Some people say that politicians are sneaky people who say one thing and do another. Lots of promises are made to get elected, few promises are followed through with, politicians flip-flop on issues if their stance is unpopular; that sort of thing. Last post I discussed how politicians used metaphors in order to frame our thought, in order to gain our support.
Let's talk euphemisms.
Politicians don't have to tell untruths, sometimes. They can tell us the truth and many of us won't get it. For example, when politicians talk about their own plans, if said plans involve tax increases, they won't actually use the words "tax increase." Because tax increases are bad, because citizens don't want to pay higher taxes. Instead, they will say "revenue enhancement." Revenue enhancement is the process of increasing government revenues... by increasing taxes. Revenue enhancement is synonymous with tax increase, but since tax increase is a buzzword with negative connotations, politicians will use revenue enhancement when talking about their own plans. When trying to attack other politicans' plans, however, they WILL use the term "tax increase," due to similar but inverted logic.
Euphemisms are everywhere in politics. Pro-life and pro-choice both seem like good things, and you'd think you'd like to have both life and a choice, but these two concepts are actually mutually exclusive; the euphemisms simply make them seem like they're something that they're not.
Euphemisms, like metaphors, are used to shape the way we think. However, if you recognize what the euphemisms replace, these are fairly easy to see through.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Metaphors in politics
Recently, I read "Immigration as Dangerous Waters" by Otto Santa Ana, which was a part of "What's language got to do with it?" by Keith Walters and Michal Brody. As I read it, I thought to myself, "Huh, this is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to write about in my blog," so here I am.
Otto writes about the metaphors used in speeches and debates over immigration. According to Otto's data, 58.2% of immigration metaphors were "immigration as dangerous waters," and 23.2% were "immigration as war."
If you're thinking, "huh?" I'll give you a couple examples and you should get the idea. For immigration as dangerous waters. This example mostly equates immigration to flooding (e.g., a flood of immigrants, a tidal wave of immigrants, an unrelenting tide of immigrants, etc.), and even directly parallels the effects of Hurricane Katrina to the potential effects of immigration. For immigration as war. This is a more humorous example; if you want more serious ones, it wouldn't be too hard to find them. In any case, the cartoon makes the metaphor obvious: immigrants are "invading" our country, and we need to "defend our borders" or "secure our borders."
This way of speaking about immigration is pretty common; so much so that many of us hardly even recognize that this is a metaphor. The language is ingrained into us so that we think of this as a natural way to talk about immigration. But speech can often influence how we view a topic. What are the consequences of viewing immigration as dangerous waters or as a war?
If we view immigraiton as dangerous waters, according to Otto Santa Ana, we dehumanize and collectivize immigrants into a large conglomeration of inorganic matter (water). We lose sight of what we are actually dealing with; the lives of real human people, real individuals. This way of speaking about immigrants also denies them any kind of real value; a tidal wave can't perform cheap labor or participate in capitalism or increase the US GDP. Instead, dangerous waters are harmful and destructive; they wash things away. In the case of immigration, these "dangerous waters" might be washing away anglo-American dominance or jobs or culture.
If we view immigration as war, we take it one step further; immigrants aren't particles of inorganic matter which do harm but are essentially neutral (since inorganic matter doesn't have feelings...). Instead, immigrants become "the enemy." I think it's pretty clear what the effects of labeling a group "the enemy" are.
Notice that the two dominant examples of immigration metaphors are mostly anti-immigration. There may be many reasons for this, but one of the most prominent ones I think it that the anti-immigration stance is largely conservative or Republican, and the Republican party has much stronger rhetoric than the Democratic party.
There are many metaphors that I notice now that I wouldn't have noticed before, since they are so deeply embeded in our language. For example, health care as war (fighting disease, war on cancer, war on AIDS, breakthroughs in medicine, invasive procedures, defensive medicine, brave patients, etc.)
What other metaphors have you noticed in politics?
Otto writes about the metaphors used in speeches and debates over immigration. According to Otto's data, 58.2% of immigration metaphors were "immigration as dangerous waters," and 23.2% were "immigration as war."
If you're thinking, "huh?" I'll give you a couple examples and you should get the idea. For immigration as dangerous waters. This example mostly equates immigration to flooding (e.g., a flood of immigrants, a tidal wave of immigrants, an unrelenting tide of immigrants, etc.), and even directly parallels the effects of Hurricane Katrina to the potential effects of immigration. For immigration as war. This is a more humorous example; if you want more serious ones, it wouldn't be too hard to find them. In any case, the cartoon makes the metaphor obvious: immigrants are "invading" our country, and we need to "defend our borders" or "secure our borders."
This way of speaking about immigration is pretty common; so much so that many of us hardly even recognize that this is a metaphor. The language is ingrained into us so that we think of this as a natural way to talk about immigration. But speech can often influence how we view a topic. What are the consequences of viewing immigration as dangerous waters or as a war?
If we view immigraiton as dangerous waters, according to Otto Santa Ana, we dehumanize and collectivize immigrants into a large conglomeration of inorganic matter (water). We lose sight of what we are actually dealing with; the lives of real human people, real individuals. This way of speaking about immigrants also denies them any kind of real value; a tidal wave can't perform cheap labor or participate in capitalism or increase the US GDP. Instead, dangerous waters are harmful and destructive; they wash things away. In the case of immigration, these "dangerous waters" might be washing away anglo-American dominance or jobs or culture.
If we view immigration as war, we take it one step further; immigrants aren't particles of inorganic matter which do harm but are essentially neutral (since inorganic matter doesn't have feelings...). Instead, immigrants become "the enemy." I think it's pretty clear what the effects of labeling a group "the enemy" are.
Notice that the two dominant examples of immigration metaphors are mostly anti-immigration. There may be many reasons for this, but one of the most prominent ones I think it that the anti-immigration stance is largely conservative or Republican, and the Republican party has much stronger rhetoric than the Democratic party.
There are many metaphors that I notice now that I wouldn't have noticed before, since they are so deeply embeded in our language. For example, health care as war (fighting disease, war on cancer, war on AIDS, breakthroughs in medicine, invasive procedures, defensive medicine, brave patients, etc.)
What other metaphors have you noticed in politics?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Voting
In English class, we read a book called The Poisonwood Bible.
In the book, there were two instances of voting. One in which the Congolese vote on whether they should believe in Jesus or their native gods, and one in which they vote on whether or not Leah should be allowed to participate in a hunt. The controversy in the second issue was that Leah is a woman, and women don't hunt, according to Congolese tradition.
In the case of the Jesus vote, Jesus lost by a wide margin. Of the Prices, only Ruth May had the guts to vote, and likely only because she wasn't fully aware of the significance of the vote, being a young child. Ruth May voted for Jesus, but this is only because she was the daughter of a preacher who had been stuffing Jesus down her throat since she was an infant. As far as we know, Ruth May was the only one who voted on blind faith (well, maybe blind-er faith).
This vote was interesting because all the villagers had their own opinions, and voted on them. If we had to correlate this with the American political system, the villagers would basically be independents, and Ruth May would really be the only one playing party politics. This is a stark contrast from the American politics, which is highly partisan. Compared to the huge margin of something on the order of five times more votes for native gods than Jesus, the recent midterm election vote, as with most votes in the United States, had a relatively small margin. Even among the independents, who don't associate themselves with specific parties, there was a relatively small margin between votes for Republicans and Democrats.
The difference in the magnitudes by which the winning party won in both votes could be attributed to party politics and to the complicated nature of United States politics. Perhaps more to the core of the issue though is that the United States runs on a representative democracy, or a republic, and the villagers actually had a democratic vote, where the villagers expressed their will on a particular issue. The fact that the margin of victory in US elections is small could be due to the nature of our political system; we're not always sure what we're getting when we vote for a particular person or party, and thus there is much confusion when it comes to voting, especially when partisan media is thrown into the mix. If we were to simply have democratic votes on every single issue, I predict that we would get a lot more decisive results. However, due to the time that would be consumed in this process and how informed the voters would have to be in order to make a meaningful vote, this is simply not feasible.
In the hunting vote, Leah won the right to go on the hunt. Leah won by a smaller margin than did the native deities. Perhaps this was because this was because a woman hunting was a change from the norm. Perhaps this was a reflection of some of the issues in the US system, since partisanship began to develop in the village, with schoolteacher Anatole leading one party and the tribe leader leading the other party.
So yeah. Partisanship leads to split votes. Partisanship is perhaps unavoidable in a representative democracy. And due to the nature of party politics, dynamic action and change is unlikely. Here's to the next two years.
In the book, there were two instances of voting. One in which the Congolese vote on whether they should believe in Jesus or their native gods, and one in which they vote on whether or not Leah should be allowed to participate in a hunt. The controversy in the second issue was that Leah is a woman, and women don't hunt, according to Congolese tradition.
In the case of the Jesus vote, Jesus lost by a wide margin. Of the Prices, only Ruth May had the guts to vote, and likely only because she wasn't fully aware of the significance of the vote, being a young child. Ruth May voted for Jesus, but this is only because she was the daughter of a preacher who had been stuffing Jesus down her throat since she was an infant. As far as we know, Ruth May was the only one who voted on blind faith (well, maybe blind-er faith).
This vote was interesting because all the villagers had their own opinions, and voted on them. If we had to correlate this with the American political system, the villagers would basically be independents, and Ruth May would really be the only one playing party politics. This is a stark contrast from the American politics, which is highly partisan. Compared to the huge margin of something on the order of five times more votes for native gods than Jesus, the recent midterm election vote, as with most votes in the United States, had a relatively small margin. Even among the independents, who don't associate themselves with specific parties, there was a relatively small margin between votes for Republicans and Democrats.
The difference in the magnitudes by which the winning party won in both votes could be attributed to party politics and to the complicated nature of United States politics. Perhaps more to the core of the issue though is that the United States runs on a representative democracy, or a republic, and the villagers actually had a democratic vote, where the villagers expressed their will on a particular issue. The fact that the margin of victory in US elections is small could be due to the nature of our political system; we're not always sure what we're getting when we vote for a particular person or party, and thus there is much confusion when it comes to voting, especially when partisan media is thrown into the mix. If we were to simply have democratic votes on every single issue, I predict that we would get a lot more decisive results. However, due to the time that would be consumed in this process and how informed the voters would have to be in order to make a meaningful vote, this is simply not feasible.
In the hunting vote, Leah won the right to go on the hunt. Leah won by a smaller margin than did the native deities. Perhaps this was because this was because a woman hunting was a change from the norm. Perhaps this was a reflection of some of the issues in the US system, since partisanship began to develop in the village, with schoolteacher Anatole leading one party and the tribe leader leading the other party.
So yeah. Partisanship leads to split votes. Partisanship is perhaps unavoidable in a representative democracy. And due to the nature of party politics, dynamic action and change is unlikely. Here's to the next two years.
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