Using Language to Sell Your Product

This month's American Prospect had three excellent articles about language (and the use of language by the Republicans) by some of the best explainers of how words work: Deborah Tannen, George Lakoff and Geoffrey Nunberg. (It appears that they are not yet available online, but they are a powerful set of articles and provide some really excellent insight and advice for the Democrats.)

Debrorah Tannen: Let Them Eat Words

Deborah Tannen discusses how the Republicans are using the advice of master propagandist, Frank Luntz, to sell themselves as on the side of Americans without having to do anything to back up their rhetoric. Frank Luntz heads a research company which provides services such as:

Strategic Consulting & Message Development: LRC helps Fortune 100 companies and leading trade associations get the language right the first time.

That is exactly what Frank Luntz provides the Republican party, advice on what words to use to sell the political party.

To do this, Luntz puts together focus groups to see what words sell a policy. If people don't like a particular policy, he works to find words to put that same policy in a different light. The classic example of this is using "death tax" instead of "estate tax". When the tax is called a death tax, then everyone thinks they are affected, not just those with large estates. As Tannen says:

Win the name game and you're than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you're on your way to winning the war.

Luntz' advice is to use language that connects to people's emotional center. Bush and his speechwriters have taken Luntz' advice to heart, and so Bush's speeches are sprinkled with words like "children", "hope", "heart", "love", and "dream". (In Bush's Portland speech a couple of weeks ago, each of these words were part of the speech.) Sometimes adding these words make for some very strange sentences: In all the confusion and controversy of our time, there is still one answer for our children. [Ed: huh?]

Frank Luntz is not interested in engaging your rational and logical mind, but rather wants to trigger your emotions and get you to buy without thinking. He is a genuinely gifted marketeer and spends a lot of time analyzing what can be done to make people believe that "black is white" and "war is peace". Tannen reflects that the tactics of the right and especially Luntz' approach to marketing the Republicans was learned by watching how Bill Clinton framed issues (by stealing Republican issues and putting a Democratic spin on them). Now, Luntz (and Bush) compete for the "soccer mom" by using terminology that is pro-child and by empathizing with women, they expect to win their votes.

By adopting emotional language without changing policies, Luntz tells them, Republicans can have it all: Like Pavlov's dogs, voters will come running if you ring the right verbal bells....

But wait. Understanding may be all that a woman is looking for when telling her husband or boyfriend about something that frustrated her that day. But when they go to the polls to elect a leader, women as well as men are selecting not a soul mate, but a public official whose job is to solve at least some of the country's problems -- or at least to address them honestly.

Finally, Deborah Tannen points out that the discipline when all the candidates repeat the same message is what allows the Republican talking points to become conventional wisdom and makes their message so powerful. She advises Democrats and Democratic candidates to take a play out of the Republican playbook and ask again and again "What does this do to the children," for every policy put forth by the Republicans.

[Frank Luntz works closely with Newt Gingrich who also is known for his skills in propaganda. Luntz helped write Contract For America used in the 1994 elections to help win the House for the Republicans.]

George Lakoff: Framing the Dems

I've been impressed with George Lakoff's work for awhile and heartedly recommend his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think to anyone trying to understand our modern politics. This article provides a review of his treatise and then goes on to provide some really interesting advice for Democrats that can be used to influence the "middle". Lakoff urges us to get past issues and coalitions and to work to build a movement that is much bigger than the sum of the disparate groups. He provides the following suggestion:

For example, the New Apollo Program -- an investment of hundreds of billions over 10 years in alternative energy development (solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen) is also a jobs program, a foreign-policy issue (freedom from dependence on Middle East oil), a health issue (clean air and water, many fewer poisons in our bodies) and an ecology issue (cleans up pollution, addresses global warming).

Lakoff continues by pointing out that we can win this round by engaging the moderate voter and by clearly stating what we believe:

The swing voters -- roughly 25 percent to 30 percent -- have both worldviews and use them actively in different part of their lives....

Activation of the progressive model among swing voters done through language -- by using a consistent, conventional language of progressive values. Democrats have been subject to a major fallacy: Voters are lined up left to right according to their views on certain issues, the thinking goes, and Democrats can get more voters by moving to the right. But the Republicans have not been getting more voters by moving to the left. What they do is stick to their strict ideology and activate their model among swing voters who have both models. They do this by being clear and issuing consistent messages framed in terms of conservative values. The moral of this: Voters are not on a left-to-right line; there is no middle. [Ed: emphasis added]

Here is a cognitive scientist's advice to progressive Democrats: Articulate your ideals, frame what you believe effectively, say what you believe and say it well, strongly and with moral fervor.

Reframing is telling the truth as we see it -- telling it forcefully, straightforwardly and articulately, with moral conviction and without hesitation. The language must fit the conceptual reframing, a reframing from the perspective of progressive values. It is not just a matter of words, though the right ones are needed to evoke progressive frames.

So saying what we believe with clarity, passion and conviction works better than trying to muddle our message by "moving to the middle". Good. I know that I am not a moderate. I'm very engaged in this discussion. I want to hear the point of view of others, and I'm more than willing to define and refine policy to pick up the best ideas -- but I absolutely do believe that we have an obligation to each other and that government has a place to fill in helping people, because I believe that in a democracy, government is us. The mutual obligation we have with one another is (as far as I can see) the difference between my viewpoint and a conservative viewpoint. Conservatives believe they are solely responsible for their success or failure. (As Clarence Thomas says: he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.) On the other hand liberals believe that we succeed because of others -- our parents, our friends, our neighbors, and our communities. And we believe that our national government as well as our state and local governments should be part of our community and have a role to play in leveling the playing field.

Geoffrey Nunberg: The Liberal Label

Nunberg's article discusses the word "liberal" and how it has been damaged (perhaps irreparably?) by the concerted denigration of the word. Nunberg says branding is important in being able to "sell" a product. He thinks that the word "liberal" is deeply damaged and it really hurts the Democratic party because it means that people already assume certain things about anyone labeled liberal. The Republican spinmeisters have succeeded in making the liberal label appear effete and feminine. Nunberg believes that it is no accident that packaging one's political party as a consumer preference, without a grounding in the philosophical basis of what the party stands for, allows for people to pick and chose the one that most closely matches their lifestyle choices.

Once you turn political orientation into a kind of consumer preference, rather than a deep class-based judgement, it's natural to see it as a decision that men and women feel free to make independently, even if they're in the same household. He drives a Chevy Avalance and drinks long-necked beer; she drives a Toyota Echo and drinks white wine. Why shouldn't they vote for different parties as well?

Nunberg points out that the press often mentions conservative blacks, but there is almost never a mention of liberal blacks. The impression that this leaves is that there are very few liberals in the ranks of the minorities or working class. And the only reason that minorities or the working class vote for Democrats is narrow self-interest or party loyalty, not because there is any philosophical reason that connects them to the party.

So, the question that Nunberg asks is: how can we provide a brand that allows people to describe their philosophy now that the liberal brand has been trashed? He notes that people are now describing themselves as progressives and that this label has none of the negative connotations associated with liberal and has the potential of helping brand the philosophy that should be the hallmark of the Democrats:

[Liberalism] has to reinvent language as well as program to convey a sense of fairness, strength, pride and common purpose, and to reconnnect with people who no longer feel it has any relevance to their lives.

But he does believe that we have lots of opportunities to do this now.

Finally, while we are talking about language, I'd like to point out Allen Brill's annotation of Martin Luther King's I've Got a Dream speech -- one that even after all these years is capable of inspiring and connecting people to the best aspirations of liberalism. Talk about using language effectively.

Posted by Mary at August 31, 2003 06:03 PM | TrackBack