Riassunto esame Lingua inglese, prof. Partington, libro consigliato Persuasion in Politics, Partington, Taylor

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Sunto Lingua inglese, prof. Partington, libro consigliato Persuasion in Politics,

Partington-Taylor

Unit 1. Evaluation: What’s good and what’s bad

1.1. Politics is conducted through language

Schäffner points out that “any political action is prepared, accompanied, controlled and influenced

by language”.

Fairclough goes further saying that “politics is not just conducted through language, but much of

politics is language.

1.2. Persuasion and rhetoric in a democratic society

In an absolutist or totalitarian regime those in power rule by using the twin weapons of coercion

and the manipulation of information.

In a democracy, instead, the principal use of language in politics is for persuasion and debate.

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This art was developed by Ancient Greeks. They created the term rhetoric , the skill of persuasion.

Rhetoric was generally felt to have three main fields of application:

1. For politics;

2. For law;

3. For speeches of public praise or blame.

According to Aristotle, rhetoric is the “art of persuasive discourse”, that is the use of words by

human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents. He argues that we

use the art of rhetoric everyday in natural relations with other people.

For Plato, instead, rhetoric is a “speech-rigger”. In his view in manipulative and there is somehow

a deficit between complex-sounding rhetorical argument and ‘the truth’.

There’s also another meaning, equivalent to “grandiloquence” or the use of high-sounding but

‘empty’ language that derives from the obscurantist associations that rhetoric acquired after the

codification of its persuasive techniques and language tropes (or figures) that took place in the

Middle Ages by Scholastic orators.

N.B. vedi anche pag. 27, Task 3.

1.3. Spin and the spin-doctor

Very recently, in those societies where speech in relatively free, much attention is being paid to

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the phenomenon of spin , that is the tailoring of news and information on its release to the public

to cast a favourable light on the institutions of authority.

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The term itself is a metaphor deriving from baseball. Politician or his/her agent hopes to spin

their political message so that it will reach the public without the intervention of critical press.

1 The art (or indeed science) of persuading others, that is, of influencing their thoughts, beliefs and behavior, through

the use of language.

2 Presenting one’s own or a client’s case in the best possible light, usually in order to pre-empt (anticipate) eventual

criticism from opponents or the press. 2

In the UK and the US all the major political parties have press officers, responsible for maintaining

relations with and communicating the party’s message to the media. They are informally labelled

spin-doctors, the verb ‘to doctor’ has the slang meaning of ‘tamper’ or ‘interfere’ with something.

1.4. Evaluative language

Language which expresses the opinion, attitude and point of view of a speaker or a writer is

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sometimes called evaluative language. Evaluation , is just the indication that something is good or

bad. Evaluation is clearly the basis of persuasion, because it’s used to convince the audience that

an opinion is good and alternative ones are not.

Evaluation can be expressed overtly or covertly. The second of these is so called because the

speaker or writer provides no obvious linguistic clues, but exploits the audience’s ability to

provides no obvious linguistic clues, but exploits the audience’s ability to recognize a good – or a

bad – thing when they see it.

Overt or explicit evaluation can be achieved through grammatical, textual or lexical means, as

shown below.

Grammatical evaluation

Comparatives are an obvious indication of evaluation.

Transitivity is the grammatical structuring which tells us ‘who does what to whom (and how)’.

Example: John argued with Sue; Sue argued with John; John and Sue argued.

Textual evaluation

If a speaker presents two alternative policies to her audience, one of which he agrees with and

wishes to persuade the audience, and one of which she does not, he will generally talk of the one

he does not approve of first and then he promotes the second.

Lexical evaluation

However the most obvious signs of evaluation are contained in the lexis, that is, the words and

phrases a speaker or writer uses.

1.5. Denotation and connotation 5

The basic meaning of the words, that is, their denotational meaning, can be roughly the same,

but they differ radically in the evaluation of the connotational meaning the express. A speaker is

unlikely to employ the word obstinate to pay someone a compliment, whereas resolute is better.

So, the denotation of an item is the definition we might find in a dictionary; the connotations of an

item are the associations it has for us, especially the evaluative ones.

1.6. ‘Insider’ words (good), ‘outsider’ words (bad)

3 A figure of speech where a name or quality is attributed to something to which it is not literally applicable, e.g. “an

icy glance”, “nerves of steel”. It is a statement of comparison between two very different entities and its main purpose

is to express an evaluation.

4 The judgement of whether an entity, an event, a process etc. is good or bad for some individual or group.

5 The literal meaning of a word or a phrase, the definition we usually find in a dictionary. 3

Closely related to the question of good or bad evaluative connotation is the question of the

difference between the labels a group chooses to describe itself and those used by those outside

the group to describ