The most fun part of my work week is teaching in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. The classes are small and seminar-style, the students are smart and the conversations are usually very interesting. In addition to the entertainment value, the course readings are constant reminders of the basics of political communication.
For those who are interested in such things, below is a list of readings for the Language and Politics course I teach in the fall (in the spring I teach a course on rhetoric, and I also occasionally teach graduate courses in media theory and strategic communication). Not surprisingly I tend to work from big theory to specific application.
All of the readings are widely available, but if you’re interested in a particular reading and can’t find it, let me know.
First Session
On Writing Well Chapter 1, 2, 3, 6, and 14
Write the first essay discussing a piece of political language and its implications – for example, examine the difference between “conservationist” and “environmentalist,” “global warming” and “climate change”, etc.
Second Session
FIRST ESSAY DUE
Discuss your essays
For next week read:
Protagoras by Plato, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/protagoras.html and elsewhere.
Third Session
Discuss Plato’s the “food of the soul” and whether or not the “art of politics” can be taught.
For next week read:
“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell, (available at http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html and elsewhere)
“The All Spin Zone” by Stanley Fish
Fourth Session
Discuss Orwell, Fish and the possibility of “good” political language.
For next week read:
Selections from Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure
Selections from C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards The Meaning of Meaning
“Language, thought and reality: a comparison of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics with C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richard’s The Meaning of Meaning by David West, Changing English Vol 12 No 2, October 2005 pp 327-336
Fifth Session
Discuss the connections between words and things.
For next week read:
“On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense” by Friedrich Nietzsche, available at http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/tls.htm#1 (and elsewhere)
“Political Language and Political Reality” by Murray Edelman, PS vol 18 no 1 Winter 1985
Write your second essay explaining what the connection between language and politics is, what it should be, and the implications of the (dis)connections.
Sixth Session
SECOND ESSAY DUE
Discuss the (dis)connection between language and politics.
Discuss your essays and the possibility of reality inside and outside of politics.
For next week read:
“Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Journal of Philosophy Vol 77 No. 8, Aug 1980)
Lakoff, “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics or Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust.” Social Research, Summer 1995 pp 177 – 213
“Block That Metaphor!” by Steven Pinker, The New Republic, Oct. 9, 2006 pp 24 – 29.
Seventh Session
Discuss Lakoff
Eight Session
MID TERM
For next week read:
“The Meaning and Measure of Policy Metaphors” by Mark Schlesinger and Richard R. Lau, (The American Political Science Review vol 94 no 3 Sept. 2000)
“Policy Frames, Metaphorical Reasoning, and Support for Public Policies” by Richard R. Lau and Mark Schlesinger, (Political Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2005).
Ninth Session
Discuss health care policy metaphor
For next week read:
“Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of “Immigrant as Pollutant” in Media Representations of Immigration: by J. David Cisneros (Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, pp. 569-602)
Tenth Session
Discuss metaphor and immigration
For next week read:
“What Should This Fight Be Called? Metaphors of Counterterrorism and their Implications” by Arie W. Kruglanski, Martha Crenshaw, Jerrold M. Post, and Jeff Victoroff (Psychological Science in the Public Interest Vol. 8 No. 3, 2008)
Eleventh Session
THIRD ESSAY DUE
Write about the relationship between metaphor and a public policy
Discuss metaphor and terrorism
For next week read:
TBD
Twelfth Session
Discuss TBD
For the next class read:
Any two essays from Mythologies by Roland Barthes
Thirteenth Session
Final Papers Due
Discuss Barthes
