Sarah Palin's semantics

I want to talk about Paul Adams' discussion of the power of language to include and exclude in Ch 6 of "Geographies of Media and Communication." I found the chapter to be quite interesting and many of his points resonated. I've long held the belief that semantics are not just semantics - our word choice informs the way we think about the world and the way in which we affect others' views.


This blog post on PR Breakfast Club: http://prbreakfastclub.com/2010/05/11/just-semantics-point/ was just the sort of argument I was looking for: 

"...the point is this – words have meanings – usually a very specific meaning.  They 1) can’t be interchanged willy-nilly, even if they’re next to each other in the thesaurus and 2) even words that “mean the same thing” have a unique power, a hint of something else, an implication of degree (e.g. smoldering vs. hot), etc. The rights word used at the right place and time can be used to spin (or rather frame) a story the way you’d like your audience (or rather community) to receive it.  Outrage, calm, anxiety, excitement, anticipation, boredom, intrigue – can all be at your beck and call with the write words (pun intentional)."

Whether it's an obvious word choice like a slur of some kind on a person's sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, looks, sexual orientation, etc., or a more subtle one like the difference between smoldering and hot, as above, the words we use both include and exclude, as Adams says. They are our way of defining the world around us, placing a certain lens over it for others to see and feel the same way we do. 

I'd like to present one strong (if unintended) advocate of the power of words and phrases: Sarah Palin. Ms Palin is famous for peppering her speeches with nationalistic words and phrases, which seem at many times to take precedence over actually making a clear point. I'm sure everyone remembers the embarrassing interview Palin did with Katie Couric, videos of which promptly went viral. Here's a clip as a refresher; I'd venture it's clear Palin wants to make sure she gets her talking points in, and it certainly seems to be at the mercy of making a coherent statement of any kind:




Just for fun, a clip of CNN's Wolf Blitzer showing the nearly exact usage of Palin's rhetoric on the subsequent SNL parody:

If you're still having some doubts over the perceived power of words themselves by this point, let me remind you of this other blazing moment in American history:

I know both of these lovely ladies were nervous, and I won't say I would necessarily do any better in their situation. I don't mean to pick on the innocent - or the stage-fright stricken, if unintelligible, reciters of talking points. What I do mean to illustrate here is the recognition that words are important. Such phrases as "shoring up our economy" are telling of Palin's view on us versus them, for example, which is a powerful sentiment with many in Palin's party. Politicians' rhetoric is a great example of the active ways in which language is used for othering. When a candidate speaks, they are explicitly trying to play to their audience. When the audience is Cold War-era Berlin, they say Ich bin ein Berliner, to include Berlin and exclude the Soviet Union. When the audience is a post-9/11 America, they speak so as to include the US and exclude the "Axis of Evil." When the audience is a gay-rights group, they'll mince some words to make their stance on gay marriage seem a bit different from when the audience is a socially conservative group.

Anyone have any other good examples of this? My roommate and I had some fun thinking of great moments in political history for the purposes of this illustration. Our favorite: 




As people, we are naturally communicators, and as such, we are all tasked with using the words we have at our disposal the best way we know how.


(And just for the record, my friends at NPR clarified the issue of Palin's accent, which is an Alaskan one and not derived in any way from my native Minnesota: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95306504)