“Say What?”

The peril of political rhetoric

“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.” George Orwell

Those words were written more than three quarters of a century ago, when George Orwell penned his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. The sentiment, however, is as cogent today as it was back then. Even more so.

Orwell believed in a direct link between political dogma and the deterioration of language, and that the latter was meant to obscure the truth rather than reveal it. “Political language,” he declared, “has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Moreover, he argued that rather than simply reflect the state of society, language also shapes it. A notion seconded by Marissa Fond, a sociolinguist at Georgetown University: “There are those connections between certain words that we use and certain entire belief systems and affiliations with political or other groups that are really important, because meaning isn’t just like the meaning of a word in a dictionary … there’s that constantly dynamic social meaning.”

The process of fabricating language into a conceptual paradigm is called framing. It is about how to finesse information to communicate a topic or circumstance, either by highlighting or downplaying features such as words, phrases, and narratives. Political issues, for example, can be framed to embellish a particular ideology or objective, such as recasting “anti-abortion” to “pro-life.”

Framing is also an important component of the broader field of rhetoric, which is the study and practice of using language to influence perceptions, understanding, and actions through what are known as “rhetorical appeals.” Ethos is an appeal based on a speaker’s credibility or trustworthiness. Logos appeals to logic or reason. And Pathos is aimed at an audience’s emotions.

Nowhere these days is rhetoric more evident and pernicious than in politics. In terms of ethos, politicians exploit words and phrases that resonate with specific demographic groups to generate a sense of belonging and shared values. Sadly, this frequently involves demeaning or vilifying opponents. It is also a means for those who initially lack name recognition to get noticed and build a following. Firebrands like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene have mastered this art.

Logic and reason, on the other hand, are harder to come by. Complex ideas are usually dumbed down to make them more digestible to the public; then wrapped in jargon and guile to hide inconsistencies and lies. What follows are inducements to emotions like anger, fear, and insecurity, encapsulated in slogans and catchphrases that are repeated ad nauseam.

Advantage Conservatives

Though rhetoric spans the political spectrum, the language of those on the right and left differ. A sweeping 2020 study of nearly 2,500 Twitter users — and more than 11 million tweets — by scholars at Princeton and New York University determined that conservatives favor terms that reference certainty, conformity, and power, whereas liberals lean toward expressions denoting curiosity, individuality, and benevolence. Not surprisingly, a subsequent survey of members of Congress found much the same.

Yet conservatives do have a leg up. In a 2003 interview with the UC Berkeley News, linguist professor George Lakeoff noted that conservatives spent decades honing their ideas and fashioning language to articulate them. “They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their worldview and getting it out there [while] progressives have done virtually nothing.” Conservatives’ advantage, added Lakeoff, was that they “understand what unites them, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.”

Over time they have only gotten better at it. Conservatives are savvy at crafting concise and emotionally charged messages, and delivering them across platforms that prioritize quick, attention-grabbing content. They have also been more successful at constructing echo chambers where beliefs reinforce themselves. Studies have shown that conservatives are more likely than liberals to habitually tune into partisan media, though this reflects a tendency toward closemindedness, which makes them more susceptible to disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Vernacular Theft

But where those on the right clearly excel is at hijacking words and phrases to serve their purposes. Semantic bleaching is a means of stripping away the precision of content so it can be used in more abstract ways. It takes specific ideas and broadens them to the extent they are essentially unintelligible. Then any new meaning can be applied.

This has been especially true of terms originating in Black culture, of which “cancel” and “woke” are the latest marks. The notion of cancelling someone was meant to censure unacceptable behavior. One of the earliest references was in Nile Rodger’s song Your Love is Cancelled, recorded in 1981 by his group Chic. In the 1991 film New Jack City, gang leader Nino, played by Wesley Snipes, dumped his girlfriend by telling a flunky to “cancel that bitch.” Nearly 20 years later, rapper Lil Wayne alluded to the line in his song I’m Single, claiming “Yeah, I’m single / n***a had to cancel that bitch like Nino.” The term then made the rounds on Black Twitter. But in 2021, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) titled its annual confab America Uncancelled, and the word has since become a Republican mantra.

“Woke” too, was an established part of Black vernacular, exhorting the need for vigilance of racial violence. When he recorded his song Scottsboro Boys in 1938, about nine Black teens falsely accused of rape in Alabama, blues legend Huddie William Ledbetter — aka Lead Belly — urged listeners to “be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” The expression re-emerged in 2014 after a series of police killings of unarmed Black men and boys, including Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, and Tamir Rice. Yet, just as they have done with “cancel,” conservatives have co-opted the term to define any program, policy, or practice they dislike, often at the expense of Black Americans.

Then there is “political correctness.” Once a self-critical jab at self-righteousness among leftists, it has since become a conservative dog whistle against liberal values. Such semantic bleaching, however, not only renders language meaningless, but also hypocritical. Politicians who decry “cancel culture” regularly champion laws banning abortion, books, education, and healthcare for young people. Critics of “political correctness” include activists who proclaim America a Christian nation and demand everyone abide by its precepts.

Dangerous Speech

Linguistic weapons like these are popular among lawmakers who rely on outrage and fear, rather than on evidence and understanding, to appeal to voters. They are “performative politicians,” more interested in scoring political points than in working to solve problems. And their language often suggests, if not outright solicits, acts of violence.

One tactic is to dehumanize opponents by comparing them to animals. During his 2022 Senatorial campaign, former Mississippi governor Eric Greitens — who had resigned amid charges of sexual assault — ran an ad inviting voters to go “RINO hunting.” Armed with shotgun and following a team of men donning paramilitary gear and assault rifles, he burst into a home of what was implied to be a moderate Republican, boasting that there is “no bagging limit, no tagging limit.”

Another ploy is to evoke the need for self-defense. Speaking at CPAC last year, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told the crowd: “this is truly a battle between those who want to save America and those who want to destroy her.” Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s warning on Twitter was even more paranoid:

Still, no one is more at home with dangerous speech than the performative-politician-in-chief, Donald Trump. The 45th president of the United States has been indicted in federal court, and his right to run for re-election is being challenged in three states, for inciting supporters to besiege the nation’s capital, resulting in the death of five people. Moreover, several of the individuals charged with the attack claimed they were persuaded to do so by Trump’s rhetoric.

In the interim, Trump is no longer just pushing the envelope, but tearing it apart. During a speech to a crowd of California Republicans, he advocated that “if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.” A few days earlier, he posted on Truth Social that the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, deserved “DEATH” for reassuring China that the U.S. had no plans to attack it before the president left the White House. And according to political analyst and Trump critic Brian Klass, it is “highly likely going into the 2024 election … that a small subset of Trump’s very well-armed and extremist base will try to kill people.”

Artificial Rhetoric

There are hopeful signs that at least some current political rhetoric may be dissipating. A New York Times/Sienna College poll taken this summer found that fewer than one-in-four Republicans support primary candidates “who focus on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture.” More than half also believe government should stay out of deciding what social matters corporations can support.

Nonetheless, recent events make it clear the nation is not yet out of the rhetorical woods. The Israeli-Hamas war has raised questions about use of words like antisemitism, terrorism, and genocide, while newer coded terms emerge online. On the web site Rumble, white nationalist Nick Fuentes suggested that recent attacks by Hamas and the Holocaust are being exploited as “atrocity propaganda.” On the same site, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned that “Islamic hordes” are pouring into the America.

Charged language like this arises from, and is targeted at, peoples’ passions. A more worrisome form of rhetoric, however, is largely detached from human emotions, or from humans at all. Artificial intelligence can generate political rhetoric, though right now it lacks nuanced reasoning. But AI-powered tools will increasingly be able to analyze patterns in political speech and writing to understand meaning, framing, and sentiment. This will enable users to refine their language, scale their messages, and micro target them at specific audiences.

Indeed, generative AI is already a combat zone in the culture war. Republicans are attacking artificial intelligence companies on both the floor of Congress and the campaign trail, claiming they are training their systems on “leftist values.” Asserting that “the danger of training AI to be woke — in other word, lie — is deadly,” Elon Musk, who co-founded Open AI, has launched his own chatbot “Grok,” which he promises will be “maximally true.” His critics, on the other hand, question how trustworthy a program can be that draws all of its data from his own X platform.

Artificial intelligence will surely shape political discourse in the future, providing greater efficiency and engagement, or distorting public opinion and spreading misinformation. Or both. The relationship between rhetoric and AI is complex and evolving. But whatever the upshot, George Orwell’s words will still ring true.