POPULISM
This is very much about using 'the language of the people':
Jay Doubleyou: education levels and voting trump and Jay Doubleyou: brexit, trump and dumbing down and Jay Doubleyou: the language of donald trump
Donald Trump Speaks at a Fourth-Grade Level - YouTube and This linguist studied the way Trump speaks for two years. Here’s what she found. - YouTube
But is that really the case?
According to a formal measure of language simplicity, United States President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at this year’s Republican National Convention was far more complex than challenger Joe Biden’s at the Democratic Convention. While Biden’s speech could be understood by a fifth grader, Trump’s required an eighth-grade level of education.
Surprised? After years of stories about how Trump uses much simpler language than his rivals, you should be. During the last campaign, we read numerous accounts of how Trump’s language was pitched low — at a child’s level...
For each populist and non-populist leader, we analysed at least 100,000 words (per leader) from their speeches over a given period of time, using an array of measures for evaluating linguistic simplicity. These included Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Readability Tests for English, along with similar scales for Italian and French. Using these measures to assess simplicity is based on the idea that, the greater the presence of shorter words and sentences, the easier a text is to understand. We also measured lexical density (the number of words conveying meaning), lexical richness (the number of different words), and the presence of words considered difficult in each language.
Our right-wing populists were the most prominent ones from their respective countries over the past decade: Trump, Matteo Salvini (leader of the League, one of Italy’s major parties), Nigel Farage (former leader of the UK Independence Party), and Marine Le Pen (France’s far-right presidential candidate)...
Our results were not what we expected.
First, the gap between Trump and Clinton in the 2016 campaign was actually not very wide. Trump’s speeches were pitched at a level comprehensible to a sixth grader, while Clinton’s required a seventh-grade level of education. On our other measures, there was little difference between the two.
In Italy, UK, and France, the results were even more surprising.
How do we explain these counterintuitive results?
One possibility is that, since studies have shown the language of mainstream political leaders in countries like the US and Italy has become simpler over time, it could be that the gap between elite and populist language has reduced, thus making claims about greater populist simplicity outdated. In other words, perhaps mainstream leaders like Clinton and Biden have moved closer to the populist Trump’s level (and sometimes even below).
Another, related, possibility is that, at the same time as mainstream politicians have followed the advice of professional communications advisers and reduced the complexity of their speeches, right-wing populists in some countries have instead chosen to appear less coached and more authentic.
For example, Farage’s long rambling sentences make his language more complex, but also add to his “man holding court in the pub” image. Similarly, as a French nationalist who opposes globalisation and its alleged cultural homogenising effects, Le Pen may see an advantage in not imitating English-speaking political language trends that, by contrast, Macron has embraced.
We compared the language of populist leaders with their mainstream opponents – the results were unexpected
What is 'populism'?
Simply put, populism is a language that frames politics as a battle between the will of ordinary people and corrupt or self-serving elites, and can exist on the left or right.
But the language of populism is everywhere in British politics these days. You hear it in the frequent vilification of political elites, the romanticisation of ordinary or “real” people, the attacks on the media and the idea that politics is no longer just a battle of ideas but a winner-takes-all conflict between good and evil.
It can pop up in sometimes unexpected places – from Theresa May’s speeches, to the lexicon of those arch-Remainers who insist a “people’s vote” is the only legitimate response to a Brexit stitch-up contrived by powerful cabal of crooks and liars.
Exploring the rise of populism: 'It pops up in unexpected places' | Membership | The Guardian
And in other countries?
Taking three illustrative examples of right wing populist party performances on TV news and current affairs broadcasts in Greece (GD), France (FN) and the UK (UKIP), the speakers’ use of a range of rhetorical devices is examined using models from socio-linguistics and discourse analysis: aspects of register shifts by GD in blame attribution speeches, interactional ‘bad manners’ in a French political debate, and Nigel Farage speaking ‘candidly’ in three different contexts of news reporting from the UK.
As regards GD’s lexical choices, blame attribution is achieved through use of bluntly aggressive or derogatory terms. Often, the speakers’ critique of the government and casting of dominant politics and policies as unpatriotic, corrupt or immoral is foregrounded through register shifts to colloquial language and slang. However, GD speakers also achieve subtle stylistic and expressive effects by tactically blending elements from different registers (e.g., archaic, formal, colloquial/slang) in the same utterance. To illustrate how this style-shifting functions as a discursive resource in GD talk, we present a selection of extracts from two different mediated performances: a speech addressed to GD supporters (extract 1), and a Parliamentary speech (extract 2).
Right-wing populism and the dynamics of style: a discourse-analytic perspective on mediated political performances | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
CULTURE WARS AND WOKE
These have been with us for at least the last five years:
Jay Doubleyou: culture wars and Jay Doubleyou: brexit and the culture wars and Jay Doubleyou: brexit and the culture wars: part two
It's happening in the UK:
Sorry, Tories, but conjuring up ever more culture wars is bound to backfire | Martha Gill | The Guardian and The Tories must fight the culture wars – or die
UK heading for most unpleasant and divisive general election in our lifetimes, says Andy Burnham and
DAN HODGES: Don't get sucked into the culture wars, Rishi... It won't impress voters who can't pay their bills | Daily Mail Online and
Lee Anderson’s Culture Wars: How the Conservative Party is Flirting with Far-Right Hate to Appeal to its Base – Byline TimesThe term 'woke' is also getting very prominent in the media:
Jay Doubleyou: what is 'woke'? part two and Jay Doubleyou: the meaning and use of the word 'woman' is changing
Jay Doubleyou: you think wikipedia is biased? check out the telegraph and Jay Doubleyou: teaching empire in british schools and Jay Doubleyou: why giving a welsh park a welsh name is problematic - or not
Jay Doubleyou: writing in a more respectful and sensitive way
Here's an example of language in use:
The one term that has cut through more is “white privilege”, with over half of the UK public saying they’d heard a lot about it. This is not a good thing for those interested in making the case for a continued focus on racial equality, as other recent research shows the public are pretty sceptical about the term, particularly white groups. For example, half of white British people agree that it’s easier to get ahead if you’re white, but only 29% agree there is “white privilege” in Britain. The language used and framing of debates matters.
Culture wars uncovered: most of UK public don't know if 'woke' is a compliment or an insult
There are all sorts of things going on over culture and language:
Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.
Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville | The New Yorker
she/her pronouns don’t always tell the full story behind someone’s gender identity or sexuality, but the moment I overheard got me thinking about the broader societal trend of straight people calling their significant other their partner...I Hated When Straight People Used the Word ‘Partner'—Until the Anti-LGBTQ+ Culture War Reset My Standards | Vogue
Fewer Ukrainians speak Russian and monuments are being taken down, but some warn a ‘language of hatred’ has taken over.How Ukrainians ‘de-Russify’ themselves | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera
It's happening in UK government:
Council fury as local authorities told to ban ‘offensive’ language for ‘woke’ alternatives | UK | News | Express.co.uk
And it's happening in charities:
Beyond parody! Oxfam's new 92-page inclusivity guide calls English 'the language of a colonising nation' and tells staff to avoid the words 'mother' 'headquarters' - and even 'youth', in move slammed by critics
'We recognise that this guide has its origin in English, the language of a colonising nation. We acknowledge the Anglo-supremacy of the sector as part of its coloniality. This guide aims to support people who have to work and communicate in the English language as part of this colonial legacy. However, we recognise that the dominance of English is one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power.'
Oxfam's new 92-page inclusivity guide calls English 'the language of a colonising nation' | Daily Mail Online
Oxfam's job is to end poverty - we refuse to be distracted by toxic culture wars - Danny Sriskandarajah and Is Oxfam’s language guide taking sides in the culture war? | Oxfam | The Guardian and Snooty Oxfam’s war on words is a disaster zone and Brand Oxfam is damaged, no matter which side of the ‘culture wars’ you are on - More About Advertising
In other words, it's very much about language:
Woke language | The Spectator Australia and Wokeness and the English Language - Michael Lewis, Commentary Magazine and America’s woke assault on English | The Spectator
Indeed it is:
Ask yourself: What exactly is “the woke?” Where did “woke” come from? And how did it become apparently worthy of gag orders instituted by politicians and administered with the might of the government? When did it transform from its roots in Black American vernacular to a supposedly all-encompassing, terrifying force emblazoned across increasingly fear-mongering headlines in the United States and even now in parts of Europe?
Put simpler: How did woke go from meaning “Black” to “Bad?”
Michael Harriot, columnist at TheGrio and author of the upcoming book, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, explains that this kind of insidious takeover and flipping of Black vernacular to anti-Black pejorative has numerous parallels in America’s past and runs all the way up to present day.
“When you look at the long arc of history and America’s reaction to the request for Black liberation – every time Black people try to use a phrase or coin a phrase that symbolizes our desire for liberation, it will eventually become a cuss word to white people,” Harriot says in an interview with LDF.
“When people during the civil rights movement began saying ‘Black power,’ all of a sudden it became a term that people equated with communism and anti-white sentiment — and then it eventually gave birth to ‘white power,’” Harriot tells LDF. “The ‘1619 Project’ [which centers the ramifications of slavery and the contributions of Black people in American history] has become an insult. ‘Black Lives Matter’ became an ‘anti-white sentiment’ that was banned in school and spawned ‘all lives matter’ and ‘blue lives matter.’”
In Harriot’s view, the manipulation of woke has been key to effecting policies that, when looked at plainly, reveal a foundational hostility to values most Americans share. “It’s hard to get people to demonize human beings and lives and history. But it’s easy to get them to demonize a word. And if you can use that word as a placeholder for those people, for caring about those people, then it’s easy to demonize instead of saying, ‘We’re just gonna stop caring about people,’” Harriot concludes.
How Woke Went From "Black" to "Bad"
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