The Language of Politics

Michael L. Geis

The Language
of Politics

Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg
London Paris Tokyo
Michael L. Geis
Department of Linguistics
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio 43210, U.S.A.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Geis, Michael L.
The language of politics.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Languages - Political aspects. 2. Journalism-
Political aspects- United States. 3. lournalism-
United States-Objectivity. 4. Reporters and
reporting-United States. 5. United States-
Politics and government-1945- I. Title.
PIl9.3.G45 1987 401'.9 86-29726

© 1987 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-9127-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-4714-2

DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-4714-2
For Elizabeth Talley Geis
Preface

This study is the second of two I have done concerning how language is used to
persuade others to believe things and to do things. The first, published by Aca-
demic Press, was The Language of Television Advertising, and was concerned
with how advertisers use language in their efforts to sell products and services
and how consumers could be expected to understand it. In this study, the focus
is on how politicians use language to win elections and get others to accept
their policies and programs and on how journalists report the suasive efforts
of politicans.
I combine an interest in the language of political reporting with an interest in
the language of politics for a number of reasons. First, much of the suasive
rhetoric of politicians is filtered through the minds of political journalists before
it reaches the citizenry, and we can be reasonably sure that this rhetoric does not
come out the way it went in. Second, the press plays a significant role in deter-
mining the nation's political agenda through its choices of what issues will be
presented to the public, how these issues will be presented, and which voices will
be heard speaking out on these issues. Third, political reporting can be suasive in
effect, if not in intent, and it will be useful, I think, to understand how this is so.
Many political journalists take the view that it is their responsibility to "explain"
or "interpret" or "make sense out of" the news for the news-consuming public, but
to do this-to explain political events-is inevitably to impose a particular politi-
cal perspective on news reports. Moreover, as we shall see, some political jour-
nalists see it as their responsibility to call politicians to public account for their
actions and policies, to paraphrase the New York Times political columnist, Tom
Wicker. This stance is very difficult to square with the thesis that the press is a
neutral observer of political events and that it is the people, not the press, who are
to decide who and what is politically right and wrong.
This is by no means the first book on the language of politics, but it is, I think,
the first such book written by a linguist and the first to provide extensive analysis
of actually occurring political language. Previous book-length studies have been
written by political scientists (Ealy, 1981; Edelman, 1964, 1971, 1977), philo-
sophers (Dallmayr, 1984), and communications scientists (Hart, 1984). Although
viii Preface

some of these books have real merit - especially the work of Edelman - such
studies are generally defective in that they rarely contain careful discussions of
actual political language. For example, Dallmayr's book, Language and Politics,
does not seem to contain a single example of naturally occurring political lan-
guage, that is, of language actually used by a political person for political pur-
poses. In general, studies of the language of politics have focused on a limited
view of the role of language in politics, and discussions of linguistic examples
rarely go beyond discussions of a few words and phrases which are believed to
have special political significance. A discussion of how the use of some particular
politically significant word or phrase or sentence might be politically efficacious
is usually also missing.
Of those that have written on the language of politics, I find the work of Edel-
man to be most useful. According to Edelman, political persons employ a variety
of linguistic devices, ranging from metaphor and metonymy, symbolic language
and special syntactic devices, and the like to evoke patterns of political beliefs.
Thus, when politicians or journalists refer to the revolutionaries in EI Salvador
as Marxist, this can be expected to evoke in some the view that these revolution-
aries are somehow in league with Marxists elsewhere in a conspiracy against a
government friendly to our own. Persons who accept such language uncritically
can be expected to support efforts to aid this government against its enemies
without fully appreciating why they do so. One of Edelman's (1984) important
insights is that use of language that implies a pattern of political beliefs may be
more effective than language that calls attention to itself, or as I said in The Lan-
guage of Television Advertising, implying something is much less likely to arouse
cognitive defenses than asserting it. I would argue that the politically most effica-
cious language will be not exceptional language of the sort that attracts the atten-
tion of those interested in doubletalk, for instance, but rather it will be quite
ordinary language. My discussion of these issues is much influenced by Edelman,
but I hope that my discussions are a bit more sophisticated linguistically than are
those of Edelman and other writers, and that I provide more explicit characteri-
zations of the relationship between political language and political beliefs than
previous writers have on this topic.
In addition to a preliminary discussion of the role of language in politics in the
Introduction in Chapter 1, there is a general discussion of the role of language in
the evocation of political beliefs (called "myths;' after Edelman) in Chapter 2 and
of the language of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Reagan in Chapter 3. I then
turn to consider the language of political journalism.
My study of political journalism is concerned with three topics. The first is the
issue of bias in reporting. The second is how political speech is reported by print
and electronic journalists. The third is "live" interactions between President Rea-
gan and the press in televised press conferences.
In recent years, many elements of the political right have argued that there is
a liberal bias in the American press. In Chapter 4, I review the question of bias
in political reporting in general and then evaluate one such conservative attack in
 Preface ix

some detail. This attack is as fatally flawed as scholarship, and though it does
make one valid point, it should not be taken too seriously. Like so many criti-
cisms of the press, those making the charges do not take into consideration the
contribution of their own biases to their perception of the bias of the press.
There exists some interesting scholarly work on bias in political journal-
ism, especially by elements of the Glasgow Media Group, which take the very
different view that political journalism in mass media in the Western demo-
cracies has a centrist orientation. Representative studies can be found in Davis
and Walton (1983a) and in the International Journal of the Sociology of Lan-
guage (1984).
In Chapters 5 and 6, two aspects of journalistic language of special linguistic
interest are examined. The first is how the press reports on political speech. The
second is how journalists identify the context in which political speech occurs. In
particular, I focus on the linguistic devices the press employs in reporting on con-
texts. The latter include interesting conversational elements. These chapters will,
perhaps, be the chapters of greatest interest to linguists.
In Chapter 7, I tie together the issue of bias and the discussion of reports on
political speech with an analysis of one aspect of how the news magazines
Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report (USN&WR) covered the speech
of former Vice President Mondale and President Reagan during their election
campaign. My focus is on the verbs employed to report on the speech of these two
candidates. The analysis is grounded in a small experiment I performed to deter-
mine the degree of bias inherent in verbs of reported speech.
In Chapter 8, I examine television journalism, with particular focus on the lin-
guistic devices employed to foster the sense of immediacy of television news
broadcasts. As we shall see, some of the instructions given in texts on broadcast
journalism are linguistically problematic. I also discuss certain aspects (some of
them also being problematic) of the editing of television news clips. Televised
presidential press conferences are considered in Chapter 9.
My interest in political press conferences derived initially from a perception
that the questions of journalists in press conferences are commonly politically
judgmental. I was also interested in how President Ronald Reagan, who has been
said to be the "Great Communicator;' comported himself linguistically in the
"live" press conferences. As we shall see, though Reagan may be a gifted political
orator, his "live" impromptu discussions of political issues are flawed, to say the
very least. But, then, so are many of the questions from the press. Reagan's per-
formances are doubly interesting. It is interesting that an American president has
a great deal of difficulty expressing himself clearly during press conferences and
that few people seem to have caught onto this before his first debate with Walter
Mondale. I would argue that when we listen to a president (or any other person
who is speaking to us), we are not passive receptors of what is said, but instead,
construct the messages that we "hear" on the basis of what we think we are hear-
ing. Thus, much of what we take our president to have said may be our contribu-
tion, not his.
x Preface

In what follows, I observe the following notational conventions. The italic font
is used when citing naturally occurring data (for example, something appearing
in a political speech or a news report). Other linguistic examples are either in
Trade Condensed font when occurring in the body of the text or in normal font when
set off from the text as numbered examples.
Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Vll

1 Introduction ................................................... .
Language and Politics ............................................ .
Orwell's Thesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
A Question of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Politics and Political Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Role of Journalism in the Political Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Question of Bias. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 16

2 Language and Myth in American Politics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Orwell's Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 18
Language and Myth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 26
Myths as Simple Causal Theories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 28
Myth and Language in American Politics ............................. 30
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 36

3 The Language of American Presidents ............................ 38

President John F. Kennedy ......................................... 38
President Lyndon Baines Johnson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 44
President Ronald Reagan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 53
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 56

4 The Problem of Bias in Political Journalism ....................... 58

Review of the Recent Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 60
Nonlinguistic Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 62
Linguistic Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 62
Other Asymmetries in Political Journalism ............................ 71
Charges of Bias in Political Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 73
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 77
xii Contents

5 Reporting of Political Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 78

The Ingredients of Reported Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 79
The News Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 80
References to News Receivers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85
Reports of Null Speech Events ...................................... 87
The Content of Reported Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 89
Verbs.. .. ... ... . ... ... . ... ... ..... ... ... ... ... .... .. ...... . ..... 93
Tense and Aspect in Reported Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 94
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 97

6 Identification of Context in News Reporting ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 98

Specification of Context in News Reports ............................. 100
Identification of Extralinguistic Context .............................. 100
The Linguistic Context ............................................ 109
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 119

7 Political Bias in News Magazines ................................. 121

Previous Studies .................................................. 121
The Present Study ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 124
Results of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 130
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 141

8 Linguistic Aspects of Television Journalism ........................ 143

Introductory Remarks ............................................. 143
Live Broadcasts .................................................. 144
The Immediacy of Television Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 145
The Structure of Television News Stories ............................. 150
Types of Television News Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 151
Instant Television News Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 157
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 163

9 A Brief Look at Presidential Press Conferences .................... 164

Implied Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 165
The Reagan Replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 168
The Great Communicator .......................................... 169
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 172

10 Conclusion..................................................... 174

References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 179
Appendix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 183
Index .............................................................. 185