Research Paper on Language Use: Rhetoric & Propaganda for Influencing Others

Introduction

Generally, when using any language either in writing or orally, the primary purpose is often to convey to other people some specific information. The message conveyed may be inquiring, informative, persuasive when trying to influence the information receiver, or explicitly or implicitly towards a particular desired behavior or attitude. The use of language to influence the receiver in a certain way is always termed as rhetoric or propaganda (Reah). Even though both rhetoric and propaganda have a negative implication, propaganda is often utilized when describing a derogatory methodology of political campaigning. In society, journalism and politics are the two main domains accused of manipulatively using the language (Reah). There exists a strong independency link between the press and politicians as the essentiality of mass media to the society, in general, is continually increasing thus influential groups and political parties, "have increasingly used public relations experts to channel facts to the media and put the best possible construction on events." (Beard, 29)) On this account, the mass media outlets and politicians get stories and free publicity respectively without effort. According to Ng et al., linguistic influence is a message presentation that appeals to both the emotions, mind, and imagination of the receiver. Language is a powerful instrument when used effectively and efficiently but also most powerful when implicitly used. The main focus of this essay is to illustrate how newspaper outlets with divergent positions politically can linguistically set forth various attitudes during news reporting.

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Journalistic Techniques

As depicted from the introductory section of this essay, media reports are not accurate events representer as they depend majorly on their readers' favor hence have to implement every possible approach to catch the readers' interest. From space considerations or political or financial reasons, the occurred events are reshaped and interpreted in various ways. Some of the journalistic techniques implemented to achieve this include concretization (abstraction avoidance and favoring specific occurrences for the general public expense), sharpening (summarization and selecting the attractive side of the story to use). Polarization (calling attention to the opposite side). Simplification (creation of complex reality understandable to the reader), personification (description of events from an individual perspective usually with interesting or unusual qualities), and intensification (instead of consensus, attention is on conflict). Stereotyping is another technique where an event is illustrated to fit a particular role; for instance, a saint or villain (Ng et al.). Through the application of these techniques, the original event account is transformed, resulting in transformed information, thus, and the readers are presented with a world biased report (Ng et al.).

For instance, taking a look at Gawthorpe's article, "Be careful. Trump may exploit the coronavirus crisis for authoritarian ends," nearly all of the techniques mentioned above are used, and the article is presented in a distortion of several degrees including equivocation, exaggeration, and minimization. The news report, in general, portrays President Donald Trump as a villain who is predicted to take advantage of the ongoing COVID19 outbreak for authoritarian ends. From just reading this article headline, the immediate conclusion drawn is that the article text will illustrate various events of Trump's negative ways towards the needs of Americans but focus on how he strives to protect his presidential objectives. This is practically proven right when Gawthorpe says, "He attempted no emotional connection with or comfort of the tens of millions of Americans whose lives are being upended by the threat of the disease." (Gawthorpe, lines 3-5). Basically, throughout the article, President Donald Trump is criticized widely for his response to the COVID19 outbreak initially beside the inability of his administration to ramp up quickly the testing processes for the virus across the country. "He didn't even have anything useful to say about what his top scientist has described as America's "failing" testing regime, which has screened about as many people all year as South Korea does in a day." (Gawthorpe, lines 5-7). There is a precise balance concerning the article facts, where there are various quoted testimonies fitting the president in a villain set of roles.

Lexico-Semantic Manipulation

Using statements with cultural or emotional loading is termed as lexico-semantic manipulation. As mentioned before, language is not valuing free as the utilized words are loaded with attitudes and emotions, which are either negative or positive. According to Ng et al., these words can be described as minus words and plus words, respectively. Journalistic word choice the minus or plus may invoke particular feelings as the reader reads a certain article, thus directly impacting their opinions. There is a difference between value-loaded and emotionally loaded words. The use of emotionally loaded statements expresses how the sender linguistically feels about something or someone but does not specifically state the individual whose feelings are expressed. For instance, "Trump had an unusual deer-in-the-headlights quality during his address, seeming to reveal that even he realizes his lie-and-deny operation cannot last for much longer." (Gawthorpe, lines 9-10). The reader might interpret the quoted statement as President Trump's irrefutable description but not a description of the feelings of the sender towards President Trump. On the other hand, words that add value implies that a particular attitude or feeling is justified, "Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he has a racialized view of who is a "true" American, from denying Barack Obama's citizenship to telling congresswomen of color born in the US to "go back" to where "they came" from." (Gawthorpe, lines 30-33). In summary, the language used when news reporting is loaded, but the language loading relies majorly on cultural nature where the language exists. Meaning, cultural attitudes towards a certain topic or a person is reflected in how the language used expresses concepts, ideas, and beliefs. Basing on the content of Gawthorpe's article, the attitudes of Americans towards President Trump is that, he can exploit any crisis for his benefits. As Milton Friedman says, only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Modality

Generally, modality can be referred to as the use of modal auxiliary verbs, modal adjectives, and disjuncts to express a variety of attitudes towards a situation, person, or event. Thus providing different ways that opinions can originate from either to be judged as likely, true, or desirable. Examples of modal auxiliary verbs are such as could, can, must, might, shall, ought to, will, would, shall and may. The use of disjuncts, on the other hand, displays attitude, for example, use of, unfortunately, possibly, necessarily, among others. News media influence people with often utilization of modal expressions to enhance the subjectivity sense, thus giving "the illusion of a "person" with voice and opinions." (Fowler, 64). If a journalist is targeting objectivity, then he/she should restrict the utilization of modal expressions, but the utilizations of these expressions allow the newspaper to present speculations and opinions, which may be interpreted by the readers as actual facts. For instance, "When Trump and his allies can no longer lie or deny, we can expect them to move on to the next phase of their crisis management playbook: attacking their enemies." (Gawthorpe, lines 16-17). Based on this statement, there is no guarantee that Trump's administration will turn to attack their enemies if they are unable to control a pandemic, and the economy is crashed among other impacts, but the reader might perceive this as a fact. Throughout the article, the use of modality expressions has established an unfavorable bias towards Trump's and his administration, thus manipulating the opinions of the reader. "He might look like a deer in the headlights right now, but soon enough, he will snap back to the unreality he lives in and deploy the only political trick he knows: rallying his base, abusing his power, trashing his foes." (Gawthorpe, lines 53-55)

Active and Passive voices

In news reporting, the use of active and passive voices depends on how credit or blame is supposed to be distributed among the participants of an occurrence. In this case, the participants' role may be minimized, emphasized, or omitted throughout the entire article. Minimizing or emphasizing the role of a participant can be termed as backgrounding or foregrounding, respectively. Structuring the voice as active focuses on portraying the actor in question is assuming responsibility for the topic in question. On the other hand, the use of passive voices develops a different impact where the actor in question is portrayed as less prominent, and the thing or person affected by the event is focused. As mentioned above, Gawthorpe's article focuses on fitting the villain set of roles to Trump; thus, more active voices are used throughout the article. For instance, "Donald Trump's Oval Office address on coronavirus was terrifying because it revealed a man completely unmatched to the moment." (Gawthorpe, line 1-2). This statement overtly declares Trump and his administration as responsible for the COVID19 crisis not being under control as many American people are suffering. The article does not mention the Americans as the primary importance but second.

Conclusion

The primary objective of this essay has been to illustrate how newspapers outlets with divergent positions politically can linguistically set forth various attitudes during news reporting that affects public opinion. Based on the above description, the conclusion to be drawn is that there is a high possibility that news media influence people with their linguistic choices, for example, through the use of active and passive voices, modal expressions, metaphors, lexico-semantic manipulations, stereotyping among others. All these journalistic techniques have major impact words the attitude of the reader on a particular topic.

Work Cited

Beard, Adrian. The language of politics. London: Routledge, 2000.

Fowler, Roger. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge, 2013.

Gawthorpe, Andrew. Be careful. Trump may exploit the coronavirus crisis for authoritarian ends. Guardian News & Media Limited, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/14/trump-may-exploit-coronavirus-crisis

Ng, Sik Hung, and James J. Bradac. Power in language: Verbal communication and social influence. Sage Publications, Inc, 1993.

Reah, Danuta. The language of newspapers. Psychology Press, 2002.