THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609280502
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DECISION '96
SOURCE: By TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 131 lines
During the Republican convention, Bob Dole appealed to voters to think of him as a ``bridge'' to a different America, the nation of his youth. At the Democratic convention, and in numerous speeches since, President Bill Clinton has called it a bridge to the past and portrayed himself as the ``bridge to the future.''
Only Election Day will decide the winner. But from their speeches alone, it appears Clinton has wrested a buzzword away from Dole, co-opting ``the bridge'' so effectively that Dole, who first introduced it to the campaign, now makes fun of it.
This is the front line in the war of the buzzwords.
``It's what the image of the bridge comes to represent that counts,'' said Robin Lakoff, a University of California-Berkeley linguistics professor who studies political language.
``There's the bridge forward, the bridge backward. There's a competition as to who will put their vision in the electorate's mind.''
Even in this electronic media age, politicians still primarily use words to persuade. In speeches, advertisements and interviews, they strive to win over voters and vanquish opponents.
The difference now is that the fewer words, the better your ``sound bite,'' the better chance you have of getting on the evening news and shoehorning your message into the voter's supposedly brief attention span.
Hence the importance of the buzzword, a word or phrase that means far more than it seems, that comes loaded with baggage.
``Family values,'' ``single parents,'' ``welfare,'' ``liberal,'' ``conservative'' - all of these can summon up a host of associated images, frequently negative.
These associations are sometimes forthright and sometimes clandestine, referring to darker parts of the American character that politicians can't speak to openly. For instance, minorities contend that ``law and order'' is too often a veiled effort to stoke the fires of racism.
Family values - This is a hotly contested phrase in politics. For conservatives, it can mean upholding the ``traditional family'' of a heterosexual mother and father and a couple of children, restoring prayer to schools, controlling pornography and resisting the advance of gay rights.
More liberal groups have attempted to win back the expression, interpreting ``family values'' to be inclusive of gays and single parents, and trying to make it less exclusive.
Single parents - This seems innocuous enough. But to many, it apparently has come to represent irresponsible parents, shadowy figures that we never know personally but who are raising all the delinquent children.
John Doble, a researcher from New Jersey who went to numerous discussion groups sponsored by the National Issues Forum, told an anecdote about one man who was venting anger about single parents.
``He blamed social problems on single parents,'' Doble said. ``Then the woman beside him said, `I'm a single parent. My kids went to college.' He said, `Oh, I didn't mean you.'
``He meant, single parents who don't do something, who don't provide the structure, discipline, love, all the things kids need.''
Lakoff said, ``Buzzwords always refer to `them,' not us. They're a way of distinguishing us from them, a way of beating up on other people.''
Welfare - Similarly, saying ``welfare'' speaks less to the facts and conditions of government aid programs than it does to the fear of many Americans: that our ``moral fiber'' is weakening and we are relying too much on government or others.
Liberal - It used to describe simply a different philosophy of government. When politicians try to pin that label on someone today, it typically means, ``He wants to tax you to the hilt and spend your money on foolish, wasteful programs.'' The label has become a very effective tactic, both in national and local politics, and even now Bob Dole is hoping to slap it on Bill Clinton's back.
``Since 1960, `liberal' has changed from a reference to a political ideology to a synonym for the adjective `wrong,' '' said Christopher Adasiewicz, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center who has been tracking campaign dialogue.
Conservative - This term has held on to its positive connotations better than ``liberal,'' but in the 1990s it is increasingly linked to the religious right. Thus, a term that used to describe someone who wanted to keep government to a minimum and budgets tight in all ways, now more often means, ``He wants to poke the government's nose into your bedroom and has a heart of stone.''
The tricky part for a politician is knowing just what associations the audience makes when it hears a buzzword. Buzzwords don't always mean what the speaker thinks.
Lakoff said Vice President Dan Quayle discovered how unreliable a buzzword can be when he attacked the television character ``Murphy Brown'' for having a child out of wedlock.
``Murphy Brown is not a `single mother' to many people,'' Lakoff said.
Doble said that ``family values,'' too, is defined in diverse ways.
``When many ordinary people use `family values,' it means to them good things,'' he said. ``Perseverance, the importance of hard work, respect for authority, the things you learned at home.''
Sometimes, ordinary words take on complex meanings among citizens because they make connections between issues. ``Education,'' for example, appears to mean, ``We need to prepare our children to be productive members of society.''
That's why many people don't mind the idea of a trade-school education for some students, rather than trying to send everyone to college, because it still can lead to a good life for all students.
The key difference between the way citizens use buzzwords and the way politicians do is their goals. Most citizens want to be able to talk about issues in constructive ways and not force someone else into a rhetorical corner.
However, politicians - and especially their ``handlers'' - use buzzwords as rhetorical war.
``It's a way that you change words' meaning very subtly, making it impossible to argue against it without sounding like a horrible person,'' Lakoff said. ``You can shut out analytical thought. You don't have to think about it anymore.''
The most successful buzzwords, Lakoff said, can actually fool people, or attempt to, about the intent of a movement or an idea. She referred to the ``naming game'' in ballot initiatives in California, where one effort to restrict affirmative action, for instance, is called the ``civil rights initiative'' by supporters.
Buzzwords work in the short run, Doble said, but their aggressive use in the long run erodes the credibility of all politicians and government in general.
``It becomes hard for people to follow the political dialogue, hard for people to make choices and exercise responsibility as citizens,'' he said. ``The problem is not what happens in the short run, it's what happens in the long run in race after race where handlers are doing this.
``That's where the danger is. That's where all the corrosion is.''
In a fast-moving campaign, like the current one for president, buzzwords can have extremely short half-lives, and evolve rapidly into new meanings.
So, less than a month after Bob Dole had seriously used ``the bridge'' to refer to himself, and suggest he was the link to a better time, the Republican candidate had converted it to a punch line.
``Let's build a bridge to Little Rock, Ark., and send Bill Clinton back in January,'' he said. by CNB