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Applied Discourse Analysis
Arthur Asa Berger
Applied Discourse
Analysis
Popular Culture, Media, and Everyday Life
Arthur Asa Berger
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, California, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-47180-8 ISBN 978-3-319-47181-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956860
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © Bitboxx.com
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical Multimodal

Discourse Analysis 1
Part I Communication
2 Communication: What Objects Tell Us 13
3 Language: Speed Dating 21
4 Metaphor: Love Is a Game 29
5 Words: Freud on Dreams 35
6 Images: Advertising 41
7 Signs: Fashion 51
Part II Texts
8 Narratives: Fairy Tales 63
9 Texts: Hamlet 77
v
vi CONTENTS
10 Myths: The Myth Model 91
11 Genres: Uses and Gratifications 99
12 Humor: Jokes 107
13 Intertextuality: Parody 119
Part III Concepts
14 Ritual: Smoking 127
15 Lifestyles: Grid-Group Theory 135
16 Sacred and the Profane: Department Stores

and Cathedrals 145
17 Ideology: The Prisoner 155
18 Culture: Identity 167
19 Nobrow Culture: The Maltese Falcon 179
References 187
Index 191
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Asa Berger is Professor Emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic

Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught
from 1965 until 2003. He received BA in English and Philosophy at the
University of Massachusetts in 1954; MA in journalism at the University
of Iowa (and studied at the Writers’ Workshop there) in 1956, and PhD in
American studies at the University of Minnesota in 1965. He wrote his
dissertation on the comic strip Li’l Abner. During the academic year
1963–1964, he had a Fulbright scholarship to Italy and taught at the
University of Milan. He spent a year as visiting professor at the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles in 1984 and taught a short course on advertising in 2002 as a
Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Heinrich Heine University in
Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2012, he spent a month lecturing in Argentina
vii
viii ABOUT THE AUTHOR
on semiotics and media criticism as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. In 2014,

he spent a month as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at Belarus State
University lecturing on discourse analysis, media, and popular culture
and three weeks in Iran, where he lectured on media, communication,
and related concerns. He is the author of more than 140 articles and book
reviews, and of more than seventy books on mass media, popular culture,
humor, and everyday life. Among his recent books are Media Analysis
Techniques 5th edition; Seeing Is Believing: An Introduction to Visual
Communication, 4th edition; Understanding American Icons: An
Introduction to Semiotics; The Art of Comedy Writing; Messages: An
Introduction to Communication and Media, Myth and Society. He has
also written a number of academic mysteries: The Hamlet Case,
Postmortem for a Postmodernist, The Mass Comm Murders: Five Media
Theorists Self-Destruct, and Durkheim Is Dead: Sherlock Holmes Is
Introduced to Social Theory. His books have been translated into
German, Swedish, Italian, Korean, Indonesian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish,
Spanish, and Chinese. He has lectured in more than a dozen countries in
the course of his career. Berger is married, has two children and four
grandchildren, and lives in Mill Valley, California.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical

Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Abstract Intertextual nature of texts and applied discourse analysis are

discussed. Distinctive aspects of this book are found in its design. In each
chapter, after discussing a concept from discourse theory, it applies that
concept to a text of some kind from popular culture, media, and everyday
life. Ideas from prominent discourse theorists are dealt with, different
kinds of discourse analyses are explained, and they are differentiated
from ethnomethodology.
Application The author’s dissertation on the American comic strip

Li’l Abner is offered as an example of multimodal critical discourse
analysis.
Keywords Intertextuality Ethnomethodology Critical discourse

analysis Multimodal discourse analysis
PASSOVER SEDER
How is this book different from other books on discourse analysis? This may
seem like an ordinary question, but the material in italics happens to be
adapted from a small book, the Passover Haggadah, used in all Seder
dinners (the term Seder means “order”) in which a wise son asks “Why
© The Author(s) 2016 1

A.A. Berger, Applied Discourse Analysis,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5_1
2 APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Passover Haggadah
1 INTRODUCTION: LI’L ABNER AND CRITICAL MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE . . . 3
is this night different from all other nights?” This question which I asked
in the first sentence of this book is an example of what communication
scholars call “intertextuality,” which means, roughly speaking, that all
texts borrow from other texts or are intertwined with one another. I will
have a lot more to say about this topic later. It is very important and plays a
major role in the thinking of discourse analysts. According to the Russian
scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, whose thinking is behind intertextual theory, all
texts borrow—in various ways—from other texts, whether the borrowing
is conscious or unconscious.
This book, then, like all books, if Bakhtin is correct, is full of borrow-
ings—of quotations by discourse theorists and others of interest and with
material revised, updated, and transformed in various ways from my writ-
ings over the years. In all cases, when I borrow from others, I quote them
and tell who wrote the passage, so there is a difference between intertex-
tuality and stealing someone else’s material, which we describe as plagiar-
ism. I use quotations because I think that what the people I’m quoting
have to say is important and is expressed in a distinctive way.
Intertextuality suggests that we often imitate others by using their plots,
themes or styles, or other things, and we are generally not conscious that
we are doing so.
I cover a wide variety of topics in this book. You will learn about
discourse theory, language, metaphor, narratives, culture, myths, rituals,
genres, signs (and the science of semiotics), jokes, images, the psyche,
Hamlet, fairy tales, dreams, and love, among other things, and I have
included a number of learning games that will help you learn how to apply
concepts and use them to make sense of the role discourse analysis plays in
our lives, societies, and cultures. So this book differs from other discourse
analysis books in that it focuses upon a wider range of topics relating to
culture than you find in the typical discourse analysis book and applies
concepts from discourse very broadly—perhaps more broadly than tradi-
tional discourse analysts do.
In their book, Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social
Construction, Nelson Phillips and Cynthia Hardy write (2002:6):
Traditional qualitative approaches often assume a social world and then

seek to understand the meaning of this world for participants. Discourse
analysis, on the other hand, tried to explore how the socially produced
ideas and objects that populate the world were created in the first place
and how they are maintained and held in place over time. Whereas other
qualitative methodologies work to understand or interpret social reality

as it exists, discourse analysis endeavors to uncover the way in which it is
produced. This is the most important contribution of discourse analysis:
it examines how language constructs phenomena, how it reflects and
reveals it. In other words, discourse analysis views discourse as constitu-
tive of the social world—not a route to it—and assumes the world
cannot be known separately from discourse.
Discourse analysis deals with our use of language and the way our lan-
guage shapes our identities, our social relationships, and our social and
political world. Discourse analysis is mostly done by linguistics professors,
who used to be confined in their research to the sentence. When the
linguists decided to move beyond the sentence to conversations and
then to literary texts of one kind or another, and then to mass-mediated
texts, linguists identified themselves as discourse analysts. When I searched
“discourse analysis” on Google on August 8, 2015, I got 5,770,000
results. So there is a great deal of interest in the subject.
Teun A. van Dijk
Teun A. van Dijk, a Dutch scholar who is one of the most prominent
contemporary discourse analysts, writes in “The Study of Discourse” in
Discourse as Structure and Process (1997:1):
What exactly is discourse, anyway?

It would be nice if we could squeeze all we know about discourse into a
handy definition. Unfortunately, as is also the case for related concepts as
“language,” “communication,” “interaction,” “society” and “culture” the
notion of discourse is essentially fuzzy. As is so often the case for concepts
that stand for complex phenomena, it is in fact the whole discipline, in this
case the new cross-discipline of discourse studies (also called “discourse
analysis”) that provides the definition of such fundamental concepts.
So understanding what discourse analysis isn’t easy because it is a “fuzzy”

concept.
If you look in dictionaries, you’ll see discourse described as a conversa-
tion or a treatise on some subject. Discourse analysts are interested in how
people use language and how this language shapes their relationships with
others and the institutions in their societies. Many academic disciplines are
interested in language but not the same way that discourse analysts are. Let
me offer an example that will help you understand more about discourse
analysis. In his book Story and Discourse, Seymour Chatman, a professor of
rhetoric at the University of California in Berkeley, discusses narratives—
texts that have a linear or time perspective to them. He writes (1978:19)
Each narrative has two parts: a story (histoire), the content or chain of events
(actions, happenings), plus what might be called the existents (characters,
items of settings); and a discourse (discourse), that is the expression, the
means by which the content is communicated.
The story is the “what” and the discourse is the “how.” And it is the how
that discourse analysis focuses attention on. We can see these relationships
in the chart that I have made based on Chatman’s ideas:
Story Discourse
Events Expression
Content (what happens) Form (how story is told)
Histoire Discourse
Chatman’s discussion helps us understand how discourse analysis differs

from other approaches to communication. The focus, in discourse analy-
sis, is on style and on expression, not only content.
The quote by Phillips and Hardy in the epigraph suggests that discourse
is basic to our social world. From the moment we start to talk, when we
are little children, discourse shapes our existence. At a very early age
children learn what words mean, and around the age of four can put
words together in their own way, and make sentences they’ve never
heard before. As I show in this book, discourse deals not only with
words but also in newer versions of discourse analysis, with images. So
this book will not only deal with theories and concepts related to discourse
analysis but also will show you discourse in action in the real world.
As I suggested earlier, discourse analysis represents an effort by linguists
to move beyond the sentence, which is where linguists traditionally have
focused their attention. Discourse analysts worked on speech and conver-
sation—spoken discourse—before moving on to written discourse and
then, in our brave new world of Internet, to what they call multimodal
discourse analysis. This kind of discourse analysis deals with images and
videos—what is found on Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites.
A number of discourse analysts write from what they call a “critical”
perspective, meaning an approach that deals with ideology and politics
and is, generally speaking, critical of the political arrangements found in
bourgeois capitalist societies. Since these scholars are interested in what is
going on in contemporary societies they describe themselves as “Critical
Multimodal Discourse Analysts.”
Van Dijk adds other insights into what discourse analysis is in a book he
edited, Discourse as Structure and Process, the first of two volumes of
Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. In his chapter in
this book titled “The Study of Discourse” he describes what discourse
analysis deals with and discusses the three main dimensions of the field
(1997:2):
(a) language use, (b) the communication of beliefs (cognition), and (c)
interaction in social situations. Given these three dimensions, it is not
surprising to find that several disciplines are involved in the study of dis-
course such as linguistics (for the specific study of language and language
use), psychology (for the study of beliefs and how they are communicated),
and the social sciences (for the analysis of interactions in social situations).
It is typically the task of discourse studies to provide integrated descrip-
tions of these three main dimensions of discourse: how does language use
influence beliefs and interaction, or vice versa, how do aspects of interactions
influence how people speak, or how do beliefs control language use and
interaction? Moreover, besides giving systematic descriptions, we may

expect discourse studies to formulate theories that explain such relationships
between language use, beliefs and interaction.
He reminds us that while discourse analysis pays attention to talk and oral
communication, it also studies written language. And written texts. We
can see that it is interested in all kinds of human communication, with a
focus on people’s language use and the interactions among people who are
talking with one another or writing texts of one kind or another. While
scholars from many disciplines focus their attention on the content of
discourse, discourse analysis are more interested in the styles used, in the
way language and images are used and the role language plays in social
interactions.
Discourse analysis is different from ethnomethodology, though both
are interested in conversation. As Dirk vom Lehn, the author of a book on
the ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel, explains (in a personal com-
munication, 2015):
Ethnomethodologists are ethnomethodologists. Discourse Analysis in my

book is a collection of research methods. Some discourse analysts use
research methods, like conversation analysis, that have been derived from
ethnomethodology. But often they do not use these methods in the spirit of
ethnomethodology. In particular they ignore Garfinkel and Harvey Sack’s
argument that people themselves in their conversations analyze the interac-
tion as and when it happens. And it is this analysis that allows them to
participate in the interaction. Discourse analysts tend to stick to the scien-
tists perspective and use conversation analytic techniques to explore the
organization of talk.
Van Dijk describes discourse analysis as a multi-disciplinary approach

that encompasses semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, sociological theory,
literary theory, and many other disciplines. So it is a field in which
different kinds of scholars can work and do work, since language and
communication are so central to many qualitative disciplines. Although
many people have never heard the term, it is very popular in academic
circles. One publisher, Routledge, has more than forty books on the
subject and there are hundreds of books on discourse analysis at
Amazon.com. So the question naturally arises—why another book on
the subject?
My answer is that this book is different from other books on discourse

analysis in that it focuses upon applying discourse analysis to popular culture,
media, and everyday life. You will be able to see how the dominant concepts,
theories, and topics discussed by discourse theorists function in the real
world and this will help you better understand the role that discourse plays
in your life and the lives of your friends, families, and loved ones.
Shmoo drawing by AAB
LI’L ABNER AND CRITICAL MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

In 1964, I was a graduate student in the American Studies program at the
University of Minnesota. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Al Capp’s
comic strip Li’l Abner. It was very popular and read by around 200 million
people every day, but some members of the committee (from the English
department and the humanities department) that ruled on topics for
dissertations were not pleased with my choice of subject. My dissertation
advisor, a political theorist named Mulford Q. Sibley had suggested I write
on the topic and the scholars from the social sciences in the American
Studies program went along with Sibley’s suggestion. What I did was write
about Capp’s use of language in the strip, his graphic style, the nature of
his narrative style, and his satire of American culture. All of these topics are
of interest to the newest development in discourse analysis, what is called

“Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis.”
We read, a book by two English scholars, David Machin and Andrea
Mayr’s How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis (2012:1):
While visual analysis has more traditionally been the domain of Media and
Cultural Studies, linguists. . . . have begun to develop some of their own
models for analysis that draw on the same kinds of precision and more
systematic kinds of description that characterized the approach to language
in CDA. These authors began to look at how language, image and other
modes of communication such as toys, monuments, films, sounds, etc.
combine to make meaning. This has broadly been referred to as “multi-
modal” analysis. Not all of this work has adopted the kind of critical
approach used in CDA, where the aim is to reveal buried ideology.
What this passage suggests to me is that in 1964, when I wrote my

dissertation on Li’l Abner, I was functioning as a multimodal critical
discourse analyst, though I’d never heard of the term “discourse
analysis” because I was not trained in linguistics and linguists were
not yet at the multimodal stage of development for discourse analysis.
The concept of multimodal critical discourse analysis had not yet been
invented.
As an example of Capp’s remarkable use of language, let me quote a
passage from the strip—which was about a zany collection of country
bumpkins and other types living in a mythical “Dogpatch” in the
United States. Here is “Marryin’ Sam’s” description of what he does
for an eight-dollar wedding, from my Li’l Abner: A Study in American
Satire (1994:58)
Fust—Ah strips t’ th’ waist an’ rassles th’ four biggest guests!! Next—a fast
demon-stray-shun o’ how t’ cheat your friends at cards!!—followed by four
snappy jokes—guaranteed t’ embarrass man or beast—an’ then after ah
dances a jig wif a pag, Ah yanks out tow o’ mah teeth and presents ‘em t’
th’ bride an’ groom—as mementos o’ th’ occasion!!—then—Ah really gits
goin!!—Ah offers t’ remove any weddin’ guest’s appendix, with mah bare
hands—free!! Then yo spread-eagles me, fastens mah arem an’ laigs t’ four
wild jackasses—an’—bam!! yo’ fires a gun!!—While they tears me t’ pieces—
Ah puffawms th’ wedding cermony.
My book has chapters on Li’l Abner’s place in American Satire, on

Capp’s narrative technique, on Capp’s use of dialogue, and on social
criticism and the pictorial image. It would take fifty years for me to
discover that in 1964 I was what we now call a critical multimodal
discourse analyst.
PART I
Communication
CHAPTER 2
Communication: What Objects Tell Us
Abstract Different definitions of the term are offered from communication

theorists. Roman Jakobson’s model of communication process is described.
Importance of nonverbal communication is mentioned along with the way
messages are transmitted through language or other methods. Umberto Eco’s
definition of a sign is mentioned along with his caution that signs can be used
to lie.
Application Objects are shown to transmit messages about owners and the
ways in which they are used. Work of motivation researcher Ernest Dichter is
discussed. Learning games in which students analyze messages they find in an
object and what the owner of objects thinks the object means is described.
Keywords Objects Material culture Nonverbal communication Signs
Though communication is certainly a tool for conducting the everyday business

of our lives, it is also at the core of who we are, what we think, and what we do.
The debate over whether communication reflects or creates the reality we call our
lives oversimplifies the relationship between communication and the things
about which we communicate. . . . Our communication reflects the world within
and around us, and simultaneously creates it. For now, “symbols shape mean-
ing” is a phrase that best captures the idea that communication gives meaning to
reality, whether reality is an object in the physical world or an idea in our minds.
Imagining the meaning of any pre-existing thing or thought in this world,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5_2
untouched by communication, is difficult. . . . In short, communication plays a

significant role in who we are, what we know, and what we do.
Jodi R. Cohen, Communication Criticism: Developing Your
Critical Powers
Whether we are considering ordinary conversation, a public speech, a letter,

or a poem, we always find a message which proceeds from a sender to
a receiver. These are the most obvious aspects of communication. But
a successful communication depends on three other aspects of the event as
well: the message must be delivered through a contact, physical and/or
psychological; it must be framed in a code, and it must refer to a context.
In the area of context, we find what a message is about. But to get there we
must understand the code in which the message is framed—as in the present
case, my messages reach you through the medium of an academic/literary
subcode of the English language. And even if we have the code, we under-
stand nothing until we make contact with the utterance; in the present case,
until you see the printed words on this page (or hear them read aloud) they
do not exist as a message for you.
Robert Scholes, Structuralism: An Introduction. New Haven,
CN: Yale University Press. 1974.
Communication, as linguists such as Roman Jakobson have suggested,

involves sending messages and interpreting how these messages “work.”
In Denis McQuail and Sven Windahl’s we find a number of definitions of
the term “communication” by scholars (1993:4):
The transmission of information, ideas, attitudes, or emotion from one

person or group to another (or others) primarily through symbols.
(Theodorson and Theodorson, 1969)
In the most general sense, we have communication wherever one system, a
source, influences another, the destination, by manipulation of alternative
symbols, which can be transmitted over the channel connecting them.
(Osgood et al. 1957)
Communication may be defined as ‘social interaction through messages.’
(Gerbner 1967).
Another definition of communication is offered by semiotician Marcel

Danesi (2002:220):
Social interaction through messages; the production and exchange of mes-

sages and meanings; the use of specific modes and media to transmit messages.
2 COMMUNICATION: WHAT OBJECTS TELL US 15
McQuail and Windahl offer their own definition of communication (1993:5):
Thus, in the most general terms, communication involves a sender, a

channel, a message, a receiver, a relationship between sender and receiver,
an effect, a context in which communication occurs and a range of things
to which “messages” refer . . . Communication can be any or all of the
following: an action on others; an interaction with others and a reaction
to others.
There is a common theme to these definitions: central to the communica-

tion process are the messages that people send back and forth to one
another, and it is discourse analysis, which deals with how we find meaning
in messages sent by others and affected by these messages, that informs
this book.
The McQuail and Windahl definition of communication is similar to
one of the most important and widely discussed models of communica-
tion, which comes from Roman Jakobson, a Russian linguist who lived
from 1896 to 1982. He taught at institutions such as Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his ideas were very
influential. In his model, someone, a sender, sends a message (with some
kind of information) to a receiver. The message is transmitted by a code
(such as the English language) using a contact (or medium, such as
speech). The context in which a message is sent also plays an important
role in helping the receiver make sense of the message.
Roman Jakobson
There are six elements in Jakobson’s model which is shown below

(found in Berger 2016:92):
Context
Message
Sender ————————————— Receiver
Contact (Medium)
Code
The message is affected by the context in which it is sent (we speak

differently in bars and university seminars), the medium used (such as
speech) and the code (such as the French or English language).
We also recognize that speech—that is words—is not the only way of
sending messages. A considerable percentage of the information in the
messages we send and receive come from nonverbal communication. I am
talking about things like gestures, facial expression and body language
when we are speaking and semiotic signs we send by things such as our
hair style, hair colors, style of clothing, objects we carry (I call them props)
and that kind of thing. As David Matsumoto, Mark G. Frame, Hi Sung
Hwang (eds.) explain, in their book Nonverbal Communication: Science
and Applications (2013:4):
Although “language” often comes to mind when considering communica-

tion, no discussion of communication is complete without the inclusion of
nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication has been referred to
as “body language” in popular culture since the publication of Julius Fast’s
book of the same name in 1970. Researchers, however, have defined non-
verbal communication as encompassing almost all of human communication
except the spoken and written word. (Knapp 1972). We also define non-
verbal communication as the transfer and exchange of messages in any and all
modalities that do not include words. As we discuss shortly, one of the major
ways by which nonverbal communication occurs is through nonverbal beha-
viors, which are behaviors that occur during communication that do not
include verbal language. But our definition of nonverbal communication
implies that it is more than body language. It can be the distance people
stand when they converse. It can be the sweat stains in their armpits. It can
be the design of the room. Nonverbal communication is a broader category
than nonverbal behavior, encompassing the way you dress, the place of your
office within a larger building, the use of time, the bumper stickers you place
on your car, or the arrangement, lighting, or color of your room.
Their point is that nonverbal communication involves the exchange of

messages not involving words but involving what semioticians would
describe as signs, which, as Umberto Eco reminds us, are anything that
can be used to stand for something else and to lie. Communication is a
complicated process and in something that might seem to be simple,
our conversations, we find that our words, our facial expressions, our
body language, our gestures, and where the conversation is taking
place, play an important role in shaping the way the messages we
send are received by others and the messages others send are received
by us.
Shell Photo by author (Photograph by Arthur Asa Berger)
APPLICATIONS: OBJECTS AS MESSAGES

When I taught a seminar in semiotics many years ago at San Francisco
State University, I devised a little exercise that turned out to be
extremely interesting. One week I asked students to get an unmarked
brown paper bag (typically used for sandwiches) and put some com-
mon object that reflected something about them in it, along with
a piece of paper listing what they believed the object reflected about
them. What this exercise involved, among other things, was using
material culture to reflect the owner’s personality and taste. As Ernest

Dichter explained in his book The Strategy of Desire (1960/2002:91):
The objects which surround us do not simply have utilitarian aspects; rather,
they serve as a kind of mirror which reflects our own image. Objects which
surround us permit us to discover more and more aspects of ourselves.
Owning a boat, for example, for a person who did not own a boat before,
produces new understandings of aspects of his own personality; and also a
new bond of communication is established with all boat owners. At the same
time some of the power strivings of the individual come out more clearly
into the open, in the speed attained, the ability to manipulate the boat; and
the conquest of a new medium, water, in the form of lakes and rivers and the
ocean, becomes a new discovery.
In a sense, therefore, the knowledge of the soul of things is possibly a
very direct and new and revolutionary way of discovering the soul of man.
The power of various types of objects to bring out into the open new aspects
of the personality of modern man is great. The more intimate knowledge of
as many different types of products a man has, the richer his life will be. . . .
The things which surround us motivate us to a very large extent in our
everyday behavior. They also motivate us as the goals of our life—the
Cadillac that we are dreaming about, the swimming pool that we are work-
ing for, the kind of clothes, the kind of trips, and even the kind of people we
want to meet from a social-status viewpoint are influencing factors. In the
final analysis objects motivate our life probably at least as much as the
Oedipus complex or childhood experiences do.
Dichter, one of the founding fathers of motivation research, argues that

the things we own are much more meaningful than we might imagine.
With this insight from Dichter in mind, let us return to the brown bags I
asked my students to bring to class.
The next week the students all brought in brown bags into which they
had placed objects that reflected their personalities, taste and so on. The
bags all looked the same so we had no way of knowing who put what into
a bag. I opened one bag and pulled out a seashell of about six inches.
I held it up and asked the students to tell me what they got from the sea
shell. The answers from my class were terms like “empty,” “sterile,”
“dead.” Then I took the slip of paper on which the person who put the
shell into the bag wrote what the shell signified and the terms were
“natural,” “beautiful,” and “refined.” For discourse analysts, the terms
used by the students about the shell and the terms used by the student
who brought the shell tell us a great deal. The woman who brought the
shell thought of it in aesthetic terms while the students in the class thought
about it in functional terms. What this shows is that people can differ
greatly in the way they interpret objects, and by implication, all forms of
communication—both verbal and nonverbal.
What did the students learn from this exercise? The most important
thing they learned is that people don’t always interpret the messages we
send the way we think they will. You think that you are sending “beautiful”
and “natural” to others and they are interpreting your messages as “empty”
and “sterile.” We must always assume, then, that our messages may be
interpreted the wrong way. We can attempt to deal with this by sending
other messages to help clarify our original message and by being redundant
so the receivers of our messages have a better chance of interpreting them
correctly or remembering them. You will find a certain amount of redun-
dancy in this book. It represents my attempt to make sure my messages are
interpreted correctly and, I hope, that you remember the messages.
CHAPTER 3
Language: Speed Dating
Abstract Work of Saussure on semiotics is discussed, with a focus on signs

and on differential nature of concepts.
Peter Farb’s work on language is explained, and rules behind language
use are mentioned. Ideas by linguist Francisco Yus about gaps in conversa-
tions are offered.
Application Work by James Pennebaker on speed dating is considered

and the way in which language use can predict which players will date after
speed-dating sessions. Language use is shown to be a reflection of people’s
identities.
Keywords Semiotics Signs Concepts Speed dating Language
For human beings, society is a primary reality, not just the sum of individual
activities . . . and if one wishes to study human behavior, one must grant that
there is a social reality . . . Since meanings are a social product, explanation
must be carried out in social terms . . . Individual actions and symptoms can
be interpreted psychoanalytically because they are the result of common
psychic processes, unconscious defenses occasioned by social taboos and
leading to particular types of repression and displacement. Linguistic com-
munication is possible because we have assimilated a system of collective
norms that organize the world and give meaning to verbal acts. Or again, as
Durkheim argued, the reality crucial to the individual is not the physical

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5_3
environment but the social milieu, a system of rules and norms, of collective
representations, which makes possible social behavior.
Jonathan Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure (1986:86:87)
Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable

to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite
formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these
systems.
A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would
be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology;
I shall call it semiology (from Greek sēmeȋon “sign”). Semiology would
show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science
does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to
existence, a place staked out in advance.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
Saussure drawing
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose book, Course in General

Linguistics (first published in French in 1915 comprised of notes on his
lectures by two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye), is
considered to be one of the most influential books published in the nine-
teenth century. It is one of the foundational texts of semiotics, the science
of signs. Saussure used the term semiology—literally “words about
3 LANGUAGE: SPEED DATING 23
signs”—but it has been supplanted by the term semiotics, which was used
by the other founding father of semiotics, Charles S. Peirce. Saussure
makes a number of important points, in the third chapter of the book,
“The Object of Linguistics.” He explains that (1966:9) “language [lan-
gue] is not to be confused with human speech [langage] of which it is only
a definite part, though certainly an essential one.” Later he adds (1966:13)
“Execution is always individual, and the individual is always its master.
I shall call the executive side speaking [parole]. It is the speaking and writing
done by individuals that is most interest to discourse analysts.”
We then have three insights from Saussure relating to language:
Langue Langage Parole
Language Human Speech Speaking

Social institution Vocabulary Individual act
We can say that language is a social institution and involves, for people
who speak English, the approximately two hundred thousand words in the
English language. Speech refers to the vocabulary of an individual and
speaking refers to the words used by an individual when speaking to
someone or to some group of people. We can also think of speaking as
involving “writing” by individuals and other forms of communication,
such as gestures and body language.
Saussure made another important point relative to language. He writes
(1966:117):
Concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content
but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their
most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.
Later he adds (1966:120, 21) “In language there are only differences . . .
The entire mechanism of language, with which we shall be concerned later, is
based on oppositions.”
These two statements are of great importance. Concepts, we learn, have
no meaning in themselves but take their meaning from the system (the
collections of words, we may say) in which they are embedded, and the
most important “difference” in language is the polar opposition. “Happy”
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for the purpose of guarantying the neutrality of the Isthmus canal or
determining the conditions of its use.
CHILI AND PERU.
The entire question is complicated by the war between Chili and

Peru, the latter owning immense guano deposits in which American
citizens have become financially interested. These sought the friendly
intervention of our government to prevent Chili, the conquering
Republic, from appropriating these deposits as part of her war
indemnity. The Landreau, an original French claim, is said to
represent $125,000,000, and the holders were prior to and during
the war pressing it upon Calderon, the Peruvian President, for
settlement; the Cochet claim, another of the same class, represented
$1,000,000,000. Doubtless these claims are speculative and largely
fraudulent, and shrewd agents are interested in their collection and
preservation. A still more preposterous and speculative movement
was fathered by one Shipherd, who opened a correspondence with
Minister Hurlburt, and with other parties for the establishment of
the Credit Industriel, which was to pay the $20,000,000 money
indemnity demanded of Peru by Chili, and to be reimbursed by the
Peruvian nitrates and guano deposits.
THE SCANDAL.
All of these things surround the question with scandals which

probably fail to truthfully reach any prominent officer of our
government, but which have nevertheless attracted the attention of
Congress to such an extent that the following action has been already
taken:
On February 24th Mr. Bayard offered in the Senate a resolution
reciting that whereas publication has been widely made by the public
press of certain alleged public commercial contracts between certain
companies and copartnerships of individuals relative to the exports
of guano and nitrates from Peru, in which the mediation by the
Government of the United States between the Governments of Peru,
Bolivia and Chili is declared to be a condition for the effectuation and
continuance of the said contracts; therefore be it resolved, that the
Committee on Foreign Relations be instructed to inquire whether
any promise or stipulation by which the intervention by the United
States in the controversies existing between Chili and Peru or Chili
and Bolivia has been expressly or impliedly given by any person or
persons officially connected with the Government of the United
States, or whether the influence of the Government of the United
States has been in any way exerted, promised or intimated in
connection with, or in relation to the said contracts by any one
officially connected with the Government of the United States, and
whether any one officially connected with the Government of the
United States is interested, directly or indirectly, with any such
alleged contracts in which the mediation as aforesaid of the United
States is recited to be a condition, and that the said committee have
power to send for persons and paper and make report of their
proceedings in the premises to the Senate at the earliest possible day.
Mr. Edmunds said he had drafted a resolution covering all the
branches of “that most unfortunate affair” to which reference was
now made, and in view of the ill policy of any action which would
commit the Senate to inquiries about declaring foreign matters in
advance of a careful investigation by a committee, he now made the
suggestion that he would have made as to his own resolution, if he
had offered it, namely, that the subject be referred to the Committee
on Foreign Relations. He intimated that the proposition prepared by
himself would be considered by the committee as a suggestion
bearing upon the pending resolution.
Mr. Bayard acquiesced in the reference with the remark that
anything that tended to bring the matter more fully before the
country was satisfactory to him.
The resolution accordingly went to the Committee on Foreign
Relations.
In the House Mr. Kasson, of Iowa, offered a resolution reciting
that whereas, it is alleged, in connection with the Chili Peruvian
correspondence recently and officially published on the call of the
two Houses of Congress, that one or more Ministers Plenipotentiary
of the United States were either personally interested or improperly
connected with a business transaction in which the intervention of
this Government was requested or expected and whereas, it is
alleged that certain papers in relation to the same subject have been
improperly lost or removed from the files of the State Department,
that therefore the Committee on Foreign Affairs be instructed to
inquire into said allegations and ascertain the facts relating thereto,
and report the same with such recommendations as they may deem
proper, and they shall have power to send for persons and papers.
The resolution was adopted.
THE CLAIMS.
The inner history of what is known as the Peruvian Company reads

more like a tale from the Arabian Nights than a plain statement of
facts. The following is gleaned from the prospectus of the company,
of which only a limited number of copies was printed. According to a
note on the cover of these “they are for the strictly private use of the
gentlemen into whose hands they are immediately placed.”
The prospects of the corporation are based entirely upon the
claims of Cochet and Landreau, two French chemists, residents of
Peru. In the year 1833, the Peruvian government, by published
decree, promised to every discoverer of valuable deposits upon the
public domain a premium of one-third of the discovery as an
incentive to the development of great natural resources vaguely
known to exist. In the beginning of 1830, Alexandre Cochet, who was
a man of superior information, occupied himself in the laborious
work of manufacturing nitrate of soda in a small oficina in Peru, and
being possessed with quick intelligence and a careful observer he
soon came to understand that the valuable properties contained in
the guano—an article only known to native cultivators of the soil—
would be eminently useful as a restorative to the exhausted lands of
the old continent. With this idea he made himself completely master
of the mode of application adopted by the Indians and small farmers
in the province where he resided, and after a careful investigation of
the chemical effects produced on the land by the proper application
of the regenerating agent, he proceeded in the year 1840 to the
capital (Lima) in order to interest some of his friends in this new
enterprise. Not without great persuasion and much hesitation, he
induced his countryman, Mr. Achilles Allier, to take up the
hazardous speculation and join with him in his discovery. He
succeeded, however, and toward the end of the same year the firm of
Quiroz & Allier obtained a concession for six years from the
government of Peru for the exportation of all the guano existing in
the afterwards famous islands of Chinchi for the sum of sixty
thousand dollars. In consequence of the refusal of that firm to admit
Cochet, the discoverer, to a participation in the profits growing out of
this contract a series of lawsuits resulted and a paper war ensued in
which Cochet was baffled. In vain he called the attention of the
government to the nature and value of this discovery; he was told
that he was a “visionary.” In vain he demonstrated that the nation
possessed hundreds of millions of dollars in the grand deposits: this
only confirmed the opinion of the Council of State that he was a
madman. In vain he attempted to prove that one cargo of guano was
equal to fourteen cargoes of grain; the Council of State coolly told
him that guano was an article known to the Spaniards, and of no
value: that Commissioner Humbolt had referred to it, and that they
could not accept his theory respecting its superior properties, its
value and its probable use in foreign agriculture at a period when no
new discovery could be made relative to an article so long and of so
evident small value.
At length a new light began to dawn on the lethargic
understanding of the officials in power, and as rumors continued to
arrive from Europe confirming the asseverations of Cochet, and
announcing the sale of guano at from $90 to $120 per ton, a degree
of haste was suddenly evinced to secure once more to the public
treasury this new and unexpected source of wealth; and at one blow
the contract with Quiroz & Allier, which had previously been
extended, was reduced to one year. Their claims were cancelled by
the payment of ten thousand tons of guano which Congress decreed
them. There still remained to be settled the just and acknowledged
indebtedness for benefits conferred on the country by Cochet,
benefits which could not be denied as wealth and prosperity rolled in
on the government and on the people. But few, if any, troubled
themselves about the question to whom they were indebted for so
much good fortune, nor had time to pay particular attention to
Cochet’s claims. Finally, however, Congress was led to declare Cochet
the true discoverer of the value, uses and application of guano for
European agriculture, and a grant of 5,000 tons was made in his
favor September 30th, 1849, but was never paid him. After passing a
period of years in hopeless expectancy—from 1840 to 1851—his
impoverished circumstances made it necessary for him to endeavor
to procure, through the influence of his own government, that
measure of support in favor of his claims which would insure him a
competency in his old age.
He resolved upon returning to France, after having spent the best
part of his life in the service of a country whose cities had risen from
desolation to splendor under the sole magic of his touch—a touch
that had in it for Peru all the fabled power of the long-sought
“philosopher’s stone.” In 1853 Cochet returned to France, but he was
then already exhausted by enthusiastic explorations in a deadly
climate and never rallied. He lingered in poverty for eleven painful
years and died in Paris in an almshouse in 1864, entitled to an estate
worth $500,000,000—the richest man in the history of the world—
and was buried by the city in the Potters’ Field; his wonderful history
well illustrating that truth is stranger than fiction.
THE LANDREAU CLAIM.
About the year 1844 Jean Theophile Landreau, also a French

citizen, in partnership with his brother, John C. Landreau, a
naturalized American citizen, upon the faith of the promised
premium of 33⅓ per cent. entered upon a series of extended
systematic and scientific explorations with a view to ascertaining
whether the deposits of guano particularly pointed out by Cochet
constituted the entire guano deposit of Peru, and with money
furnished by his partner, John, Theophile prosecuted his searches
with remarkable energy and with great success for twelve years,
identifying beds not before known to the value of not less than
$400,000,000. Well aware, however, of the manner in which his
fellow-countryman had been neglected by an unprincipled people, he
had the discretion to keep his own counsel and to extort from the
Peruvian authorities an absolute agreement in advance before he
revealed his treasure. This agreement was, indeed, for a royalty of
less than one sixth the amount promised, but the most solemn
assurances were given that the lessened amount would be promptly
and cheerfully paid, its total would give the brothers each a large
fortune, and payments were to begin at once. The solemn agreement
having been concluded and duly certified, the precious deposits
having been pointed out and taken possession of by the profligate
government, the brothers were at first put off with plausible pretexts
of delay, and when these grew monotonous the government calmly
issued a decree recognizing the discoveries, accepting the treasure,
and annulling the contract, with a suggestion that a more suitable
agreement might be arranged in the future.
It will be seen that these two men, Cochet and Landreau, have
been acknowledged by the Peruvian government as claimants. No
attempt has ever been made to deny the indebtedness. The very
decree of repudiation reaffirmed the obligation, and all the courts
refused to pronounce against the plaintiffs. Both of these claims
came into the possession of Mr. Peter W. Hevenor, of Philadelphia.
Cochet left one son whom Mr. Hevenor found in poverty in Lima and
advanced money to push his father’s claim of $500,000,000 against
the government. After $50,000 were spent young Cochet’s backer
was surprised to learn of the Laudreaus and their claim. Not wishing
to antagonize them, he advanced them money, and in a short time
owned nearly all the fifteen interests in the Landreau claim of
$125,000,000.
To the Peruvian Company Mr. Hevenor has transferred his titles,
and on the basis of these that corporation maintains that eventually
it will realize not less than $1,200,000,000, computed as follows:
The amount of guano already taken out of the Cochet Islands—
including the Chinchas—will be shown by the Peruvian Custom
House records, and will aggregate, it is said, not far from
$1,200,000,000 worth. The discoverer’s one-third of this would be
$400,000,000, and interest upon this amount at six per cent. say for
an equalized average of twenty years—would be $480,000,000
more. The amount remaining in these islands is not positively
known, and is probably not more than $200,000,000 worth; and in
the Landreau deposits say $300,000,000 more. The Chilean
plenipotentiary recently announced that his government are about
opening very rich deposits on the Lobos Islands—which are included
in this group. It is probably within safe limits, says the Peruvian
Company’s prospectus, to say that, including interest to accrue
before the claim can be fully liquidated, its owners will realize no less
than $1,200,000,000.
THE COUNTRIES INVOLVED.
In South America there are ten independent governments; and the

three Guianas which are dependencies on European powers. Of the
independent governments Brazil is an empire, having an area of
3,609,160 square miles and 11,058,000 inhabitants. The other nine
are republics. In giving area and population we use the most
complete statistics at our command, but they are not strictly reliable,
nor as late as we could have wished. The area and the population of
the republics are: Venezuela, 426,712 square miles and 2,200,000
inhabitants; United States of Colombia, 475,000 square miles and
2,900,000 inhabitants; Peru, 580,000 square miles and 2,500,000
inhabitants; Ecuador, 208,000 square miles and 1,300,000
inhabitants; Bolivia, 842,730 square miles and 1,987,352
inhabitants; Chili, 200,000 square miles and 2,084,960 inhabitants;
Argentine Republic, 1,323,560 square miles and 1,887,000
inhabitants; Paraguay, 73,000 square miles and 1,337,439
inhabitants; Uruguay, 66,716 square miles and 240,000 inhabitants,
or a total in the nine republics of 3,789,220 square miles and
16,436,751 inhabitants. The aggregate area of the nine republics
exceeds that of Brazil 180,060 square miles, and the total population
exceeds that of Brazil 5,069,552. Brazil, being an empire, is not
comprehended in the Blaine proposal—she rather stands as a strong
barrier against it. Mexico and Guatemala are included, but are on
this continent, and their character and resources better understood
by our people. In the South American countries generally the
Spanish language is spoken. The educated classes are of nearly pure
Spanish extraction. The laboring classes are of mixed Spanish and
aboriginal blood, or of pure aboriginal ancestry. The characteristics
of the Continent are emphatically Spanish. The area and population
we have already given. The territory is nearly equally divided
between the republics and the empire, the former having a greater
area of only 180,060 square miles; but the nine republics have an
aggregate population of 5,059,522 more than Brazil. The United
States has an area of 3,634,797 square miles, including Alaska; but
excluding Alaska, it has 3,056,797 square miles. The area of Brazil is
greater than that of the United States, excluding Alaska, by 552,363
square miles, and the aggregate area of the nine republics is greater
by 732,423 square miles. This comparison of the area of the nine
republics and of Brazil with that of this nation gives a definite idea of
their magnitude. Geographically, these republics occupy the
northern, western and southern portions of South America, and are
contiguous. The aggregate exports and imports of South America,
according to the last available data, were $529,300,000; those of
Brazil, $168,930,000; of the nine republics, $360,360,000.
These resolutions will bring out voluminous correspondence, but
we have given the reader sufficient to reach a fair understanding of
the subject. Whatever of scandal may be connected with it, like the
Star Route cases, it should await official investigation and
condemnation. Last of all should history condemn any one in
advance of official inquiry. None of the governments invited to the
Congress had accepted formally, and in view of obstacles thrown in
the way by the present administration, it is not probable they will.
Accepting the proposition of Mr. Blaine as stated in his letter to
President Arthur, as conveying his true desire and meaning, it is due
to the truth to say that it comprehends more than the Monroe
doctrine, the text of which is given in President Monroe’s own words
in this volume. While he contended against foreign intervention with
the Republics on this Hemisphere, he never asserted the right of our
government to participate in or seek the control either of the
internal, commercial or foreign policy of any of the Republics of
America, by arbitration or otherwise. So that Mr. Blaine is the author
of an advance upon the Monroe doctrine, and what seems at this
time a radical advance. What it may be when the United States seeks
to “spread itself” by an aggressive foreign policy, and by
aggrandizement of new avenues of trade, possibly new acquisitions
of territory, is another question. It is a policy brilliant beyond any
examples in our history, and a new departure from the teachings of
Washington, who advised absolute non-intervention in foreign
affairs. The new doctrine might thrive and acquire great popularity
under an administration friendly to it; but President Arthur has
already intimated his hostility, and it is now beyond enforcement
during his administration. The views of Congress also seem to be
adverse as far as the debates have gone into the question, though it
has some warm friends who may revive it under more favorable
auspices.
The Star Route Scandal.
Directly after Mr. James assumed the position of Postmaster-

General in the Cabinet of President Garfield, he discovered a great
amount of extravagance and probably fraud in the conduct of the
mail service known as the Star Routes, authorized by act of Congress
to further extend the mail facilities and promote the more rapid
carriage of the mails. These routes proved to be very popular in the
West and Southwest, and the growing demand for mail facilities in
these sections would even in a legitimate way, if not closely watched,
lead to unusual cost and extravagance; but it is alleged that a ring
was formed headed by General Brady, one of the Assistant
Postmaster-Generals under General Key, by which routes were
established with the sole view of defrauding the Government—that
false bonds were given and enormous and fraudulent sums paid for
little or no service. This scandal was at its height at the time of the
assassination of President Garfield, at which time Postmaster-
General James, Attorney-General MacVeagh and other officials were
rapidly preparing for the prosecution of all charged with the fraud.
Upon the succession of President Arthur he openly insisted upon the
fullest prosecution, and declined to receive the resignation of Mr.
MacVeagh from the Cabinet because of a stated fear that the
prosecution would suffer by his withdrawal. Mr. MacVeagh, however,
withdrew from the Cabinet, believing that the new President should
not by any circumstance be prevented from the official association of
friends of his own selection; and at this writing Attorney-General
Brewster is pushing the prosecutions.
On the 24th of March, 1882, the Grand Jury sitting at Washington
presented indictments for conspiracy in connection with the Star
Route mail service against the following named persons: Thomas J.
Brady, J. W. Dorsey, Henry M. Vail, John W. Dorsey, John R. Miner,
John M. Peck, M. C. Rerdell, J. L. Sanderson, Wm. H. Turner. Also
against Alvin O. Buck, Wm. S. Barringer and Albert E. Boone, and
against Kate M. Armstrong for perjury. The indictment against
Brady, Dorsey and others, which is very voluminous, recites the
existence, on March 10, 1879, of the Post Office Department,
Postmaster-General and three assistants, and a Sixth Auditor’s office
and Contract office and division.
“To the latter was subject,” the indictment continues, “the
arrangement of the mail service of the United States and the letting
out of the same on contract.” It then describes the duties of the
inspecting division. On March 10, 1879, the grand jurors represent,
Thomas J. Brady was the lawful Second Assistant Postmaster-
General engaged in the performance of the duties of that office.
William H. Turner was a clerk in the Second Assistant Postmaster-
General’s office, and attended to the business of the contract division
relating to the mail service over several post routes in California,
Colorado, Oregon, Nebraska, and the Territories. On the 16th of
March, 1879, the indictment represents Thomas J. Brady as having
made eight contracts with John W. Dorsey to carry the mails from
July 1, 1878, to June 30, 1882, from Vermillion, in Dakota Territory,
to Sioux Falls and back, on a fourteen hour time schedule, for $398
each year; on route from White River to Rawlins, Colorado, once a
week of 108 hours’ time, for $1,700 a year; on route from Garland,
Colorado, to Parrott City, once a week, on a schedule of 168 hours’
time, for $2,745; on route from Ouray, Colorado, to Los Pinos, once a
week, in 12 hours’ time, for $348; on route from Silverton, Colorado,
to Parrott City, twice a week, on 36 hours’ time, for $1,488; on route
from Mineral Park, in Arizona Territory, to Pioche and back, once a
week, in 84 hours’ time, $2,982; on route from Tres Almos to Clifton
and back, once a week, of 84 hours’ time, for $1,568.
It further sets forth that the Second Assistant Postmaster-General
entered into five contracts with John R. Miner on June 13, 1878, on
routes in Dakota Territory and Colorado, and on March 15, 1879,
with John M. Peck, over eight post routes. In the space of sixty days
after the making of these contracts they were in full force. On March
10, 1879, John W. Dorsey, John R. Miner, and John M. Peck, with
Stephen W. Dorsey and Henry M. Vaile, M. C. Rerdell and J. L.
Sanderson, mutually interested in these contracts and money, to be
paid by the United States to the three parties above named, did
unlawfully and maliciously combine and conspire to fraudulently
write, sign, and cause to be written and signed, a large number of
fraudulent letters and communications and false and fraudulent
petitions and applications to the Postmaster-General for additional
service and increase of expenditure on the routes, which were
purported to be signed by the people and inhabitants in the
neighborhood of the routes, which were filed with the papers in the
office of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General. Further that these
parties swore falsely in describing the number of men and animals
required to perform the mail service over the routes and States as
greater than was necessary.
These false oaths were placed on file in the Second Assistant
Postmaster-General’s office; and by means of Wm. H. Turner falsely
making and writing and endorsing these papers, with brief and
untrue statements as to their contents, and by Turner preparing
fraudulent written orders for allowances to be made to these
contractors and signed by Thomas J. Brady fraudulently, and for the
benefit and gain of all the parties named in this bill, the service was
increased over these routes; and that Brady knew it was not lawfully
needed and required. That he caused the order for increasing to be
certified to and filed in the Sixth Auditor’s office for fraudulent
additional compensation. That Mr. Brady gave orders to extend the
service so as to include other and different stations than those
mentioned in the contract, that he and others might have the
benefits and profits of it: that he refused to impose fines on these
contracts for failures and delinquencies, but allowed them additional
pay for the service over these routes. During the continuance of these
contracts the parties acquired unto themselves several large and
excessive sums of money, the property of the United States,
fraudulently and unlawfully ordered to be paid them by Mr. Brady.
These are certainly formidable indictments. Others are pending
against persons in Philadelphia and other cities, who are charged
with complicity in these Star Route frauds, in giving straw bonds, &c.
The Star Route service still continues, the Post Office Department
under the law having sent out several thousand notifications this
year to contractors, informing them of the official acceptance of their
proposals, and some of these contractors are the same named above
as under indictment. This well exemplifies the maxim of the law
relative to innocence until guilt be shown.
The Coming States.
Bills are pending before Congress for the admission of Dakota,

Wyoming, New Mexico and Washington Territories. The Bill for the
admission of Dakota divides the old Territory, and provides that the
new State shall consist of the territory included within the following
boundaries: Commencing at a point on the west line of the State of
Minnesota where the forty-sixth degree of north latitude intersects
the same; thence south along the west boundary lines of the States of
Minnesota and Iowa to the point of intersection with the northern
boundary line of the State of Nebraska; thence westwardly along the
northern boundary line of the State of Nebraska to the twenty-
seventh meridian of longitude west from Washington; thence north
along the said twenty-seventh degree of longitude to the forty-sixth
degree of north latitude; to the place of beginning. The bill provides
for a convention of one hundred and twenty delegates, to be chosen
by the legal voters, who shall adopt the United States Constitution
and then proceed to form a State Constitution and government. Until
the next census the State shall be entitled to one representative, who,
with the Governor and other officials, shall be elected upon a day
named by the Constitutional Convention. The report sets apart lands
for school purposes, and gives the State five per centum of the
proceeds of all sales of public lands within its limits subsequent to its
admission as a State, excluding all mineral lands from being thus set
apart for school purposes. It provides that portion of the Territory
not included in the proposed new State shall continue as a Territory
under the name of the Territory of North Dakota.
The proposition to divide comes from Senator McMillan, and if
Congress sustains the division, the portion admitted would contain
100,000 inhabitants, the entire estimated population being 175,000
—a number in excess of twenty of the present States when admitted,
exclusive of the original thirteen; while the division, which shows
100,000 inhabitants, is still in excess of sixteen States when
admitted.
Nevada, with less than 65,000 population, was admitted before
the close Presidential election of 1876, and it may be said that her
majority of 1,075, in a total poll of 19,691 votes, decided the
Presidential result in favor of Hayes, and these votes counteracted
the plurality of nearly 300,000 received by Mr. Tilden elsewhere.
This fact well illustrates the power of States, as States, and however
small, in controlling the affairs of the country. It also accounts for the
jealousy with which closely balanced political parties watch the
incoming States.
Population is but one of the considerations entering into the
question of admitting territories, State sovereignty does not rest
upon population, as in the make up of the U. S. Senate neither
population, size, nor resources are taken into account. Rhode Island,
the smallest of all the States, and New York, the great Empire State,
with over 5,000,000 of inhabitants, stand upon an equality in the
conservative branch of the Government. It is in the House of
Representatives that the population is considered. Such is the
jealousy of the larger States of their representation in the U. S.
Senate, that few new ones would be admitted without long and
continuous knocking if it were not for partisan interests, and yet
where a fair number of people demand State Government there is no
just cause for denial. Yet all questions of population, natural division,
area and resources should be given their proper weight.
The area of the combined territories—Utah, Washington, New
Mexico, Dakota, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Indian is
about 900,000 square miles. We exclude Alaska, which has not been
surveyed.
Indian Territory and Utah are for some years to come excluded
from admission—the one being reserved to the occupancy of the
Indians, while the other is by her peculiar institution of polygamy,
generally thrown out of all calculation. And yet it may be found that
polygamy can best be made amenable to the laws by the compulsory
admission of Utah as a State—an idea entertained by not a few who
have given consideration to the question. Alaska may also be counted
out for many years to come. There are but 30,000 inhabitants, few of
these permanent, and Congress is now considering a petition for the
establishment of a territorial government there.
Next to Dakota, New Mexico justly claims admission. The lands
comprised within its original area were acquired from Mexico, at the
conclusion of the war with that country, by the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo in 1848, and by act of September 9, 1850, a Territorial
government was organized. By treaty of December 30, 1853, the
region south of the Gila river—the Gadsden purchase, so called—was
ceded by Mexico, and by act of August 4, 1854, added to the
Territory, which at that time included within its limits the present
Territory of Arizona. Its prayer for admission was brought to the
serious attention of Congress in 1874. The bill was presented in an
able speech by Mr. Elkins, then delegate from the Territory, and had
the warm support of many members. A bill to admit was also
introduced in the Senate, and passed that body February 25, 1875, by
a vote of thirty-two to eleven, two of the present members of that
body, Messrs. Ingalls and Windom, being among its supporters. The
matter of admission came up for final action in the House at the
same session, just prior to adjournment, and a motion to suspend
the rules, in order to put it upon its final passage, was lost by a vote
of one hundred and fifty-four to eighty-seven, and the earnest efforts
to secure the admission of New Mexico were thus defeated. A bill for
its admission is now again before Congress, and it is a matter of
interest to note the representations as to the condition of the
Territory then made, and the facts as they now exist. It has,
according to the census of 1880, a population of 119,565. It had in
1870 a population of 91,874. It was claimed by the more moderate
advocates of the bill that its population then numbered 135,000
(15,435 more than at present), while others placed it as high as
145,000. Of this population, 45,000 were said to be of American and
European descent. It was stated by Senator Hoar, one of the
opponents of the bill, that, out of an illiterate population of 52,220,
by far the larger part were native inhabitants of Mexican or Spanish
origin, who could not speak the English language. This statement
seems to be in large degree confirmed by the census of 1880, which
shows a total native white population of 108,721, of whom, as nearly
as can be ascertained, upward of 80 per cent. are not only illiterates
of Mexican and Spanish extraction, but as in 1870, speaking a foreign
language. The vote for Mr. Elkins, Territorial Delegate in 1875, was
reported as being about 17,000. The total vote in 1878 was 18,806,
and in 1880, 20,397, showing a comparatively insignificant increase
from 1875 to 1880.
The Territory of Washington was constituted out of Oregon, and
organized as a Territory by act of March 2, 1853. Its population by
the census of 1880 was 75,116, an increase from 23,955 in 1870. Of
this total, 59,313 are of native and 15,803 of foreign nativity. Its total
white population in the census year was 67,119; Chinese, 3,186;
Indian, 4,105; colored, 326, and its total present population is
probably not far from 95,000. Its yield of precious metals in 1880,
and for the entire period since its development, while showing
resources full of promise, has been much less than that of any other
of the organized Territories. Its total vote for Territorial Delegate in
1880, while exceeding that of the Territories of Arizona, Idaho, and
Wyoming, was but 15,823.
The Territory of Arizona, organized out of a portion of New
Mexico, and provided with a territorial government in 1863, contains
about 5,000,000 acres less than the Territory of New Mexico, or an
acreage exceeded by that of only five States and Territories. Its total
population in 1870 was 9,658, and in 1880, 40,440, 35,160 of whom
were whites. Of its total population in the census year, 24,391 were of
native and 16,049 of foreign birth, the number of Indians, Chinese,
and colored being 5,000.
Idaho was originally a part of Oregon, from which it was separated
and provided with a territorial government by the act of March 3,
1863. It embraces in its area a little more than 55,000,000 acres, and
had in 1880 a total population of 32,610, being an increase from
14,999 in 1870. Of this population, 22,636 are of native and 9,974 of
foreign birth; 29,013 of the total inhabitants are white, 3,379 Chinese
and 218 Indians and colored.
The Territory of Montana, organized by act of May 26, 1864,
contains an acreage larger than that of any other Territory save
Dakota. While it seems to be inferior in cereal producing capacity, in
its area of valuable grazing lands it equals, if it does not excel, Idaho.
The chief prosperity of the Territory, and that which promises for it a
future of growing importance, lies in its extraordinary mineral
wealth, the productions of its mines in the year 1880 having been
nearly twice that of any other Territory, with a corresponding excess
in its total production, which had reached, on June 30, 1880, the
enormous total of over $53,000,000. Its mining industries represent
in the aggregate very large invested capital, and the increasing
products, with the development of new mines, are attracting
constant additions to its population, which in 1880 showed an
increase, as compared with 1870, of over 90 per cent. For particulars
see census tables in tabulated history.
Wyoming was constituted out of the Territory of Dakota, and
provided with territorial government July 25, 1868. Lying between
Colorado and Montana, and adjoining Dakota and Nebraska on the
east, it partakes of the natural characteristics of these States and
Territories, having a fair portion of land suitable for cultivation, a
large area suitable for grazing purposes, and a wealth in mineral
resources whose development, although of recent beginning, has
already resulted in an encouraging yield in precious metals. It is the
fifth in area.
Henry Randall Waite, in an able article in the March number of
the International Review (1882,) closes with these interesting
paragraphs:
“It will be thus seen that eleven States organized from Territories,
when authorized to form State governments, and the same number
when admitted to the Union, had free populations of less than
60,000, and that of the slave States included in this number, seven
in all, not one had the required number of free inhabitants, either
when authorized to take the first steps toward admission or when
finally admitted; and that both of these steps were taken by two of
the latter States with a total population, free and slave, below the
required number. Why so many States have been authorized to form
State governments, and have been subsequently admitted to the
Union with populations so far below the requirements of the
ordinance of 1787, and the accepted rules for subsequent action may
be briefly explained as follows: 1st, by the ground for the use of a
wide discretion afforded in the provisions of the ordinance of 1787,
for the admission of States, when deemed expedient, before their
population should equal the required number; and 2d. by the equally
wide discretion given by the Constitution in the words, ‘New States
may be admitted by Congress into this Union,’ the only provision of
the Constitution bearing specifically upon this subject. Efforts have
been made at various times to secure the strict enforcement of the
original rules, with the modification resulting from the increase in
the population of the Union, which provided that the number of free
inhabitants in a Territory seeking admission should equal the
number established as the basis of representation in the
apportionment of Representatives in Congress, as determined by the
preceding census. How little success the efforts made in this
direction have met, may be seen by a comparison of the number of
inhabitants forming the basis of representation, as established by the
different censuses, and the free population of the Territories
admitted at corresponding periods.
“At this late date, it is hardly to be expected that rules so long
disregarded will be made applicable to the admission of the States to
be organized from the existing Territories. There is, nevertheless, a
growing disposition on the part of Congress to look with disfavor
upon the formation of States whose population, and the development
of whose resources, render the expediency of their admission
questionable; and an increasing doubt as to the propriety of so
dividing the existing Territories as to multiply to an unnecessary
extent the number of States, with the attendant increase in the
number of Representatives in the National Legislature.
“To recapitulate the facts as to the present condition of the
Territories with reference to their admission as States, it may be said
that only Dakota, Utah, New Mexico and Washington are in
possession of the necessary population according to the rule
requiring 60,000; that only the three first named conform to the rule
demanding a population equal to the present basis of representation;
that only Dakota, Utah and Washington give evidence of that
intelligence on the part of their inhabitants which is essential to the
proper exercise, under favorable conditions, of the extended rights of
citizenship, and of that progress in the development of their
resources which makes self-government essential, safe, or in any way
desirable; and that only Dakota can be said, unquestionably, to
possess all of the requirements which, by the dictates of a sound
policy, should be demanded of a Territory at this time seeking
admission to the Union.
“Whatever the response to the Territorial messengers now waiting
at the doors of Congress, a few years, at most, will bring an answer to
their prayers. The stars of a dozen proud and prosperous States will
soon be added to those already blazoned upon the blue field of the
Union, and the term Territory, save as applied to the frozen regions
of Alaska, will disappear from the map of the United States.”
The Chinese Question.
Since 1877 the agitation of the prohibition of Chinese immigration

in California and other States and Territories on the Pacific slope has
been very great. This led to many scenes of violence and in some
instances bloodshed, when one Dennis Kearney led the
Workingmen’s party in San Francisco. On this issue an agitator and
preacher named Kalloch was elected Mayor. The issue was carried to
the Legislature, and in the vote on a constitutional amendment it was
found that not only the labor but nearly all classes in California were
opposed to the Chinese. The constitutional amendment did not meet
the sanction of the higher courts. A bill was introduced into Congress
restricting Chinese immigrants to fifteen on each vessel. This passed
both branches, but was vetoed by President Hayes on the ground
that it was in violation of the spirit of treaty stipulations. At the
sessions of 1881–82 a new and more radical measure was
introduced. This prohibits immigration to Chinese or Coolie laborers
for twenty years. The discussion in the U. S. Senate began on the
28th of February, 1882, in a speech of unusual strength by Senator
John F. Miller, the author of the Bill. From this we freely quote, not
alone to show the later views entertained by the people of the Pacific
slope, but to give from the lips of one who knows the leading facts in
the history of the agitation.

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Applied Discourse Analysis: Popular

Culture, Media, and Everyday Life 1st

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

Marketing and American Consumer Culture: A Cultural

Representing U Popular Culture Media and Higher

The Culture Of AI Everyday Life And The Digital

European Cinema and Television Cultural Policy and

Encounters with Popular Pasts Cultural Heritage and

Applied Analysis of Composite Media Analytical and

Globalization and American popular culture Fourth

ISBN 978-3-319-47180-8 ISBN 978-3-319-47181-5 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover illustration: © Bitboxx.com

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical Multimodal

2 Communication: What Objects Tell Us 13

3 Language: Speed Dating 21

4 Metaphor: Love Is a Game 29

5 Words: Freud on Dreams 35

8 Narratives: Fairy Tales 63

10 Myths: The Myth Model 91

11 Genres: Uses and Gratiﬁcations 99

12 Humor: Jokes 107

13 Intertextuality: Parody 119

Part III Concepts

14 Ritual: Smoking 127

15 Lifestyles: Grid-Group Theory 135

16 Sacred and the Profane: Department Stores

17 Ideology: The Prisoner 155

18 Culture: Identity 167

19 Nobrow Culture: The Maltese Falcon 179

Arthur Asa Berger is Professor Emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic

on semiotics and media criticism as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. In 2014,

Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical

Abstract Intertextual nature of texts and applied discourse analysis are

Application The author’s dissertation on the American comic strip

Keywords Intertextuality Ethnomethodology Critical discourse

© The Author(s) 2016 1

Traditional qualitative approaches often assume a social world and then

qualitative methodologies work to understand or interpret social reality

Teun A. van Dijk

What exactly is discourse, anyway?

So understanding what discourse analysis isn’t easy because it is a “fuzzy”

Chatman’s discussion helps us understand how discourse analysis differs

interaction? Moreover, besides giving systematic descriptions, we may

Ethnomethodologists are ethnomethodologists. Discourse Analysis in my

Van Dijk describes discourse analysis as a multi-disciplinary approach

My answer is that this book is different from other books on discourse

Shmoo drawing by AAB

LI’L ABNER AND CRITICAL MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

of interest to the newest development in discourse analysis, what is called

What this passage suggests to me is that in 1964, when I wrote my

My book has chapters on Li’l Abner’s place in American Satire, on

Communication: What Objects Tell Us

Abstract Different deﬁnitions of the term are offered from communication

Keywords Objects Material culture Nonverbal communication Signs

Though communication is certainly a tool for conducting the everyday business

© The Author(s) 2016 13

untouched by communication, is difﬁcult. . . . In short, communication plays a

Whether we are considering ordinary conversation, a public speech, a letter,

Communication, as linguists such as Roman Jakobson have suggested,

The transmission of information, ideas, attitudes, or emotion from one