our behaviour is affected by framing about which we have little consciousness. He
thinks the neo-conservatives successfully manipulate public consciousness by playing
into their own frameworks by using appropriate metaphors. Against this, the appeal
to reasoned arguments is politically weak. In his view, progressives need to build on
nurturing metaphors. In his bestselling book Don’t Think of an Elephant, Lakoff points out how, even when you want not to think of an elephant, the very want brings about
the thought. Likewise for those who argue within the set of metaphors that favour the
neo-conservatives. As long as you argue within their frame of metaphors, you merely
support the frame benefiting that side.
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Thomas nast, “Jewels Among Swine,” Harper’s Weekly XVIII,
no. 911 (June 13, 1874). An example of metaphor. The police are
depicted as pigs, ignoring the drunk and disorderly while arresting
women demonstrating for temperance.
DEVICES InVoLVIng LAngUAgE MAnIPULATIon
Some Examples from Bolinger
Many forms of manipulation make artful use of language. The Harvard linguist
Dwight Bolinger, drawing on the work of others, has provided some interesting
examples, to which he has given useful names.8
The first is what he calls, citing Julia Stanley, deleted agent of the passive. In this, we rephrase a sentence from active to passive voice and delete the subject of the first
sentence. Instead of “Jane kicked the bal ,” the sentence is written “the ball was kicked.”
Instead of “Willy broke the window at 5 p.m.,” we get “The window was broken at 5
p.m.” As can be seen, it is a useful device for obscuring responsibility, and it is, not
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surprisingly, a favoured language for boardroom minutes where the aim is to avoid divisiveness or public recriminations. Equally, it is language frowned on by editors
who are looking for directness and transparency in writing. Stanley’s example repro-
duced in Bolinger’s text is illuminating. Suppose Shanks and Shaughnessey dispute a
medical bill. Shanks says that Shaughnessey sewed him up after an operation, leaving
sponges and a scalpel inside. Shaughnessey says that that is a dirty lie. Depending on
whom an editor favours, the headline might read: “Shanks charged with slander” or
“Shaughnessey charged with malpractice.” The other person’s name does not appear in
the headline, and the reader is primed to put the focus of guilt on the named person
rather than on the namer.
Secondly, and rather similar to the first, there is what Bolinger calls, citing
Donald Smith, experiencer deletion. Experiencing verbs are those such as believes,
knows, feels, senses, touches, and so on. If we say, for example, “it is believed that over
10,000 people appeared at the demonstration” and leave out the relevant fact that the
belief was held only by some wishful thinker in the sponsoring organization, who did
not attend the meeting and who notoriously exaggerates the numbers, we give a false
impression. Stanley makes a similar point, using a different terminology. The sentence
“In the fifth century the known world was limited to Europe and small parts of Asia
and Africa” obscures, as she points out, the fact that large parts of the world outside
the stated geographical limits were known to many people who happened not to live
within the limits indicated.9 It is not difficult to think of other examples of deceptions
using this form of language. Of course, the experiencer deletion can be replaced by
an equally misleading substitute. For example, a foreign correspondent reporter may
write “Seasoned observers here feel that ...” when the reference is only to a taxi driver,
himself, or other journalists holed up in some hotel bar with no real access to what is
Thirdly, there is what Bolinger calls the deletion of a qualifying performative.
People with some expertise in a particular field of knowledge may be called on by the
media to express their views to the public. Wanting to be helpful, they may say things
like “Well, I haven’t looked into the matter, but my guess would be....” It is a case of
deleted qualifying performative if the report gives the rest of the sentence without
including the first part. The media prefers to present readers with uncomplicated facts,
but the interests of truth demand the inclusion of qualifiers, since otherwise readers
or listeners will be led to misjudge the strength of the speaker’s support for the claim,
whatever it was. Performatives such as “I think ...” or “I feel ...” are included precisely
in order to signal to the listener that the speaker is giving only limited endorsement to
what follows. To omit these qualifiers can mislead people, in some cases seriously and
unfairly. Bolinger makes a Cold War example. Someone in authority says, “America is
lagging behind Russia in arms production.” It makes a difference whether that state-
ment is founded on good intelligence or whether the speaker is making a guess or
attributing the view to someone else who happens to be uninformed.10
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Finally, Bolinger views the act of naming along with “favorable or unfavorable overtone” in the terms selected as “the favorite device of the propagandist and the
ultimate refinement in the art of lying.”11 Here we are reminded of Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four and the naming of the ministry where lies are continually reinvented
as the “Ministry of Truth.” Among examples Bolinger takes from Henry Steele
Commager are the use of terms such as “surgical strikes” for precision bombing (often
not so precise, nor so healthy), “pacification centres” to apply to concentration camps,
“incontinent ordnance” for bombs that miss their target, and “friendly fire” that kills
people in one’s own villages by mistake.12A government may choose to title legislation
that drastically cuts back on funding for education, as “An Act for the Improvement of
Education,” treating as a truth what is, at best, only debatably so. A great deal of effort
and expense is often required to counteract impressions so formed.
Name-cal ing in general is a powerful force for influencing opinion because names
are easily remembered. Words such as “Uncle Tom,” “demagogue,” “racist,” “sexist,” “trai-
tor,” and the like carry powerful emotional overtones, but they also cause perceptions
of the individual so named to be warped. It is sometimes said of such powerful terms
that a person is “guilty if charged,” such is the tendency of people to believe that there’s
“no smoke without fire” and that denials are only to be expected and not to be believed
without further evidence. Names can have a powerful revealing effect, causing people
to become aware of some truth. But, used in propaganda, names invite us to form our
opinions without reviewing the evidence and, thus, to overlook those aspects of the
truth the propagandist pr
efers to see concealed. In our own day, we find words like
“Communist,” “leftist,” “liberal,” “extreme rightist,” “bigot,” “neo-con,” “terrorist,” and so on used pejoratively, often without a clear idea as to the meaning of the term so applied.
Bolinger usefully investigates how names or descriptions can exploit hidden asso-
ciations in our language. The two words “baseless” and “groundless” have the same
literal meaning, but he feels that the former term is the stronger of the two because of
the association with the term “base” as something mean and unworthy.13 (Never mind
that “baseless” should mean “less base.” The association is unconscious, and so logic
does not play a part.)
Sometimes it seems impossible to discuss controversial issues without slipping
into tendentious language. In the abortion debate, one side speaks of “pro-abortion,”
the other of “pro-choice.” Both terms have an element of truth and falsity. To say that
someone who opposes criminal laws prohibiting abortion is “pro-abortion” misses the
distinction between those who favour abortion, and those who do not but who believe
that a criminal prohibition will do more harm than good. To say that someone who
opposes criminal prohibitions for abortion is “pro-choice” obscures the fact that the
nature of the choice involves the destruction of the beginning of a human life. It con-
centrates only on the abstract notion of free choosing, avoiding the particularities of the
choice. The names given to opposing participants in the debate are highly loaded, yet it
seems difficult to find terms that avoid tendentiousness without being awkwardly long.
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Examples from the Institute for Propaganda Analysis
A compact, frequently reproduced list of “tricks of the trade” was furnished in 1939 by
the New York-based Institute for Propaganda Analysis. In addition to name-calling,
there are six common tricks, examined below.
1. Glittering Generality. This is defined as “associating something with a ‘virtue word’ ...
to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.” Glittering
generalities “mean different things to different people; they can be used in different
ways.”14 A prime example of such a word is “democracy,” which in our day has a virtu-
ous connotation. But what exactly does it mean? To some people, it may be treated
as supportive of the status quo in a given society, while others may see it as requiring
change in the form, say, of a reform of election financing practices. The ambiguity
of the term is such that Nazis and Soviet Communists both felt they could claim it
(when it was convenient to do so) for their own system of governance, despite the fact
that many in the West saw these systems, with reason, as the antithesis of democracy.
The expression “free speech” is another glittering generality, which can be used to
deny free speech to others. The Fine Art of Propaganda was aimed at combatting the
influence of popular radio speeches by a fiery priest, Father Charles E. Coughlin of
Detroit. In one talk given January 1, 1939, Father Coughlin stated: “[Americans] are
seldom advised that the free speech of the Communist or the free speech of the Nazi
may not be used to destroy the free speech of the American” (FAP 51). The effect of
his address was to call for the denial of free speech for Communists and Nazis, while
all the time making use of the glittering generality of “free speech.” Use of glittering
generalities can give power to individuals who exploit them. Senator Joe McCarthy
used the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings to appeal to a particu-
lar concept of what constitutes “American” (another glitter word for his audience)
as a way of bullying Americans of a more socialist political standpoint than his own.
In recent years, the word “freedom” has been harnessed by Tea Party enthusiasts to
combat government regulation. But not all government regulation is necessarily bad,
and in restraining the actions of some it may be enhancing the freedoms of others.
Removal of government-imposed barriers to manipulation of markets by unscrupu-
lous traders in mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps, and the like has been
widely recognized as contributing to the financial crisis that began in 2008. The bulk
of the population thus suffered economically from a “freedom” that benefited a few at
the top of the income pyramid, but not themselves.15
2. Transfer. The Institute defines this term as follows: “Transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in
order to make the latter acceptable” (FAP 70). It observed how Father Coughlin’s
radio speeches opened with churchlike music, giving the impression he represented
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the Catholic Church in the views he broadcast. “By Transfer he attempts to carry the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered by millions (the
Roman Catholic Church) over to something else (his own economic, political, and
even racial views) that he wishes to make thus more acceptable to us” (FAP 69).
Transfer is a very common device. A younger, aspiring politician has a photograph
taken with a senior political icon in order to share the latter’s prestige. Photographing
a politician against the background of a revered institution, such as Parliament, can
have the same effect. Having the flag as background is a frequent form of transfer.
Always, the aim is to be seen in the company of persons, places, or things that will
resonate well in the minds of voters. If public transportation is in favour, then it helps
to be seen riding a bus whether or not the party platform endorses increasing public
subsidies for mass transit.
There are legitimate and illegitimate uses of transfer. It is legitimate when transfer
is used to represent fairly what a candidate stands for. It is illegitimate when this or any
other propaganda device is used unfairly to pretend that the candidate favours some-
thing that he or she does not (FAP 73). Among the irritants at election time are public-
ity-seeking candidates who try to take credit, through photo-opportunities, for projects
with which they had nothing to do or even may have opposed. The reverse of this is
taking photographs of opponents in the presence of people who have earned the hatred
and contempt of the community and then publicizing the pictures to suggest an affinity
between the candidates and the others. Of course, the technique of photomontage can
produce the same effect with very little effort, but it risks a boomerang from detection.
3. Testimonial. In the Institute’s definition, “Testimonial consists in having some respected or hated person say that a given idea or program or product or person is
good or bad” (FAP 75). This appeal to authority encourages us to accept ideas without
subjecting them to critical examination. To avoid being duped by such appeals, we
should ask ourselves who or what is quoted in the testimonial; what reason there is
for regarding the pe
rson, organization, etc., appealed to as authoritative; whether the
person or group giving the testimonial had financial or other inducements to do so;
and, finally, what merits attach to the idea, etc., apart from the testimonials.
Deception occurs when the supposed authority never said what is attributed to
him, her, or it; when the views of the authority are distorted; or when the authority
is untrustworthy. A popular film star may lack the expertise to speak competently
on scientific, economic, or complicated political issues, or a famous scientist may
pronounce on something outside his or her field, without the lack of competence
being communicated to the audience. Father Coughlin in certain instances made
anti-Semitic statements based on information provided by a Nazi propaganda sheet,
World-Service, but he cited official government documents as his sources. The latter
either did not contain the information attributed to them or acknowledged a lack of
adequate evidence for the very claims he made on air (FAP 76–84).
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In the early debates on abortion in the 1960s, anti-abortion activists complained that the number of alleged illegal abortions in Canada—35,000 in Toronto alone and
100,000 for the country as a whole—was greatly exaggerated by those seeking lib-
eralization of the laws. The Toronto figure was attributed to the former head of the
abortion squad of the Morality Department of the Metropolitan Police Department,
Detective Sergeant William Quennell, who included statistics for natural miscar-
riages and legal abortions as well as criminal abortions in this figure.16 Information
not properly sourced may undergo a “laundering” effect in this way. Some 14 years ago,
the Regional Medical Health Officer in Ottawa-Carleton provided an exact figure
for the number of area lung cancer deaths caused by second-hand smoke. This might
appear to the uninitiated as a very reliable figure, but he could have obtained that
kind of information only by appealing to worldwide research into the matter, which
would give an estimate of the number of such people per 100,000 population who