the focus of George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” in which he criticizes the bad writing that signals a political tract: “If the speech he [a political actor] is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church” (Orwell, 1961, 363). Once a term, or a series of statements, becomes a regular vehicle for expressing group interests, it loses its descriptive qualities, becoming merely evocative and consequently extremely dangerous. To declare that a “worker has nothing to lose but his chains” or to insist on asking “whose side are you on?” during a long strike that threatens the viability of the worker’s company creates an uncompromising mood that threatens to transcend the reality of the global marketplace, the incremental value of any offer the company makes, or the sustainable lifestyle that may vanish once the company closes its doors.

While spoken words have the power to create negative outcomes for individuals who rely on their authority for good, language that is never uttered can be equally lethal to rational outcomes. For example, a growing number of unlikely foodstuffs, including flavored soda drinks, most condiments, and even McDonald’s salads, contain high-fructose corn syrup. Highly refined corn syrup has been linked for some time to an epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease in Americans, including an alarming number of children. To explicitly verbalize the problem is to begin to look for a solution, while for those who cannot or will not articulate the problem, there is no possibility of articulating a solution.

The Politics Of Language

Political correctness, which seeks to minimize offense to racial, cultural, or other identifiable minority groups, is the result of the increasingly vague understanding people have of the heuristics of language that make up so much of our contemporary lexicon. Critics have argued that political correctness is tantamount to censorship, endangering free speech by limiting what is considered acceptable public discourse in a culture. It has even been argued that political correctness is a Marxist plot to express liberal conceptions of free speech as a pernicious form of social and cultural repression, especially in federally controlled institutions such as government offices and universities.

There is little doubt that word choices have measurable framing effects on the perceptions and attitudes of listeners. The practical question is whether the use of racially derived terms, for example, promotes racist acts and attitudes. In the case of ascription, which is to description as racism is to race, it appears inarguable that to view ourselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits damages our ability to accept them as fully human in ethical, if not ontological, terms. To declare women incapable of parallel parking serves to irrationally and unfairly reduce one’s capacity to accept women as deserving of as much respect as men, at least in the realm of vehicular manipulation.

For political science, a concern worthy of analysis is the degree to which people forget to apply thought to the application of self-censorship leading to certain words becoming taboo without sufficient critical evidence to back such an elevation in etymological power. In the United States, the so-called N word is in danger of such critical neglect, in that it is a common expletive among young blacks of a certain generation but is social and political poison coming out of a nonblack person’s mouth. In 2008 New York City banned the use of the word nigger by all citizens. The ban is a symbolic one and it is, in effect, a plea for the public to stand in solidarity to restigmatize the word, and it underlines the emotion and political potential that can be condensed into a single word.

As documented by Randall Kennedy in Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002), even words that have slight resemblance to the “troublesome word” have caused problems, such as when David Howard, a white city official in Washington, DC, was forced to resign from his job when he noted that the administration would have to be “niggardly” with its finances in the upcoming year. Black colleagues took offense at his use of the word, and even when it was pointed out that niggardly has no etymological connection to the American word, coming as it does from an Old Norse word meaning a miserly person, and that Howard, who was gay, would not have knowingly maligned another minority, they still insisted that he step down.

Political language has an even darker side, which is generally evoked by the words propaganda and rhetoric, and although their reputations are much maligned by philosophers they continue to have real political value. At root, effective propaganda does little more than call the attention of a group with shared interests to a proposed line of action that appears to further their interests, as does the federal government’s food pyramid. Words and phrases are chosen that permit the broadest possible number of sympathetic associations, which is the criticism aimed at it by more rationally inclined analysts, whereas if those evocative phrases are substituted for clear and truthful declarations, the propagandists fail in their task. Poor propaganda attempts to change citizens’ behavior without evoking the concerns of its target audience, since what is valid for philosophy or logic is anathema to propaganda. The worst aspect of effective propaganda is that it offers a substitute for thinking on the part of this group, because someone has already done the thinking that they should have done themselves.

Rhetoric

Contrary to the arguments of philosophers stretching back to Plato, the power of rhetoric is not due to any mystical power in words themselves, or even in their particular arrangement, but rather in the degree to which they answer the emotional and practical needs of human beings. Men have long harbored the belief that the perfect “pickup line” will result in an infallible series of sexual conquests, whereas the truth is that only on those occasions when the emotional needs of the object of desire match the tenor of the introductory statement will a successful union result.

Not all of the Platonists’ complaints are invalid, however; it remains true that accuracy or truth has little currency in rhetoric, because the single criterion of value is that the statement resonates with the beliefs of the target audience. These beliefs may be as irrational or as false as any one might imagine, but if the rhetor fails to conform to the belief systems of the group, no organizational or grammatical principle will bring about a political success. As Richard Rorty (1979) points out, the only political certainty human beings have access to is that “our certainty will be a matter of conversation between persons, rather than a matter of interaction with nonhuman reality” (156). Such a conversation will no doubt be filled with the mixture of sensible and irrational beliefs to which humans are prey. Teachers who hear the phrase “federally mandated testing” will not react to the dictionary definition of those three words but rather will have a Pavlovian response filled with social, economic, and professional anxieties that they might fairly or unfairly believe is directed at curtailing teachers’ freedom to teach or even at terminating teachers’ employment. Schiller (1907) states that “it is still possible to observe how society establishes an objective order by coercing or cajoling those who are inclined to divergent judgments in moral or aesthetic matters” (38). This cajoling rarely focuses on truth claims made by those who remain socially recalcitrant, as a philosopher might demand, but on the utility an alternative social and political approach promises. Truth claims are relative to individuals, and different individuals might make a series of reasonable but different arguments based on the same evidence that, when contradicted, cause individuals to stop interacting with the heretical speaker. However, utility, varied as it is, when activated rhetorically as a motive, has the power to cause the agent to agree to the principle in order to enjoy the specific benefit that agent has in mind. Rorty believes that winning debates with rhetorical imagination will return us to “where the Sophists were before Plato brought his principle to bear and invented ‘philosophical thinking’: we shall be looking for an airtight case rather than an unshakeable foundation” (157).

This accumulation of emotional value in individual words led to George Lakoff ’s (2004) explanation of the power of political framing. In Don’t Think of an Elephant, Lakoff notes the power of certain words to frame a debate so that one’s opponents are constantly defending an emotionally unacceptable position they have been led into by the careless use or dismissal of a trigger word. The Democrats’ failure to prevent the phrase “death tax” from framing the debate in the late 1990s rather than the more emotionally neutral “estate tax” caused them to fight the subsequent legislative battle to repeal it on their back foot. Even wealthy Democrats were concerned over the inevitability of a punitive tax on the death of a loved one, to say nothing of the nonaligned public, who were unclear as to what an “estate” might involve but were quite sure about the finality of death and taxes. When their political naiveté was exposed they were quick to react. In May 2005 Bill Frist, the U.S. Senate majority leader, declared that to defeat the Democratic filibuster against the Republican state supreme court nominees he would employ “the nuclear option.” Although Republican PR firms spent millions to rename the attack on the filibuster “the constitutional option,” their efforts could not overcome the emotional power with which the word nuclear was invested. Such trigger words can mollify and placate just as easily as they can excite and radicalize. Indeed most trigger words, such as social security, national security, democratic election, and military intelligence, overcome their oxymoronic juxtaposition when they serve to calm the public’s fears. When common language is profoundly irrational in its claims, it is wiser to think of it as a heuristic series of cues than a tool for reasoned analysis; to ignore this application in the real world is to ignore the political heart of rhetoric.

Fish (1989) gives the rhetorician of common language a true place in a state’s hierarchy of values:

The skill which produces belief and therefore establishes what, in a particular time and a particular place, is true, is the skill essential to the building of a civilized society. In the absence of a revealed truth, rhetoric is that skill, and in teaching it the sophists were teaching “the one thing that mattered, how to take care of one’s own affairs and the business of the state. (481)

Bibliography:

Austin, John L. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Chong, Dennis, and James N. Druckman. “Framing Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science 10, no. 1 (2007): 103–126.
Druckman, James N. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects.” American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (2004): 671–686.
Fish, Stanley. Doing What Comes Naturally. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
Kennedy, Randall. Nigger:The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. New York: Pantheon, 2002.
Lakoff, George. Don’t Think of an Elephant. White River Junction,Vt.: Chelsea Green, 2004.
Orwell, George. The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961.
Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Sapir, Edward. Language. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949. Schiller, Ferdinand C. S. “From Plato to Protagoras.” In Studies in Humanism.

This example Language And Politics Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.