ozarque's Journal

Linguistics; political language; persuasion; part two...
I think it would be useful to look more closely at a few of the excellent comments you've been sending me about the Rockridge Institute's strategies and what I perceive as a Story Gap; and then I'd like to add a few words.

1. Charles Martel commented:
"Liberals are perfectly willing to appeal to fear. The central claim of the economic left, after all, is that we're individually helpless in the face of huge, sinister corporate interests, and our only hope is to seek the protection of a union and a big left-wing government."

I think there's some truth to Martel's claim that the economic left does a considerable amount of wailing about our being "individually helpless in the face of huge, sinister corporate interests." I've seen/heard that done, and it's both pernicious and counterproductive. It's the source of the perpetual "I'm only one person, there's nothing I can do" excuse.

I disagree, however, with Martel's claim that the economic non-right claims that "the only hope" for fixing individual helplessness [for those who fall for that one] is "a union and a big left-wing government." There are very large contingents on the non-right who are just as opposed to big government as those on the right claim to be, and who believe that hope lies in building community, not in building big government.

[Note: I am underwhelmed lately, looking at the government we have right now, by claims that the right is opposed to big government. And I'm not sure that "a union and a big left-wing government" is a reasonable pair of items to link with "and" in that way.]

2. And

bemusedoutsider responded to Martel with:

"I get the impression that Gore went after the union vote and such, on a sensible, practical, no nonsense sort of approach, instead of with mass media 'stories'. And Hillary (bless her!) keeps talking about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work and straightening things out in Washington. Not a juicy or dramatic story, but believable."

My opinion: Gore (bless him) and Clinton (bless her) continue to believe that the way to persuade people is to put together, and present, a "sensible, practical, no nonsense sort of approach" complete with all the True Facts and Logical Arguments. And never mind the body language that goes with it, as long as the words are all well chosen.

Bless them both. What they believe is what our culture teaches us, with all its "thirty days to a more powerful vocabulary" products and slogans and classes and tests and similar truck. But this rational/factual approach -- although it may persuade people that you are someone electable -- doesn't persuade people to work together and build community and fix problems.

3. And then there was the comment from

dpolicar, which I can summarize as the hypothesis that what's most important is not the story but the storyteller, and that the non-right's problem may well be not a lack of stories but the lack of a spellbindingly powerful spokesperson. And my response, which I can summarize as the claim that (a) when a group is dependent on one such spokesperson, that's dangerous, because the loss of that one person usually destroys the group, and (b) the Tale Of The Wicked Welfare Queen works even when the person telling it is a tedious and boring and tiresome speaker.
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A Few Words

The non-right needs stories like that Wicked Welfare Queen story.

Stories in which the person who's convinced that there has to be a pony somewhere in the pile of horse manure actually finds the pony.

Stories that work like a Zipper Song -- that get everybody present talking and excited and adding examples of their own.

Stories that work that way even in the mouths of inadequate storytellers with inadequate body language.

Stories that are put together using the words that ordinary people use when they talk or write or sign.

I am absolutely certain that we are smart enough to create a few stories like that. And I propose a new slogan for consideration: "It doesn't take a think tank."