From Moyers and Company
Decoding the Political Buzzwords of 2012
by Lauren Feeney
With the Republican presidential primary debate season drawing to a close, we asked linguist Geoffrey Nunberg to decode some of the language heard on the campaign trail thus far, including words and phrases uttered in 19 debates, nearly $70 million worth of political advertising, countless stump speeches, interviews and media appearances.
Lauren Feeney: What does “dog-whistle politics” mean? Have you heard any examples during this primary season?
Geoffrey Nunberg: It was originally about using coded expressions that evoked a specific message for one group while sounding innocuous to others. George Bush talked about “people of faith” as if he was talking about religious believers of any sort, but Karl Rove made it clear the phrase meant conservative Catholics, Charismatics, Pentecostals and the like. Nowadays, though, the phrase can be just a question of plausible deniability. Newt Gingrich’s references to the “food stamp president” go straight back to Reagan’s talk about “strapping young bucks” using food stamps to buy “T-bone steaks.” That’s not really dog whistle, anymore — it’s at a frequency that anybody can hear....
Geoff Nunberg is a linguist who teaches at the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley. He is the author of Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show. His new book, Ascent of the A-Word, deals with the breakdown of modern political discourse. It will be published in July by PublicAffairs. You can follow him on Twitter at @geoffnunberg.