Political Rhetoric Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Political Rhetoric - Essay Example The Institute is a think-thank which offers its expertise and research to progressives to help the latter understand and learn how to communicate effectively their messages across. 1 Lakoff’s contribution to political rhetoric is his study of metaphors in relation to political discourse. Lakoff asserts that metaphors are not merely occasional figures of speech but is a cognitive phenomenon implying that language in itself is metaphorical. The ability to create metaphors is made possible by the use of a source domain as a reference to a target domain using areas of experience or semantic frames. Thus the metaphor war on terror and others like it coined to refer to the 9/11 incident was drawn from the war frame idea signifying a relentless battle against an enemy. 2 The function of metaphors in political rhetoric, according to Lakoff, is that they determine how people perceive phenomena and hence, how they act. Metaphors likewise act to highlight a particular aspect of a phenomenon whilst concealing some other aspects. In addition, Lakoff theorises that the processes of thinking are structured metaphorically which is turn is reflected by speech but when met aphors are used intentionally, they become debatable. 3 Murray Edelman (1919-2001) was a multi-awarded professor who taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin until his death in 2001. He initially focused his attention in the field of labour-management relations but eventually turned to the subject of symbolic politics and the subjective part of politics and power, which would pre-occupy him in the next forty years of his life. Some of his works are: The Symbolic Uses of Politics in 1964; Politics as a Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence in 1971; Political Language: Words that Succeed and Politics that Fail in 1977; Constructing the Political Spectacle in 1995, and; The Politics of Misinformation in 2001. 4 Edelman’s books were seen as major

Saturation of Media is Causing Loss of Democratic Communication Essay

Saturation of Media is Causing Loss of Democratic Communication - Essay Example It is worth noting that free flow of information and fast transmissions are key advantages of media. The advances of media have been events of celebration in history but their increased use has reached a saturation point. The saturation is leading to a gradual loss of democratic communication. Society has embraced media without holding back. Media forms an integral part of human existence in the current world. Because of the increasing saturation, man is slowly losing the essence of democratic communication. Democratic communication is a two-way platform that allows individuals access to information and gives them the opportunity to raise debate and criticism of such information to qualify it as the absolute truth. Concerning social media, there are many social websites in society. These include facebook, twitter, MySpace, badoo, Skype, and netlog. Facebook and twitter have numerous subscribers in the American society. Most of the subscribers spent a lot of time on the websites but d ue to saturation level, they do little while online. Few subscribers create new information. On the contrary, people transmit the existing information. In addition, television, disk players, smart phones are all over in the society. People are in constant access with these forms of media such that they have forgotten the experience of life without any of them. Each time, there is a continuous flow of data and information from status updates, tweets, photos and videos from friends. The influence of media images, opinions, commentaries, critics, and observation has been blinding people from embracing the truth as it is in real life. There is so much available on data networks that influence the opinions and reasoning of people, that very few people can make unbiased analysis of events and happenings. People have allowed media to influence their daily relationships. The daily access to images over time has led to loss of the reality. Print media was the first to reach a saturation poin t and next came the era of the internet. Before the internet, came public broadcasting and television. Through all these, people access limitless information and images to a point whereby, they take what they see or hear as the truth. At the start of media, images were but representatives of the real objects. As saturation increases, people have allowed the media images to take the place of reality. Most of the people in society no longer take time to analyze things as they are in real life. They do not form opinions in communication without the influence of media and this hinders democratic communication. People have lost the autonomy in communication because they imitate what the media presents from the celebrities to movie characters. The media has multiple impacts on the political decisions of people. The public makes political decisions based on the media criticism and allegations. Very few people analyze the quality of leaders from real life reality. Therefore, the people rely on misleading compulsion from the media sources that do not reflect the reality on the ground. There is too much on any data source that one cannot discern what is true or false. Most of the forms of media do not allow a two-way form of communication. The people cannot effectively raise criticism on the data they receive. Nobody has the time to weigh out and criticizer the