Ex. 21. Read the article. Identify the main idea of the articles along with the supporting details and speak on the author’s style of the articles.

 April 6, 2015 by John Cassar White

The Language of Politics

Business and political communication share many characteristics. In an age where social communication dominates our lives the understanding of the language of politics interests not just linguists but all attentive observers of how political democracy really works.

Whether in the field of politics or business language is a weapon and a powerful tool in winning public support. Rhetoric has always been the cornerstone of political communication. Today it is the most effective tool of those who work in public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising. Good politicians often build around them teams of assistants who are capable of applying rhetoric in all these elements of communication.

Political discourse is a product of personal development. Factors like an individual’s educational experience, family influence, social circles, political beliefs and economic status affect the way a politician communicates with his or her audience. When politicians become important public figures they feel compelled to suppress some of these traces for the sake of survival.

To continue to be successful a politician must fall in love with rhetoric and never be influenced by Plato’s writing who defined rhetoric as “merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, which masks the undesirability of unhealthy food by making it taste good”. It is a sobering reality that politicians use language skills “to gain public support, and shirk responsibility when things go wrong”.

So what language strategies do political leaders use to make an impact on the electorate? One of the strategies that mainstream politicians adopt is the ‘inclusive technique’. Through this technique the politician directs his appeal to groups held together already by common ties, ties of nationality, religion, race, or social and economic status. One of the most targeted groups in modern politics are ‘the middle class’, presumably because they form the most dense sector of most western societies.

All of the artifices of flattery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to this group. Politicians appealing to this group attempt to convince the electorate that both they and their ideals are ‘of the people’. They sing the virtues of the middle class and have no hesitation merging themselves with this important group. By projecting themselves as ‘ordinary citizens’, political leaders hope to assimilate with the targeted communal group.

Political leaders like to win the trust of the electorate by using the ‘testimony technique’

Another important strategy for political leaders is the ‘enforcement strategy’. With both the printed and electronic media obsessed with what our politicians say, the effectiveness of political communication is a top priority for politician: “The effectiveness of delivery, proverbs, poetry of expression and emotional investment of the rhetoricians gives the audience a gauge for determining the speaker’s sincerity.”

Trust is the most fragile of assets as it is easily shattered. Politicians know this too well. So to convince their audience, political leaders like to win the trust of the electorate by using the ‘testimony technique’ – listing their achievements in a language that impresses the targeted audience. The problem with this technique is that often economic achievements are exaggerated and their cost under-estimated.

Testimonial technique can be used to construct a fair well-balanced argument. However, very often it is used in ways that are unfair and misleading. For instance, they superficially refer to short-term economic successes, but fail to delve deeply in the long-term tough structural issues that have such an important influence on society’s future wellbeing. How many European politicians, for instance, are prepared to tackle their countries’ pension problems?

Another often used weapon in the armoury of politicians is the ‘fear technique’. This technique makes the public aware of a potential threat, then it is extrapolated superficially in apocalyptic terms, and finally a solution is offered. Very often this solution is simple. The politician projects himself as a saviour as long as the electorate trust him to lead them out of the wilderness.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage often uses this technique to promote his anti-immigration prejudice. Perhaps more glaring was Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s snubbing President Obama and going to the US Congress to paint a catastrophic picture of what would happen to the world if Iran entered into an agreement not to use nuclear research to build nuclear weapons. The Israeli prime minister was using fear to distract attention from the hardships that the Israeli people were facing because of a faltering economy.

Ultimately, political language is mostly made up of slogans, sound bites and propaganda, rather than statements of truth and facts.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150406/business-news/the-language-of-politics.562777

Ex. 22. George Orwell, a famous English novelist, in his essay 'Politics And The English Language', described the use of ready-made political phrases like 'lay the foundations' and 'achieve a radical transformation' as something which 'anaesthetises a portion of one's brain'. Read the essay and express your opinion. Do you agree that the language politicians use is damaging politics?

Politics and the English Language (abridged)

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning, and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.

MEANINGLESS WORDS. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism

 Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

Ex. 23. A television commercial has an average of thirty seconds to make an impact. Although television is primarily a visual medium, the choice of language in political advertisements also plays a crucial role in conveying a message. The language of campaign commercials combines a strong political message with the verbal techniques and emotional appeals typical of television advertising. You will be analyzing a presidential ad in order to understand how the language and the visual elements of the ad work together.

Underline three phrases or words in the text that stand out. Place a "+" next to a phrase that gives them a positive feeling.

Text:

 "NARRATOR: It's morning again in America. Today, more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past 4 years. This afternoon, 6500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just 4 years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again, in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan our country is prouder, and stronger, and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than 4 short years ago?"

Questions for discussion:

1. What phrases or words did you mark as "positive"? Why?

2. What phrases or words did you mark as "negative"? Why?

3. How does the ad portray President Reagan?

4. What does the ad say about the opposing candidate? Is there any direct or indirect criticism?

5. If you had to pick a phrase to use as a title for this ad, what would it be?

6. Is the ad in color or black-and-white? What effect does that have?

7. What do you think the ad is about? Why?

Task: