Issue about Political Science

The Manipulative Power of Language Framing in Politics

Political communicators are skilled at framing the debates over controversial issues through an emphasis on the policy goals that deserve the highest priority , according to themselves rather than the people they communicate with . Such rhetoric affects political attitudes by influencing the importance that individuals place on competing issues . Frames do not only affect opinions on the issues , but they also influence the judgments of the participants in the communication process with regards to the relative importance of competing values . Thus political persuaders shape

the public opinion through the framing of their policy goals and choices (Nelson 581

Politicians attempt to control public perception through the use of words . Thus an encyclopedia has defined framing as a process of selective control over the individual 's perception of media , public , or private communication , in particular the meanings attributed to words or phrases . Framing defines how an element of rhetoric is packaged so as to allow certain interpretations and rule out others . Moreover , media frames may be created by the mass madia as well as specific political and social movements or organizations ( Framing : Communication Theory

Very often we find that the media works alongside political and social movements to control the perceptions of the public at large through the communication theory of framing . Hence , the media is very frequently heard discussing the war on terror ' seeing as the politicians have coined the phrase and use it regularly to advise the public about their policies concerning the issue . Another important example of framing in this context is the recent popularization of the term "escalation " to describe an increase in troop levels in war torn Iraq . This term , escalation ' implies that the United States of America is deliberately heightening the scope of the conflict in a

POLITICAL FRAMING

Page 2

manner that is provocative ( Framing . Christian Spielvogel writes that both George W . Bush and John Kerry , during the 2004 presidential campaign , relied upon the moral framing of the war on terrorism ' and the situation in Iraq as a battle between good and evil ' in their day to day political discourse . Moreover , President Bush employed this rhetorical frame to politically and morally cloak the war in Iraq under a larger war on terror

One of the principal experts on the communication theory of framing is George Lakeoff , who has written books on the subject as it applies to politics . Lakeoff 's theory of political framing presumes that the political elites are the key framers of political discourse , and the manipulative power of language framing is ultimately more important to a successful political message than the ideas behind it (Dickson . A typical example offered by Lakeoff to explain political framing is that of the phrase , tax relief ' in place of tax reform ' Here , the use of the word relief ' implies that taxes are a burden on the citizen and the government (as well as the politicians who use the phrase ) are concerned about helping the citizen be granted relief...