Abstract
This chapter draws on philosophical deliberations of language in its investigation of partisan media. It starts with an introduction of the major concepts philosophers have arrived at in their investigation of the relations of language to the events and realities shaping our lives. It presents a brief survey of the literature, with emphasis on research with a bearing on partisan language. Then, it provides the method the research pursues and the conceptual frameworks it adopts for the analysis of the data. Thereafter, the chapter analyzes the data to operationalize the conceptual frameworks through which thinkers have strived to unravel the role of language in society. Finally, the research finds that partisan language falls into at least ten distinct but salient discursive threads, defined in terms of language’s communicative functions and conceptual frameworks of how language orders the way we make sense of events in our lives.
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Notes
- 1.
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.
- 2.
Barkho, News from the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.
- 3.
Mieth, The Basic Norm of Truthfulness, 89–90.
- 4.
Whitaker, “Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic.”
- 5.
Martin, Plato’s Doctrine of Truth.
- 6.
See Gunkel and Taylor, Heidegger and the Media, Russell and Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, Shannon and Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, and Taylor, “What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty?”
- 7.
Ward, “Truth and Objectivity.”
- 8.
BBC Editorial Guidelines.
- 9.
See Alexander, “How the AP Stylebook Censors ‘Pro-life’ and other Conservative Words, and Perlman, “AP Tackles Language about Race in this year’s Style Guide.”
- 10.
Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 35–36.
- 11.
Sher, “On the Possibility of a Substantive Theory of Truth,” 134.
- 12.
See Mills, The Sociological Imagination.
- 13.
See Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Austin, How to Do Things with Words, and Putnam, The Meaning of ‘Meaning.
- 14.
Wilkins and Christians, The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics.
- 15.
Gadamer, Truth and Method.
- 16.
Calvert, “Hate Speech and Its Harms: A Communication Theory Perspective,” 4–19.
- 17.
Doherty, Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016.
- 18.
Michele, Connecting Humanities.
- 19.
O’Connor, How Memes got Broke Millennials through the Recession.
- 20.
Maheshwari, How Fakes News Goes Viral.
- 21.
Mitchell et al., Political Polarization & Media Habits.
- 22.
Dimock et al., Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology.
- 23.
Pew Research Center, Where do you fit in the political typology?
- 24.
Doherty et al., Conflicting Partisan Priorities for U.S. Foreign Policy.
- 25.
Abernathy, “The Partisan Media Still Doesn’t Understand Trump Country.”
- 26.
Chomsky, “What makes Mainstream Media Mainstream,” 17–23.
- 27.
Kuypers, “Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States.”
- 28.
Conservapedia, Essay: Best New Conservative Words.
- 29.
Oxford Dictionaries, What are the most common American political insults?
- 30.
Hoff, Partisan Thesaurus.
- 31.
See Crossley et al., “A Linguistic Analysis of Simplified and Authentic Texts,” 15–30, and Pak, “Twitter as a Corpus for Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining,” 1320–1326.
- 32.
Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 350–377.
- 33.
Associated Press, AP Government Terms Unit 2: The Legislature.
- 34.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus.
- 35.
Gentzkow et al., “Measuring Polarization in High-Dimensional Data: Method and Application to Congressional Speech,” 1.
- 36.
Foucault, “The Order of Things.”
- 37.
See Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics.”
- 38.
See Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics.”
- 39.
See Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics.”
- 40.
Harwood, Taking Their Umbrage Where They Can Get It.
- 41.
Bukszpan, “The Political Buzzwords Some People Hope will End with Election Day.”
- 42.
David, “Donald Trump Supporters Spar with Clinton over ‘Basket of Deplorables’ Remark.”
- 43.
Corn, “SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters.”
- 44.
Kurtzleben, “We Asked People What They Know About Taxes. See If You Know The Answers.”
- 45.
See Gentzkow et al., “Measuring Polarization in High-Dimensional data: Method and Application to Congressional Speech,” 1.
- 46.
Powell, “Framing the Issues: UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff Tells How Conservatives Use Language to Dominate Politics.”
- 47.
Miller, REVEALED: How To Talk Like A Republican.
- 48.
See Oxford Dictionaries, What are the Most Common American Political Insults?
- 49.
See Harwood, Taking Their Umbrage Where They Can Get It.
- 50.
Henley, A Glossary of US Military Torture Euphemisms.
- 51.
Barkho, “Towards a Pragmatic View of Impartiality,” 185–208.
- 52.
Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action.
- 53.
Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”
- 54.
Stares and Yacoubian, Terrorism as a Disease: An Epidemiological Model for Countering Islamist Extremism.
- 55.
See Power, Hannah Arendt’s Lesson, and Schlesinger, “War and the American Presidency.”
- 56.
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
- 57.
Haass, The Opportunity: America’s Moment to Alter History’s Course.
- 58.
Bernstein, “The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religions since 9/11.”
- 59.
Barkho, “Towards a Pragmatic View of Impartiality,” 185–208.
- 60.
Waller, “Making Jihad Work for America,” 1–22.
- 61.
Zurcher, “How Trump Feud with ‘Dumb as a Rock’ Tillerson Erupted.”
- 62.
Crilly, “Donald Trump spends ‘up to eight hours a day watching TV’ – report.”
- 63.
Margolin, “Make America Great Again’—Who Said It First?”
- 64.
Tatum and Acosta, “Report: Trump Continues to Question Obama’s Birth Certificate.”
- 65.
See Flynn, “A Jewish Republican called Ilhan Omar anti-Semitic. She suggested he’s Islamophobic. Then Came a Voice Mail,” Schulberg, “GOP Congressman Spent His Week Harassing Muslim Colleague On Twitter,” and Fox News, “Rep. Zeldin: Anti-Semitic Hate Infiltrating’ US Politics, Colleges & Halls of Congress.”
- 66.
Schulberg, “GOP Congressman Spent His Week Harassing Muslim Colleague On Twitter.”
- 67.
Fox News, “Rep. Zeldin: Anti-Semitic Hate Infiltrating’ US Politics, Colleges & Halls of Congress.”
- 68.
See Allsides, “Washington Post Media Bias Rating is Lean Left, 2020.”
- 69.
See Flynn, “A Jewish Republican called Ilhan Omar anti-Semitic. She suggested he’s Islamophobic. Then Came a Voice Mail.”
- 70.
Taylor, Extreme Mediaand American Politics: In Defense of Extremity.
- 71.
See Flynn, “A Jewish Republican called Ilhan Omar anti-Semitic. She suggested he’s Islamophobic. Then Came a Voice Mail.”
- 72.
Sales, “Can a feud in Congress between Jewish and Muslim lawmakers be solved over tea?”
- 73.
Syverson, Linguistics can help Conservatives and Liberals agree on Objective Reality Again.
- 74.
Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.
- 75.
Morrison, “Linguist George Lakoff on what Democrats don’t understand—and Republicans do—about how voters think.”
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Barkho, L. (2021). Without Fear or Favor? The Social Reality of Partisan Language. In: Ward, S.J.A. (eds) Handbook of Global Media Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_23
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