unsatisfactory,” the people you’re talking to might provide the spin for you
and remind you that you had the flu that week, or that nobody did very
well because the manager conducting the reviews is a jerk. One of the
most fruitful areas for study of spin and objectivity is the political
campaign.
The study of political language can take many points of departure.
There are studies of style in public debate, audience focus, rhetorical
tropes, metaphor, ritual insulting, and the use of humor, to name a few
(Cienki and Mueller 2008; Clayman 1995; Dillard and Pfau 2002; Lim
2008; Santa Ana 2002). George Lakoff (Lakoff 2004, 2006, 2008; Lakoff
and Rockridge 2006) is one of very few linguists whose theories have
come to the attention of the public. This happened at least in part because
his work in discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics aroused the
interest of a senior members of the Democratic Party, who were
scrambling for new, more effective ways of reaching the public (Bai
2005). Lakoff became a consultant to many politicians who were
interested in the concept of rhetorical framing.
Lakoff’s work suggests that success in swaying public opinion has to do
with a more effective and consistent set of rhetorical strategies, or a frame
of reference so that “through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames ...
we understand and express our ideals (Lakoff 2008).
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Republicans have
tended to be much better at getting their message out to the public, and
getting the public to listen. They do this, in part, by coining new,
ideologically laden and emotive terminology and repeating those terms
until they become embedded in the public consciousness. Two things are
crucial to such a strategy: uniformity of style and rhetoric across the party,
and repetition.
In Whose Freedom?, Lakoff claims that liberals run into trouble because
they operate on the basis of a self-defeating political rationalism, which is
“a myth about reason and its relationship to politics” (Lakoff 2006: 249–
251). Some primary characteristics of political rationalism are: (1) its
defining nature for humans (it distinguishes us from other life forms); (2)
its universality (everyone is rational); and (3) the fact that rational thought
is a conscious process.
A person who believes strongly in the value of rationalism will
conclude that once the public has the facts, they will come to the same
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