Chapter 4: Political Marketing Meets Corporate Language

Many might expect the answer to be that that the corporate world has created the most effective language tools for advertising, selling something, and then affirming to the buyer that they purchased the best thing. But a language that attempts to make you purchase a product, or make you believe that you purchased the best product, differs from a language designed to fool you into believing you bought the product you really wanted and requested. The former language is simply sales, and the latter is salespeak. When sales works correctly, maybe you become convinced that you need a piece of twisted up metal with a square cushion to do a sit-up. But if salespeak works correctly, when you ask for your ab workout machine, you may get a toaster and still believe you got the ab workout machine.

The corporate world has provided the tools for this type of communication, but this has been primarily in its internal communications. When companies began substantially increasing in size about a century ago, they ran into planning and co-ordination problems, making good communication essential . Forms of corporate communication soon spread into many modes of public expression (see Schiller 1989). Then research began to indicate that a “human resources management” (HRM) or “total quality management” (TQM) approach would be more effective than earlier forms of communication, which relied on top-down, military-style instructions. The new approach came with a language all its own – a language designed to conceal inequality, and that set out a way of doing things without requiring anybody to actually do them. Corporations also became more involved in public life, and thus increasingly came into conflict with the public during recessions and other times of market failure. To deal with these situations, companies learned to use a language that avoids liability. These two types of language form the basis of salespeak.

When TQM was founded by W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Kaoru Ishikawa , it was considered a scientific breakthrough in the rational planning and management of organizations. “Total” meant organization-wide, and “quality” referred to three things: 1) quality of returns on investment; in other words, staying in business and doing well, 2) quality of products - the belief was that low cost-products would, for various reasons, be more expensive in the long-run, and 3) quality of life for employees. Instead of a top-down approach to management, the founders advocated a “have faith in your employees approach” to tap employees’ creative capabilities and capacity for hard work. There was to be no more punishing employees for poor performance, only “evaluations”, and “professional development”. Senior management were no longer supposed to be supervisors, they were to be “leaders”, leading by example in assuring quality. Essentially there were to be no followers or losers – everyone is part of a “team”, and everyone feels “empowered”.

The problem was that companies used the rhetoric of TQM without actually doing TQM. Companies created mission statements and business principles, and used an arsenal of TQM terms to create a sense of democracy that did not exist. Fox and Fox dissect some of these terms:

- Empowerment = making somebody else take the risk and responsibility.
- Team Working = reducing individual discretion .
We can add to these:
- Professional Development = extra training.
- Evaluation / Review = detailed and recorded monitoring

Zbaracki conducted an in-depth study of five organizations, and found that only one of these organizations backed their TQM rhetoric “by outlining specific expectations and counsel on the use of TQM tools” . The remainder did a lot of talking about TQM, and used the rhetoric, but did not do anything to make TQM happen.

Zbaracki gives some examples: “upper management for a defence contractor revised two of their management policy statements to reflect its new commitment to TQM, and a hotel’s upper management developed a mission statement that supported TQM” .

The language of HRM and TQM is still popular today, and it mostly goes unnoticed. The Canadian McDonald’s “career” web page says, “at McDonald’s, we recognize our real strength is our people. They are the foundation of our business” . Of course, what else can they say? That the foundation is profits? Low wages? Machines?

MacDonald’s “Five People Principles” are classic TQM. Some of the sub-principles listed are:
- Employees are respected, valued and empowered.
- We coach and learn.
- Employees are provided the tools they need to develop personally and professionally .

Similarly, The Gap tells us “our people are what make Gap Inc. a great company” and Canadian Tire calls themselves a “proud Canadian family” .

TQM is full of platitudes like this that mask the reality of power relations. It is also full of ambiguity. “Mission statements”, lists of “values”, “objectives”, “visions”, and expressions of a desire for “continuous improvement” are common. Workers need not worry about having their ambitions constrained, because companies assure them they have created “an enabling environment” . Companies use these terms in the hope that its employees will begin to think this way, in this language. Heath does not see so much of a problem with this, arguing, “the key… is the realization that organizations function adequately because of strategic ambiguity”, because ambiguities are “predictable scripts and cues needed for enactment” . “Enactment” is a TQM word that implies employees simply act out their roles, almost spontaneously, without direction. And they can do this because the “mission statements”, “objectives”, etc., are like a “script”, and employees are just acting out their parts. Even better than plain “enactment” is “joint enactment”, which Heath describes as the process of managers becoming involved in “enact(ing) a drama with employees rather than attempt to direct the actions of employees” . The rhetoric of TQM here almost moves into the realm of fantasy. Imagine - it is not that your boss is coming down to your cubicle to supervise, or to pass on directions. He is coming down to enact a drama with you.

There are scholars, besides Heath, who are not helping the situation. Rapert et al re-affirm the findings of other research which shows the “importance of consensus in strategic implementation”, where consensus means “shared understandings between management and functional levels” . Luckily, much of the research which attempts to build on the rhetoric of TQM is unsuccessful precisely because the language used is so vague (or just plain bad). The word “strategic” finds its way into most of this literature, but nobody seems to know what it means. Usually, when something is described as “strategic” we are supposed to think it is better. For instance, what Smith and Hirst call “strategic political segmentation” is just an expanded form of normal political segmentation. We could argue that “strategic” means “planned”, but that would not explain the almost-every day use of “strategic planning” in marketing and public language. You can make anything sound more sophisticated by adding “strategic”: Strategic marketing, strategic networking, strategic research, strategic grocery shopping…

Adding “implementation” onto “strategic” makes something very simple sound sophisticated. If “implementation” is the execution of something, then “strategic implementation” really means “something being executed better”. And what is a “functional level”? Where would we find the “non-functional level?”

Sometimes HRM or TQM language succeeds in fooling workers into believing that their company is indeed some sort of “family” or “team”, but often it does not. As we know from our own experiences and the experiences of those around us, when workers in a TQM company go home, they often still use the old language of management – “my boss”, “my manager”, and complain about “overtime”, and receiving “warnings”. Workers are generally aware of the disconnect between TQM rhetoric and reality. For example, employees in one of the organizations studied by Zbaracki wondered why they had to use the TQM process while their managers apparently did not .

There are scholars and business people who have sensed this disconnect, and have come up with an interesting, if manipulative, way to mitigate it. They call it simply “dialogue”, and in Yankelovich’s The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Co-operation, it is billed as “a process of successful relationship building and seeking mutual understanding” . The idea is that companies should physically get workers and managers together, bring assumptions out into the open, explore common ground, listen to each other, and seek new options. Isaacs, in Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life, urges an almost Zen-like approach to problem solving, where disputants at a meeting must “be present” and “be still and listen to what is true right now” .

The problem is that it is managers themselves that have to initiate this process, hypothetically, in response to layoffs, pay disputes, and other conflicts between workers and managers. “Dialogue” is just a touchy-feely way of hiding contradiction, designed to blur the distinction between management and workers, without getting to the root of the problem – hierarchy and socio-economic inequality. Yankelovich discusses an instance of a trade union dispute being worked out through “dialogue”, where one union member was heard to say, “you know, I can’t tell who is on what side anymore”. The magic of dialogue indeed. If there is ever any doubt about who is on what side, compare paycheques.

TQM’s latest, most used, and over-used innovation in language that conceals hierarchy, is the rhetoric of “change”. This type of rhetoric is used to subtly assert or re-assert top-down management practices, either in cases where companies have been “flattened” (had parts of their hierarchy removed), or in cases where a company is experiencing some upheaval (i.e, layoffs, significant profit losses, difficult competition, etc).

We have all probably heard somebody say “this is a time of change”, as if we had just emerged from a period where everything stood still – un-time, if you will, since change is fundamental to time. In “A Best Practice Approach to Designing a Change Communication Programme”, Barrett tells us “in today’s business climate… the only true constant is change”, therefore, we must learn the ways of “change communication” . The features of this type of communication are similar to TQM rhetoric, but according to Barrett, “change communication” also requires: educating employees on what the change will mean to them; motivating support for the company’s new direction; and limiting misunderstandings and rumours that may damage productivity . These features and the “best practices” Barrett offers really amount to a communications program designed to make employers accept something they probably do not want. The part about “limiting misunderstandings and rumours that may damage productivity” is telling. This can also mean, “if your employees are figuring out that they are losing their jobs because you are outsourcing for cheaper labour, either find ways to keep them quiet or tell them something different”.

Once “change communication” appears in company communications, it tends to stay, most likely because managers are convinced of its effectiveness in stifling dissent and giving them greater power. But a study of large companies by Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector shows that the rhetoric of “change” makes employees cynical, and there is no actual change .

Therefore, although HRM and TQM were designed to make companies work in a different way, they function best, and most often, only as linguistic constructs suitable for disguising hierarchical power relations, and setting out a way of doing things, without requiring anybody to actually do them.

The other corporate language that forms the basis for salespeak is the language that avoids liability. This type of language attempts to shift responsibility, or attempts to make it seem as if nobody is to blame for something. As corporations became more involved in public life and sometimes made bold mistakes, they began to attract a lot of scrutiny. The public became aware of massive profits accrued at the expense of the environment, jobs, and, in general, company responsibility. Corporations soon became more vulnerable to public investigations, lawsuits, and scandals.

To deal with these problems corporations did two things: first, they started programs of “corporate social responsibility” to make themselves look like they were part of their communities and responsible citizens, but more importantly, they began working on a language to avoid liability in the first place.

McCord explains, “in the not too distant past, a business person with no legal training could communicate on the job without worrying unduly that casual utterances or routine business writing might result in a legal liability” . But as the public challenged corporations more and more, this changed. Companies could be found legally accountable if their words were interpreted by courts as creating a legal contract.

Therefore, business writers needed to become more careful in their writing, more “word-conscious” . Woolever uses legal case studies to show how certain words and terms create liability, and offers alternative words and terms that avoid liability. For instance, in State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Co. v. Rickoff, the insurance company should not have used the word “inspection” in its engineering report, because “inspection” implies thoroughness, officiality, testing, or providing recommendations. Woolever says the company should have used words like “review” and “study” (96) to avoid being sued, because these words avoid liability . When a student “reviews” or “studies” their notes, this could mean something thorough, but it could also mean they flipped through the pages as fast as possible and then went out for a beer.

Woolever suggests another company should have substituted the word “determine” with “evaluated”, “assess”, or “analyze”, and in another case, substituted the word “assure” for “facilitate”, “provide further confidence”, or “enhance the reliability of” . Why? Because the words she recommends will not get the company into legal trouble.

The problem is that these terms are also vague and essentially meaningless. If you intended to send a parcel somewhere, would you want the delivery of that parcel “assured” or “facilitated”? Do you want your eligibility for Canadian citizenship “determined” or “assessed”? The words “assure” and “determine” imply that something will get done, and you will know the results. But for companies, this is bad. As Woolever explains, “determine” means “decide”, and “assure” means “promise” . What she is telling us is that companies should not say these things, but the result of her recommendations may be that companies do not have to do these things either; that they do not have to “decide” or “promise” anything. Why should a company “decide” or “assure” a product is safe, when they can “facilitate an assessment” of the product’s safety? This type of communication is great for companies, but bad for people.

McCord and Woolever are more concerned with what corporations say than what they do. For example, Woolever says an “ultimate responsibility” of corporations is that they “bear the legal burden that their prose is trustworthy” , and McCord believes “it makes no difference what you think, what is important is what you communicate” . Both of these statements are plain wrong, if not for business, then surely for politics. An ultimate responsibility of corporations is not to communicate properly, but to make sure they act as conscientious corporate citizens in the first place, so that they have no need for language that avoids liability. And saying that it makes no difference what you think, only what you communicate, almost encourages corporations to lie, especially if “what you think” really means “what you are doing”.

Nonetheless, the corporate language that avoids liability and fakes accountability remains one of the most prominent and effective features of corporate language overall. Amernic and Craig studied the CEO-speak of popular companies such as Enron, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner, IBM, Disney, Nortel, and CN, and found that CEO-speak is “a seductive, placatory, variegated, socially constructed language of accountability” that ironically permits CEOs to be unaccountable . There should be no doubt – a business language that dodges liability is also a language that may let businesses do something they should not be doing.

The corporate languages that feign equality and avoid liability are the tools of political marketing communications, whose purpose is to make the public think they got what they requested. What more could our governments and parties want than to make us believe we are all in this together, and there is no one to blame?

Chapter 3: A Theory of Political Marketing – Political Marketing as Social Control

If political marketing is the reason our government communicates with us in salespeak, then we need to know what political marketing really is. To do this we will examine its origins and then look at how it works in theory and practice. The conclusion is that although it purports to measure public opinion and translate this opinion into policy, in reality, it takes public opinion and uses it primarily to communicate policy a certain way.

The origins of political marketing actually began with what Terrence Qualter terms the “mass age”. As he explained, “prior to the liberal ideological revolution of the 18th Century and the consequent spread of egalitarian and majoritarian ideas, it did not really much matter what the public thought” . But as these ideologies became revolutions, forming the basis of more democratic governments and the enfranchisement of millions of people, suddenly it mattered what the public thought. Governments had to at least maintain the appearance of popular support, or risk being overthrown, and the only way to do this was with increasingly sophisticated forms of manipulation .

Scammel and Lees-Marshment show how these forms of manipulation (though they would not use such a strong word) in both business and politics, went through three successive stages in the 20th Century:

1) Product oriented – The party or company puts out the best product it can and assumes it will sell.
2) Sales oriented – The party or company tries to make people want what it has to offer by using general forms of communication, including various media and advertising.
3) Market oriented – The party or company uses market intelligence to find out what the customer wants, and then creates or modifies its product to suit these wants.

Marketing became the cornerstone of business philosophy because of the shift in market power from the seller to the buyer . When marketing was applied to politics, marketing language came with it: the “consumer” or “customer” is the voter, and the “product” is the party and/or party leader, platform, and policies. The political process became an “exchange” relationship – you give them your vote, and they will give you their “product”. Their credibility is based on their ability to “deliver”.

Lees-Marshment and Lilleker conducted comparative studies of political marketing, and observed that a market-oriented party goes through nine stages :

1) Market intelligence - To find out what “consumers” want, governments and their public relations firms use mostly polls and focus groups. Polls collect the quantitative or raw data, but focus groups are needed to gauge how people feel about something.
2) Product design - The “product” is designed according to the intelligence gathered.
3) Product Adjustment - The party looks to its values, its history, and the input of its members to decide if the “product” design is suitable. It considers how this “product” will look compared to the “product” of other parties.
4) Implementation - The “product” design is accepted.
5) Communication – The “product” is put out to the public, media, members of the party, and government. Intelligence informs the style, format, content, method, and timing of this communication.
6) Campaign – The party campaigns with “targeted” voter segments in mind.
7) Election and measurement – If political marketing is successful so far, the party is elected. Then the party conducts opinion polls and focus groups to confirm positive feedback on aspects of their “product”.
8 ) “Delivery” – The party does what it says it was going to do.
9) Maintain a market orientation – The party continues to gather market intelligence and adjust the “product” as needed. Communication of the current “product” and future “products” continues, as part of what has been called the “permanent campaign” .

It is important to note that not all parties, and not all companies for that matter, are market-oriented companies, although they may participate in some marketing processes, such as accessing market intelligence. Lees-Marshment and Lilleker contend that a true market-oriented party will go through all nine stages listed above.

It is the communication stage with which we are most concerned. The same way the marketers of Apple’s iPod made sure their commercials targeted youth and not grannies, political marketers want to make sure they target people who are willing to “exchange” their vote for political representation. This process is known as segmentation. In politics, as opposed to business, it is more difficult to segment, because ideally, you want to reach everybody. This is why, as Johnson-Cartee and Copeland point out, segmentation in political marketing is simply “identifying those publics so that as communicators we can adapt our message for maximum effect” . But segmentation today goes beyond the traditional geographic and demographic methods, and since around 1990 has increasingly used psychographic / attitudinal bases to classify political markets . Once market research and segmentation are complete, it is time for “product positioning”, or more simply, the presentation of images and messages appropriate to its “target markets”. And although parties and governments still try to have a “product” for everybody – youth, working poor, “single-parent families” (single mothers), yuppies, seniors, etc, - there is evidence to suggest that they predominantly position themselves according to various points on the political spectrum . For example, Canada’s New Democratic Party, the largest left-wing party in Canada, might position itself according to segments such as “Radical left”, “moderate left”, “Green left”, “Old NDP”, “Left-leaning Liberals”, etc. This way it could garner as much of the relevant left-wing vote as possible.

Political marketing has now become a sub-discipline of political science. Many scholars who write about political marketing seem in awe of it, and treat it like a new house, excitedly exploring the rooms, arranging furniture, figuring out what goes where, and how everything will work, or should work. There are few who bother to find out how political marketing is actually working, and how it negatively affects democracy. Essentially, the sub-discipline of political marketing rarely recognizes problems with the parallel between business marketing and political marketing, and what is worse, some scholars go on to improve the process of political marketing without realizing the consequences.

Palmer finds six problems with the parallel between normal marketing and political marketing, and I have added some examples.

1) In politics, the “product” only has symbolic value, and the range of products is very limited. For example, whereas a car company can usually offer a coupe, sedan, hatchback, different coloured cars with different features, etc, the political product is one intangible thing.
2) The political “product” makes people very emotional, whereas nobody dances on the street or protests when Pepsi releases a new soda.
3) There are negative “consumers” in politics who prefer the competition’s “product” just to deny you a “sale”. This would make about as much sense in the real consumer world as buying a bag of Hostess potato chips out of spite for Old Dutch when your real preference is Pringles.
4) It is more difficult to gauge what political “consumers” want, and the research is not very well funded. “Product positioning” in politics is more likely to fail because situations change so quickly. For example, a record company can safely release radio-friendly alternative-rock albums and feel confident that the market for radio-friendly alternative-rock will not disappear overnight. Political parties tend not to “position” themselves in any clear sense because public opinion can shift so quickly.
5) “Re-branding” in politics is complex due to the role of ideology. Changing a party logo, giving the party leader a makeover, or putting rap music in party advertisements implies that the party actually does something it did not do before. Such “re-branding” can alienate long-time party supporters. In contrast, when a company re-brands a consumer product, the re-branding is interpreted as saying “this product is for you too”.

O’Shaughnessy agrees that “marketing is fundamentally a business discipline, whose supreme relevance lies in business” and adds to the list of differences:

1) Political “products” are given a lot of time, consideration, and discussion in the media.
2) It is comparatively rare that a business or company will need so much “spin” to defend its product.
3) Political products are about identity and self-articulation .

We can contest the last point because it is well known that consumer products also sell identity. For example, when you eat a “frozen entrée”, better known as a TV dinner, you are not just somebody eating frozen food out of a cardboard envelope, you are somebody who is “on-the-go”.

The biggest difference, however, between real marketing and political marketing is this: real marketing finds out what we want, and then sells us that thing. Political marketing, as we will soon see, finds out what we want only so that parties and governments can make it look and sound like we are getting what we want.

This goes against Lees-Marshment’s assertion that political marketing “does not attempt to change what people think, but to deliver what they need and want” . And, of course, if we are not in reality getting what we want, but only getting the impression that we are getting what we want, then Lees-Marshment and Lilleker’s claim that political marketing makes politics a “more satisfying process for the electorate” is misleading.

Market-oriented parties are obviously primarily concerned with winning or holding power. In this situation, Qualter explains that ideologies become flexible, and policies are no longer moral commitments, just things that are useful in attracting voter support .

Research by Worcester and Baines, Lilleker and Negrine, and Bowler and Farrell shows that market intelligence is not being used to inform policy, it is just being used to communicate policy in different ways. As Bowler and Farrell suggest, “polls don’t ask voters what they want, they only seek reactions to what they have already decided to do” . And depending on this reaction, the words and terms used to describe the policy may change, but its substance stays the same.

In Lilleker and Negrine’s studies of British government insiders, a common theme was that political marketing was more a matter of:

developing policy and then finding out the values out there on the street, and then reflecting those values in any communication on that policy. It is taking the right language, (and) convincing voters that you share their concerns and can offer a viable solution .

Data from polls and focus groups is being used to brush up the look and feel of the policy; nothing more. We can at least be fairly certain that market intelligence does not directly affect the policy process, because as one British Conservative MP stated in an interview, “I do listen, but I don’t know how I use all the stuff I hear” . And when we seriously consider how a pure market-orientation would affect policy, the notion seems absurd. There are enough opinions out there to convince any market intelligence analyst that we want everything at once, even if the things we want contradict each other - for example, lower taxes and more or improved government services. Even for a business, a pure market orientation would be unrealistic, because the range of products would be limited by consumers’ imaginations. Evidence suggests that many products, including some of the most original and popular products like the Sony Walkman, were created in defiance of market research . And in defiance of data gathered in political marketing intelligence, our parties and governments have already prepared and “delivered” their “product”. All that is left is to make us think we got what we wanted.

The evidence should make us reconsider Lees-Marshment’s stages of political marketing. Lilleker and Negrine go so far as to say that all parties are actually product or sales-oriented . The figure below better represents what actually happens in political marketing.

Product Design –> Market Intelligence –> Communication

If our parties and governments are not actually gathering market intelligence, and then basing their policies on that data, we are not really talking about marketing at all. We are talking about trickery and manipulation; a hidden type of social control embedded in communication that acts like a mirror, reflecting our own images and desires back towards us. We have no reason to vote for another party, or to protest, because there are public communications firms, policy departments, and other experts at work making sure we think we got what we wanted. Real political marketing is therefore something that happens when the only thing that matters is getting elected or re-elected.

The idea that public opinion is not being used to affect policy is not new. Brooks studied the effect of public opinion on policy in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, and found that in most cases (58% overall, and 61% in Canada) the government does something that goes against public opinion . Judging by what our governments and parties tell us, we would never know that our opinion mattered so little. This is what makes political communication the key.

Nonetheless, there are some scholars who not only accept the activity of political marketing as it is normally understood, but try to find ways to improve the abilities of parties and governments to conduct political marketing. Smith and Hirst, for example, believe that a new approach is needed now that we are entering the “strategic marketing era” in politics. This new approach is “strategic political segmentation”, and it involves segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) that “promises better targeted policies towards identified and attractive segments” . With this procedure, the authors are able to “segment” the British “political market” (people) into seven distinctive groupings: “Old Labour”, “Feel Gooders, “Tory Mainstreamers”, “Labour Nationalists”, “Underwhelmed Loyals”, “Light Green Lefties”, and “Champagne Socialists” . Why bother with all this? As the authors explain, this research will “offer an opportunity for each party to communicate their policies more effectively to the electorate” (emphasis added). The key word is “communicate”. While Smith and Hirst come up with better ways to conduct political marketing, they implicitly acknowledge that it is primarily about communicating policy in certain ways, not about making policy itself.

In “The Permanent Campaign: The Integration of Market Research Techniques in Developing Strategies in More Uncertain Political Climates”, Sparrow and Turner want to help political marketers bring together qualitative and quantitative intelligence gathering methods. The article, as they describe it, “attempts to show how such methods can be brought together and how parties can start to build integrated marketing strategies” . Political marketers must learn these methods to cope with the “rapidly changing” or “uncertain” political environment . It is unclear why things are so “uncertain” or “rapidly changing”; regardless, there is no speculation here about the consequences of refining market intelligence gathering methods.

To be critical about political marketing, it is crucial to understand the alternative model proposed here – where the “product” is created, market intelligence follows, and then the “product” is communicated according to market intelligence. What we are left with seems to fit Qualter’s definition of propaganda: “the deliberate attempt by the few to influence the attitudes and behaviour of the many by the manipulation of symbolic communications” . Political marketers are using what they know about us, and about what we want, to make their policies appear and sound all right.
When many academics and the media talk about political marketing, there is a tendency to have already accepted what it is, when it is something completely different. For example, Banker defends political marketing, denying that it is unethical, and asserting that it supplies the electorate with alternative perspectives for understanding political reality . Such an interpretation does not even grasp what political marketing truly is in the first place, and overcomplicates something that is actually quite simple - either our parties and politicians are telling us what they are doing and what they intend to do, or they are not. But too much of the focus is on trivial details like attack ads, election campaign fluff, and party leader image management. All of this confirms, in part, the relevance of Chomsky and Herman’s “propaganda model”, whereby the media and intellectuals ultimately serve the interests of the state, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly .

If we are going to discuss how Canadian governments and parties communicate with us, it is worthwhile to look at political marketing in Canada. In Canada, the Liberal Party has always been at the forefront of political marketing, and not coincidentally, it also formed the government for most of the 20th century. The party imported George Gallup’s opinion research methods from the U.S. in the 1940’s, and by the 1960’s they were using the newest polling methodologies, advertising strategies, and branding philosophies . The Liberals were also the first Canadian party to establish an in-house advertising agency .

In political marketing literature, the federal Canadian parties are generally divided up in the following way: brokerage parties like the Liberals, Conservatives, and the now-defunct Progressive Conservatives are primarily seen as market-oriented parties, because they try to appeal to as many Canadians with as many different ideologies as possible, and to do this requires significant experience and resources in gathering market intelligence. For example, Marland points out that during the 2000 election campaign, the Liberals’ “daily rolling cross-country opinion polls had an impressive sample of 20 000 respondents” . The Bloc Quebecois, in contrast, is considered a product and sales-oriented party because it has a very specific goal – separation – and they do not intend on finding out your opinion to change that goal, but they are willing to try and convince you that they are right. The New Democratic Party can also be considered a sales or product-oriented party, because similar to the Bloc, there is a basic knowledge of what the NDP is about – social democracy – and the NDP is not willing to compromise on this (which is probably easier to do when you have never formed the government). But they are willing to try and sell their product. This does not mean that the Bloc and NDP do not commission polls or focus groups, only that they do not have such an extensive marketing apparatus and they do not give market intelligence the same consideration in their communications. For example, a pollster hired for the NDP in the 1984 pre-campaign found “operational problems” that inhibited market intelligence, such as a party executive disagreeing with his recommendations, and then the U.S. pollster who replaced him found party staffers analyzing his data .

Therefore, although much of the research on political marketing looks at Great Britain and the U.S., we can be sure that political marketing is doing well in Canada. And it is Canadian political marketing communications we will be concerned with later.

We have established that political marketing is, in a way, not marketing at all, but a type of social control embedded in communication. But how did our parties and governments learn how to communicate in a way that makes people think they are getting what they want and requested – in salespeak?

Chapter 2: A Theory of Language – Language as a Political Act

If our governments are speaking to us in a different way, we need an idea of what language is and how it changes. And if we are concerned that a certain political language can neutralize our desire or ability to object, consent, or participate in politics at all, we need to know how language, thought, and action are related.

The theoretical approach to language taken here, and discussed in greater detail throughout this chapter, is the following: language has biological and creative components, but it is above all political. In the biological sense, it is something innate and genetic that functions and grows, like any organ, according to certain principles. In the creative sense, it is innovative in nature and fashioned and re-fashioned through conversation, allowing us to think critically and create meaning in the world - deciding for ourselves what is good and what is bad. Ultimately, however, language is a political act; that is, it is used and misused by people to achieve their goals, and it is manipulated most masterfully by those in power. Next, there can be no totalitarian language that definitively blocks some words or phrases and introduces new uncontested ones, thus killing our critical thinking or fundamentally altering thought. Nor can there be a perfectly undistorted or neutral language of truth. There is instead a constant dialogue and contest over meanings in politics. Lastly, hierarchical or corporatist power structures and technology certainly play a role, sometimes accidental and sometimes not, in designing our language and influencing how we think. By discussing each of these topics, we come to understand that there is always a way of interpreting politics that comes closest to the truth, but we must struggle for it. Seeing language this way means that when we hear or see salespeak we know that the meaning of what is being said is unclear, and we can do something to find meanings that reflect true democracy - where people are not simply made to believe they got what they wanted, but actually get what they want.

First we should discuss how language is both biological and creative, beginning with the biological part. For many, it is initially difficult to accept that we have a sort of innate capacity for language. But once one hears the argument, it is hard, and perhaps even ridiculous to deny that there must be some underlying structure, or as Noam Chomsky describes it, a “mental organ” that is the basis for how we learn language. Chomsky does away with the assumption that intellectual structures are learned, arguing instead that the structures themselves are biological and inherited, and learning or conditioning only takes place during language’s growth. This language structure is essentially an inborn cognitive rule system that allows for the creation of a number of language forms. The result is that we can only learn certain types of languages, and the languages best suited to the structure of our language organ will be the easiest to learn. To illustrate this point, Chomsky shows how children never make certain mistakes in putting together sentences. He begins with two sentences a child may have heard such as “the man is tall”, and “the man who is tall is angry”, and assures us that the child would never make the mistake of asking “is the man who is tall is angry?” . This is because we have built in knowledge telling us that some structures which we have never heard are correct, and others which we have never heard are incorrect. If it were simply a matter of learning or imitation we would never hear a child complain “he hitted me!”

It does not make a difference that people speak many languages, some of which we would certainly think are not born from the same principles as others. According to Chomsky, these languages may differ in how they realize the principles that are available, but they are basically of the same structural pattern – and they have to be, because if they were not we would never learn any of them .

The power of this argument, especially if it is expressed simply enough, is plain to see. But we must explore beyond language’s innateness and discuss its fundamentally creative and dialogical nature.

The essentially creative nature of language use is what allows us to make sense of things in our lives. We do this in conversation or dialogue with others, imagined others, and even with ourselves. Charles Taylor argues that unlike other animals, “language animals” – human beings – “can identify things as worthy of desire or aversion” and that language “is the basis for all the sense that our lives make or that anything makes” . This also means that we can interpret ourselves, and in forming and re-forming how we see ourselves, we can change as people. This points to the way that language can, through dialogue over time, give different meanings to the same thing – in essence recreating that thing. The feminist movement is well familiar with the idea that women can in one place and time be associated with the sacred and inscrutable, and in another be transformed into “sluts”, “bitches”, “hoes” and so on. Obviously women themselves were never recreated, but by associating them with these terms, patriarchal dialogue evolved and became more unassailable, impenetrable, and women’s desire to redefine themselves was suppressed. But by making and re-making sentences in our minds and with others, we are able to struggle against this, get closer to the truth, and discover ourselves, our purpose, and our goals. If language did not have the capacity to do this, and if new or different language structures were not created in dialogue, we would never know what was good or bad. In this instance, the only way I can make the case that salespeak is something worth fighting against along with inequality and exploitation, is if language is something essentially creative and dialogical in nature that gives meaning to our lives.

This is what makes language, fundamentally, a political act. If we were to finish with the idea that language is biological and creative, we would end up with the feeling that it is just floating out there, somehow making and re-making meaning on its own. But it is people who use language; that find ways to re-work and manipulate meanings. It is you or me. But most importantly, it is our politicians, and others in power, who most ably manipulate language to suit their goals. This is why language philosophies which claim “the being of anything that is resides in the word” or that “language speaks” are not particularly useful here. We are aiming to change the attitudes of certain people who use language, and if we get caught up in matters of language somehow speaking through us, we will never get anything accomplished.

To understand language as a political act, it is useful to use Gramsci’s theory of language as the result of a history of political choices based on interplay between spontaneous and normative grammars. Spontaneous grammars are those patterns we follow while speaking that are unconscious and seem natural (meaning Gramsci would reject Chomsky’s universal grammar), and normative grammars are the conscious rules we follow to speak correctly – the stuff taught to us in school or instilled by irritated parents. Gramsci believed normative grammars were created by political acts and choices from spontaneous grammars, which were the result of previous normative grammars, and so on. It is easy to see why we might need a starting point in universal grammar.

We can combine some of these ideas now. It is possible that some of the patterns we follow while speaking and writing are natural, and are the result of a universal grammar, while some only seem natural, and are the result of a history of political acts based on the mixing of spontaneous and normative grammars. If Gramsci had lived to see the development of universal grammar as a scientific theory, he may have had little trouble accepting this.

For example, In Death Sentences, Don Watson uses writing exercises to demonstrate how certain management-speak terms and weasel words begin to seem natural, or necessary, as if we could never have written without them. We can come up with the same type of writing exercise, for example:
Rewrite the following sentence (taken from a speech by Canada’s Minister of National Defence, Gordon O’Connor) without using “in terms of”:

“In terms of development, Canada is among the top five aid donors in Afghanistan, having pledged $100 million annually until 2011 to development and reconstruction projects.”

The answer does not come easily, because “in terms of” is something we have gotten used to hearing and seeing in print. Don Watson laments how “in terms of” has gone from being innocuous sentence “padding” to something that has “wiped out prepositions and participles, corrupted sentences, and made much conversation hideous” . Perhaps, but Watson does not show us how “in terms of” changes the meaning of anything. However, as we will see later, there are other terms, salespeak terms, that seem quite natural, but significantly change the meaning of what is being said.

When we talk about salespeak then, we are not talking about something that arose on its own, and can only be explained using the mystical verbiage of language philosophy. It is a choice by somebody to communicate in a way that reflects their overarching need to get elected or re-elected, and in a way that absolves them of doing the things they tell people they are going to do. It remains to be seen, however, how an abuse of language affects our thought.

Neither language nor thought has a definitive effect upon the other. Language can have an effect on thought, and vice versa, but they only inform - or in Orwell’s words, “corrupt” - each other . Because the creative aspect of language is formed from the biological aspect, neither language or thought can completely determine the other. Many have criticized Orwell for claiming that political language can determine political thought, but here he is misunderstood, probably as a result of concentration on his fictional work. Some believe Orwell’s 1984 was an attempt to show the implications of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – “that thought is dependent on language… and since languages differ grammatically and lexically, people who speak different languages will differ in how they conceive the world” . But this is not what he believed. In his other writings; specifically Politics and the English Language, his claim is simply this: If we are lazy or insincere and the “general atmosphere is bad”, language can corrupt thought and thought can corrupt language . But by changing our habits, and confronting and undoing doublespeak and other abuses and misuses of language in public space, we can fight back. He even says “the process is reversible” , and this must be the case, or else our political masters would long ago have found an ingenious way to tell us it was not, and we would accept this as truth. The biological-creative nature of language makes an ongoing struggle possible.

There is a tendency to read Orwell as though he was a philosopher, when he should be read as a writer, or simply as somebody who cared about what was happening to the English language. When he says “what is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, not the other way about” , he is not advocating, as W.F. Bolton believes, a language that is as precise about its meaning as numbers . Nor is he calling for, as Chilton asserts, “a totally determinate language where each linguistic item corresponds to each though with mathematical necessity and perspicuity” . Orwell’s own words are unsurprisingly clear - he is asking us to simply use language “as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”, and to choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning .

In The Language of Politics, Michael Geis criticizes what he sees as Orwell’s view that “limiting the lexical resources of a language must limit thought” . Again, this is reading the Orwell of 1984. In Politics and the English Language, Orwell is clearly not worried that a totalitarian regime will come along and erase words from the dictionary. Instead, he worries about language’s decadence and pretentiousness, and puts his faith in the “conscious action of a minority” to defend the language . Reading Orwell’s non-fiction, we can only be sure he believed political language could have a significant, unconscious influence on political thought; that thought and language corrupt each other, but there are things we can do to make things better if we care enough to try.

The notion that thought is entirely dependent on language turns out to be quite silly. There are many things we know or feel that cannot be expressed in language. Jazz musicians have a knack for the rhythm, tempo, and teamwork that goes into improvisation, but this knowledge is not something that can be put into words. Similarly, hockey players should have a sort of instinctive sense for where the puck is going, and where their teammates are positioned on the ice, and where to pass – it is something that comes with time, but certainly not something you could explain with words. There are also things we feel that cannot be put into words. Most of us have struggled at some time in our lives to express extreme sadness, anger, or joy, but were unable to find the words that really matched how we felt.

Moreover, you cannot really show, as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis attempts to show, that speakers of different languages think in entirely different ways due to their language, and that we can escape our perceptions by speaking other languages. Most words or phrases can be translated, with a few exceptions. And in those exceptional cases, we can at least come up with a sentence or explanation to match the meaning. For example, in English we may not have the Japanese word “bakku-shan” to describe a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front , but chances are, if this is explained to us we will get the idea.

Similarly, although we do not have a word to describe an aunt and uncle the same way we have a word to describe our mother and father (“parents”), this does not mean we do not get the concept.

There is still a way to argue with what is being said here, but it is uncertain how much value this argument has. Some, like Herbert Marcuse, argue that the “universe of discourse” is essentially already closed or “one-dimensional”, and thus “immune from the expression of protest and refusal” . Language has stopped being useful in searching for truth and grasping reality, and has concretely established true and false, good and bad, right and wrong. Meanings are, in his gloomy assessment, “fixed, doctored, loaded” and serve merely for the recognition of an unquestionable fact . Our way of thinking then, is supposedly entirely bound by this closed universe of discourse, and we are only able to discern our situation on the terms set by our political and corporate masters. This does not mean we cannot rebel and redefine what we think is happening, only that this rebellion and redefinition is absorbed and processed as a normal part of everyday life. In other words, what I say here cannot possibly make a difference because I can only speak in the way I have been indoctrinated.

In my defence, this is something I can only be sure of if I try. And perhaps Marcuse would agree that if the struggle for a better language is taken out of academia and practised in the public sphere, then it can make a real difference. Moreover, it is possible that the very fact I have it in my mind to try, means that my thought has not been restricted to meanings created by a closed universe of discourse.

To reiterate, because the creative aspect of language is formed from the biological aspect, neither language nor thought can completely determine the other. Instead, space is created for an ongoing struggle for meaning. If this were not the case, this whole exploration would be pointless.

If the argument presented here is clear enough thus far, it may already be evident that there can be no totalitarian language that definitively blocks some words or phrases and introduces new uncontested ones, therefore killing our critical thinking or fundamentally altering thought. If there was any political desire to concretely change our way of thinking using language, it would have to deal with the way language and thought are only loosely linked, and the way these links are undone, re-done, and combined all the time in the creative world of language. Moreover, any real attempt to use language as a tool for permanently changing thought would have to radically alter the laws that give people a certain amount of freedom of speech, and this would eventually require force. It is not within the scope of this study to consider the possibility of this happening in Canada. Regardless, the mere fact that doublespeak is so frequently exposed during our prime-time satire TV viewing is evidence enough that people are quite resistant to any attempt to definitively create new meanings. For instance, it is not difficult to understand that the United States’ “Department of National Defence” has been mostly involved in making war since it was given that name, or that the terms “Department of Homeland Security” and “Department of National Defence” are comically similar, and that one of these departments must clearly be doing something other than what it claims to do.

Also, there cannot be a perfectly undistorted or neutral language of truth, where words are as specific to their meanings as numbers. According to Edward M. White, such a language might be termed “singlespeak” – a way of speaking that makes our meaning as clear as a window pane, but in doing so, reduces complex phenomena or activities to something quantifiable . He adds that “singlespeak” rejects Einstein’s qualifier that everything should be as simple as possible – but no simpler .

The idea is that there are what William E. Connolly calls “essentially contested concepts in politics” , and any attempt to find or conceive a matrix of neutral language for solving our political problems is certain to fail. Additionally, any such attempt is an effort to do away with politics altogether – an impossible task. An essentially contested concept could be a word like “terrorism”, or a phrase like “freedom of speech”. In the case of “terrorism”, for example, to one person it may be something that is mostly identified with desperate religious fanatics who hate freedom, but to another it is something most often committed by the US’s military, secret operations and intelligence apparatus. Likewise, there is often some debate about when mass killings can actually be called “genocide”. Is it when 100 people of a targeted ethnic or religious group are killed? Or 1000 people? What if a recognized government is responsible for the killings, and justifies its actions by claiming a certain group is a threat to national sovereignty? Connolly claims, in keeping with what we have said thus far, that we can argue about these conceptual discrepancies in public and come to agreements that shift meaning in a certain directions.

This is quite different from what Murray Edelman believes. In works such as Political Language and Political Reality, among others, he argues that what matters most is our interpretation of the facts of political life. Reality is really about what we suppose, assume, and construct in our minds, not about facts. For example, in the case of what constitutes “terrorism” there is no way to show that any viewpoint is more valid than the other so long as people have a material and moral reason to hold a certain opinion . History is proof, he claims, that all sorts of justifications can be made – and believed - for horrific acts that are today obviously immoral or stupid . He also discusses value inversions - for example, attacking a country to make it free, or giving police more sophisticated weaponry to reduce violence. But Edelman claims that such value inversions are not hypocritical, rather they reveal “the openness of language to accommodation to varying situations and to the range of interests of speakers and audiences” . According to Edelman, it seems we can use language to make a case for anything.

Obviously this is true, but not all arguments or rationalizations have the same value. This is the whole point of the earlier discussion about the creative aspect of language – that through dialogue it lets us distinguish, in the end, between right and wrong, truth and lies. For example, we should be able to eventually decide whether the US invasion of Iraq was justified, the same way we know we were right when we liberated European nations from Nazi rule. There will always be those who disagree, but they will likely be in the minority, and the established facts will always work against them. Even Edelman seems to acknowledge that we can look back in history and more clearly identify what was justified and what was not. Then there is no reason why today we should hear a lie, but tell ourselves, “well, that is true in a sense” simply because the liar has material and moral reasons to believe what he is saying. Those reasons could be unjust. Therefore, with good evidence, a sound argument, and some common sense, we can decide for ourselves.

There will always be a contest over meaning in politics, but the biological-creative nature of language inherently constructs a dialogue that lets us express what is right and wrong. Hence, the contest is to some extent always “won” by a particular argument, and if we are not defeatist about the prospects of improving political discourse, that particular argument is the one that reflects true democracy, where the people are told as precisely as possible what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. This way we have a real choice.

It would be ridiculous to deny that hierarchical or corporatist power structures do not play a role, accidentally or purposely, in designing our language and influencing how we think. But most attempts to describe approximately who or what is constituted in these power structures are imprecise, and to be frank, quite useless.

Marcuse points to what may, at best, be described as the cadres of “total administration”, or as he lists them, “the defense laboratories and the executive offices, the government and the machines (?), the time-keepers and managers, the efficiency experts and the political beauty parlours” . These things (we should admit some difficulty in finding a common term to denote both machines and political beauty parlours) are the proprietors of the universe of discourse. Orwell believed that political and economic power structures were a significant force, though it is unclear specifically what this means. And in The Unconscious Civilization, John Ralston Saul does his best to implicate “corporatist structures”, which create specialist dialects in science, social science, medicine, linguistics, art, education, etc . He also acknowledges the role of government rhetoric and propaganda, but this is all too obvious. Chomsky is probably the most specific here, claiming that it is the educated classes which have acquiesced to the abuse and misuse of language – in short, to propaganda. He discounts the state propaganda apparatus and encourages us to pay attention to the power of a privatized system of propaganda, which includes the media, journals of opinion, and intelligentsia.

But this is where he may be off target. This privatized propaganda apparatus certainly does what Chomsky says it does, but only in response to how the state articulates policy. It is at this state level – the policy papers, the speeches, the laws, motions, and acts – that the process of toying with language in order to shape politics begins. It is our governments that raise or lower taxes, cut or boost funding for social programs, and send our troops to war, and it is our governments that must begin at the early stages of political marketing to articulate this policy in a way that will make us accept whatever happens. The privatized propaganda system only swallows the explanations it is given and regurgitates them back into the public with twice the force.

The most recent example of this is the British and U.S. media’s coverage of the Iraq war. Piers Robinson and his colleagues conducted a review of four studies about the media’s reporting of Iraq, and confirmed that the media was in sync with the government’s agenda and ideology in a way not seen since the Cold War. In addition, the media was found echoing key themes promoted by the “coalition”, including reiterating the official justifications for war, the threat of WMD’s, the humanitarian argument for regime change, and the broader ‘war on terror’ narrative .

The importance of hierarchical or corporatist power structures in shaping language is plain, but state policy articulation will prove to be the crucial factor for later discussions of political marketing and salespeak.

Technology has made it easier for power structures to disseminate its preferred language. In The Bias of Communication, Harold A. Innis claimed that technology is the most influential force affecting how we communicate, and that each technological medium for transmitting communication has a bias due to the way it is organized and controlled. For example, hand written and oral communication, or what Innis termed “time-biased” media, favours the traditional, religious, and moral. Radio, newspapers, and television, or what Innis termed “space-biased” media, favours the secular, the modern state, and essentially territorial empire. While such a claim is perhaps too technologically determinist for what is being proposed here, it is easy to see some truth in the general claim that technology changes how we speak.

The internet is an appropriate example. We are often told that certain websites such as Myspace and Facebook make great “social networking tools”. These websites allow users to maintain profiles, write updates on what is happening in their lives, and create lists of “friends”. First, it is strange that the word “networking” has managed to creep into our normal use of language. Networking, when it is applied to interpersonal relations, really means this: finding and keeping in touch with people in case they prove to be of some utility someday. This must be the case, since “friends” lists are so often populated with people the user has not actually seen or done anything with in a long time, if at all. A good case can be made that “friends” should be people you actually associate with; people that go to you in the real physical sense when they need somebody to trust, or that are there for you in difficult times. It is possible that such “social networking tools” are using the word “friends” when they should be using “contacts”, or some other more neutral term. Nevertheless, it is normal to hear how many “friends” one has in terms of how many people are on their “friends” list.

Similarly, instant messaging has changed the way we write to each other, albeit mostly in the area of instant messaging itself. It remains unlikely that somebody will use “g2g” in place of “I have to go now” in everyday conversation, or give a hearty “LOL!” in place of actually laughing out loud. But instant messaging language has made its way into e-mails, and there is little doubt that somebody somewhere has hand-written a letter that ended with a “ttyl!” in place of “talk to you later!” In Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, Stephen Miller even suggests that our love of “conversation avoidance mechanisms”, which includes not only instant messaging, but e-mail, mp3 players, cell phones, video games, and internet use, makes us less capable of meaningful face-to-face conversation. All we are left with is either angry exchanges that must produce a winner, or the lets-all-agree-on-everything dialogue characteristic of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

It is also possible that our tendency to say “hello” when answering the phone has made the word more strictly for telephone use and outcast it from face-to-face greeting traditions. If we think of somebody saying “hello” when they physically meet somebody, we feel the stuffiness of a tux and bow-tie, handkerchief-in-pocket, and a monocle. These examples clearly demonstrate, in a limited but understandable and relatable way, the potential that technology has to transform language. This will become especially important later, since political marketing, and hence salespeak, relies so much on new technology in discerning public opinion and getting its message to the public.

In sum, language has a biological-creative nature which, in the biological sense, is innate and grows according to certain principles, and in the creative sense, innovates, fashions, and re-fashions through dialogue, allowing us to think critically and create meaning in the world. But it is above all a political act; used by people, especially those in power, for their own purposes. There can be no totalitarian language that definitively blocks some words or phrases and introduces new uncontested ones, nor can there be a perfectly undistorted or neutral language of truth. There is instead a constant conversation and contest over meanings in politics. Moreover, hierarchical or corporatist power structures and technology certainly play a role, sometimes accidental and sometimes not, in designing our language and influencing how we think. Seeing language this way means that when we hear or see salespeak we know that the meaning of what is being said is unclear, and we can do something to find meanings that embody true democracy - where people are not simply made to believe they got what they wanted, but actually get what they want.

The following is copyrighted (2007) and partially owned by a university, so it’s free to reproduce in any way, but please leave your e-mail in the comments section below. Footnotes, bibliography, primary research findings, etc. are available by e-mail.

Abstract

Political marketing is a form of social control embedded in communication which leads our politicians to write and speak to us in a different way - in an evolved form of doublespeak known as salespeak, a language that uses the findings of market intelligence to make citizens believe they are getting the type of government they want and requested. Essentially, it is the way our governments and parties speak to us when all that matters is getting elected or re-elected. The use of salespeak is a threat to democracy, but with the right conceptual tools we can learn to ask our politicians the right questions and get real answers.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Modern methods of sale are complicated and often confusing. The Consumer needs to be safeguarded against unscrupulous business practices and unsafe products. More accurate information is needed about the terms and conditions of sale.
- From the Liberal Party Platform of 1968

Most Canadians who bother with the matter would admit that the language of Canadian politicians is quite bad, but it is generally assumed that we cannot do anything about it. Besides, “filler” words, vagueness, jargon, and all of the other abuses of language that go with politics, do not seem that harmful.

The problem with the abuse of language in politics is that it may be happening on purpose. Perhaps our politicians want to write their policies and platforms in a way that lets them do anything – or nothing. This is a problem, of course, because we have elected them to do some things, and not to do others without our consent, or at the very least, without our explicit knowledge.

Recently, Canada’s Conservative government passed regulations allowing U.S. air marshals to carry firearms into Canada. This is something most Canadians would understand and support. But the regulation added that this arrangement would also apply to other situations, including “various cross-border enforcement initiatives between Canada and the United States.” What this actually means is that Canada will be allowing the FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, and other enforcement agencies, including American police, to do something they have never been allowed to do in Canada – carry firearms without a permit. Thomas Walkom, a Toronto Star reporter who caught onto this, called it “a blow to sovereignty” . As he points out, unless these U.S. agents are planning on policing somebody else’s country, they can leave their guns in the U.S. or check them at a border station.

It would have looked much worse (although it would have made a great newspaper headline) if the clause had simply stated, “American agents and police can now carry guns in Canada without a permit”. Instead the government used, “various cross-border enforcement initiatives”.

Walkom calls this “bureaucratese,” others might call it jargon or even doublespeak. We are never quite sure why politicians speak this way, or where they learned to speak this way. But it would be helpful to know if we want to do something about it.

Political marketing may help us understand what is happening to political language. Political marketing is two things: 1) the way political organizations use business marketing concepts and techniques to help them achieve their goals , and 2) a new sub-discipline in political science. It is crucial to note that the latter has paid little or no attention to how the former shapes the way our politicians communicate in policies and party platforms.

How has political marketing changed the way our politicians speak and write to us?

Political marketing has pushed the language of our politicians towards an evolved type of doublespeak known as salespeak, which is:

Communication in the form of policy documents, party platforms, and writing and speech related to these, that uses the findings of market intelligence to make citizens believe they are getting the type of government they want and requested. To write or speak this way requires forms of corporate language that hide inequality while setting out a way for people to do things, without actually requiring them to do those things. It allows those who use it to avoid liability or fake accountability.

Essentially, it is the way our governments and parties speak to us when the only thing that matters is getting elected or re-elected.

To show that salespeak is something we should be concerned about, and that it is also something we can fight against, I will discuss what language is, how it changes, and how language and thought are related. The result will be an idea of language that sees language as a fundamentally political act. As a result, we should not accept that language is beyond our control. Next, though political marketing is usually associated with electioneering, “packaged” or “promotional” politics”, party “branding”, and image management, here I will argue that it is actually a form of social control embedded in communication. Moreover, I will argue that the techniques and methods of this type of communication were copied from the corporate world for specific purposes. Lastly, I will try to refine the concept of salespeak and show how it can be useful, and then attempt to apply the concept to a few of Canada’s current policies and party platforms. The result, I hope, is a concept that helps us make better sense of what our politicians are telling us, or helps us ask the right questions when they have something to hide.

Continued…

I am often asked, when somebody recognizes me walking down the street, “hey man, aren’t you that bald guy with the glasses from E.R?”
No, I am not.
But I was recently asked, in an e-mail from somebody who claims to be looking for answers about communism in Canada, “what is the difference between the Communist Party of Canada and the Marxist Leninist Party of Canada?”

Ah, yes. I know where this person is coming from. Disenchanted with traditional Canadian politics, sees the Liberals and Conservatives as the same, too socialist for the NDP, sees past all the bullshit and is looking for something different… But unfortunately forgets to look for something relevant.

So they turn to the two “communist” parties of Canada, looking for answers, but then the question comes: “which one do I go with?” Here’s a handy comparison chart to help you make up your mind.

Instead of voting communist, just approach your local NDP rep and tell him to grow some balls. Boom, there you have it. A perfect socialist without a scary name.

I have a few concerns with the article you wrote about Omar Khadr (in the Sunday Sun, July 20th, 2008).

First, lets talk about what you said: Essentially, that the media has had a “drama-queen”, overly sympathetic response to the Omar Khadr Gitmo detention videos. You say we should not feel sorry for him, because the “boy terrorist”, as you call him, threw a grenade that allegedly killed a US Army medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer. And the reason he broke down and cried is because he thought the Canadian agents were there to take him back to Canada, but when the agents started asking him “the tough questions”… “he knew the jig was up, and that there was no going home”. Moreover, if Omar had killed a Canadian soldier we would not feel sorry for him.

I think you have made a decent effort to present a different point of view about these videos. The problem is, anybody who ascribes to this point of view has to conveniently forget some important facts.

1) Charges against Omar were dropped in 04 June 2007 because he could not be deemed an “unlawful” enemy combatant by the US’s war crimes tribunal. He has not been charged since.
2) Omar has not been convicted of any crime.
3) There is another side to the story. Omar’s defence team argues there is corroborating evidence, including evidence submitted by a ballistics expert, to suggest Sgt. Speer was killed by friendly fire – by an American grenade.

I am not saying I believe either story. What I am saying is that you cannot deride Canadians for feeling sorry for somebody who has been held for 6 years, without being charged, without being convicted, and when there has been no real effort of repatriation by the Canadian government. In Canada we have never let somebody rot in a jail cell for 6 years without even charging them.

And what makes him a “terrorist”? If he was out there killing American soldiers, then he, even as described by his American prosecutors, is an “enemy combatant”. He did not explode himself in a crowd of civilians or detonate a truck-bomb in a marketplace.

You ask us “if this Canadian poster boy terrorist had killed (a Canadian soldier), would there be the same outrage being expressed today over his treatment in detention?”

The question is designed to appeal to our patriotism, our respect for Canadian soldiers, our sentiment for those who have died there. But the question is actually invalid. Think about it: 1) We don’t know that Omar killed anybody – again, he hasn’t even been charged, let alone convicted. 2) If a Canadian citizen like Omar Khadr was accused of killing a Canadian soldier, he certainly would not end up at Guantanamo. He would be shipped back to Canada and would go through due process. He would be tried under the Young Offenders Act. He would have evidence presented against him – and for him. He would retain his rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (ie: he would be given rights to counsel before any interrogation - shamefully, something our own agents did not do when they interrogated Omar). He would not sit in a detention cell for 6 years. He would not ever be awoken every three hours and moved to a different location – a sleep deprivation technique designed to induce compliance to interrogation. He would be able to communicate with his family.

Your question is flawed, intentionally I think. You end your editorial by reminding us that “Pte Colin Wilmot, by the way, was buried on Wednesday in his home town of Fredericton”. You are using the death of one of our boys to promote the view that Khadr deserves what he is getting; you are using a dead Canadian soldier as a tool to advance a flimsy argument. The “jig” is up.

Sincerely, but with apologies to your mighty moustache,

Mercuda

A-stAr decided to leave us.
He will not be posting here anymore as with time he has changed his political views.
It is important to find your own way through rationality and not pressure of your environement and society. We sure hope he find his way on his “own”.

OMG everybody, I dunno if you just saw the latest episode of Holmes on Homes, but my dream finally came true. Mike Holmes and his crew came over and fixed my house, and it’s all because I wrote him this letter.

My letter:

Dear Mike Holmes,

We need your help! 4 years ago my wife and I purchased a detached 6270 sq ft home in Green Valley Acres (1 km south of the equestrian club). For the first three years, everything went beautifully. We really enjoyed the 3 acres of yard space, especially because we have no kids. We loved spending warm summer evenings relaxing in our gazebo, sipping vintage wine, comforted by the fact that we each make over $80,000 a year and our Land Rover is already paid off. But lately we’ve been having problems!

It seems our plumbing may have been done totally wrong! When we start the jets on our hot tub, the water that comes out first looks a little bit grey, and then it gets clear. Same thing when we start any of our taps, or when we flush the toilet. What makes this especially horrible is that we just had our kitchen renovated and had marble floors and granite counter tops put in. We’ve also noticed some grey water leakage in our basement, which makes us so angry because we just converted it into a rec-hall complete with wet bar, pool table, and walk-out to the stone patio and man-made pond with fountain. We called the people who built all of these homes in our area, but they said it was going to cost money to fix it! I hope you can help.

Mike Holmes’ response:

OH MY GOD I CANT BELEVE THEY DID THAT TO YOU. OK I WILL COME OVER. WHAT IS YOUR ADRESS I WILL MAKE IT RIGHT.-MIKE

Pictures:

Our house in Green Valley Acres. Only problem is… Something was wrong with our plumbing!

Our hot tub and back yard. And there’s our white show-horse, Pegasus, in the background! Hi Pegasus!

Mike Holmes helps lots of poor people. The people who live in this house hired somebody to finish their basement and make a rec room, guest bedroom, and wet bar… But it didn’t turn out the way they wanted. Luckily, Mike Holmes saw their plight and made it right!

Mike Holmes helps poor communities too. Here is a picture of a poor neighborhood that he helped because somebody didn’t build the fences right.

Do you have a story about Mike Holmes coming to the rescue? Share it here! Do you want to write your own letter to Mike Holmes? I can show you how! E-mail me at doubleincomenokids_homeowner@sympatico.net (please, no more renters and real poor people in apartments and condos and stuff asking for help).

Propane? Might as well take an axe to your groin – you’re a pussy.
I don’t care that charcoal smells like shit and causes cancer (to my baby). Charcoal is the real deal. I don’t go to a gas station and wait for some teenager with a certificate to pump my propane into a cute white cylinder. Charcoal comes straight from the earth. Sometimes I go to a mine and dig it up myself. I come home all covered in black, and fire up the barbeque. My neighbour’s wife is so consumed with my man-power that she can’t sleep with her husband for weeks, and leaves me dirty little notes that smell like perfume and salmon. My wife understands that it’s a normal part of being married to a man that fires up the charcoal.

My charcoal barbeque doesn’t have a hinged lid that tips open like a robot-muppet’s head. The lid comes right off. I have nowhere to put it except the ground, where it singes the grass, sometimes setting a fire that I have to put out with a pint of Blue. It has no adjustment knobs or dials – additions which have made men’s hands dainty and weak. It’s just a saucer full of charcoal; it burns as it will.
I don’t have little ledges for my utensils, food, spices, bowls, anything. Ledges are for resting, and resting is for people who download episodes of Lost. Don’t ask why, just accept. Nor do I have a side burner – the greatest travesty in barbequing history. “Oh, I know. I’ll grill some sirloin steak here, and whip up some cous-cous here”. A barbeque with a side burner is like a wrestler in a speedo.

I can grill anything on my charcoal barbeque. Steak, chicken, pork, fish, whole onions (you can eat them like an apple), potato, shish kabob, ground beef – that’s right, ground beef.

I’m not going to be that guy that brags about the “smokey taste” or tells you the food tastes better. I don’t know if it does. Barbequing has never been about the taste. I can throw a Master Choice Rising Crust pizza into the oven and get “good taste”. Barbequing is about the process, beginning to end.

Starting the barbeque:

Propane
Turn some precious knobs and press a plastic button that goes “toonks!” A little flame will appear.

Charcoal
Dump in a mound of charcoal, shape it as best you can into a pyramid, and light it with crumpled up Pennysavers that you crammed underneath the lower grill.

Turning the barbeque off:

Propane
Turn some precious knobs until the flame flickers out.

Charcoal
Close the vents, suffocating the coals.

Get a charcoal barbeque like mine.

GPS and cellphones are not a substitute for a plan

Imagine two families taking a road trip, from the city they live in to a campground 600 kilometres away. They have all the information they need before they go. They have the location of the campground and campsite, and they will be taking the same highways. One person in each family has a cell phone, and each vehicle has a GPS. It’s 09:00. They take off, driving one behind the other.
When it’s about lunch time, one of the kids starts text-messaging another about where to stop. There’s a McDick’s in Milton, or a Tim Fire ‘Em’s just before you hit Guelph. They agree to meet at McDicks and all goes well. GPS’ guides our families back onto the highway.
Gas station pit-stop. Another flurry of text messages ensures the cars stick together for this stop, and a GPS guides our families to a gas station in a small town.
They arrive at the campsite hours later, using a combination of text messaging and cell phone calls to find their way along some wooded roads and to their long weekend vacation spot.

Usually, everything goes fine. But what ever happened to making a good plan? Here are some of the problems with relying on technology and eschewing plans.

1) We spend time - what is essentially leisure time - following directions, amending routes, saving routes, setting “waypoints”, text messaging, calling, overall “planning as you go”. It’s leisure time in the sense that you could be listening to music, the news, or… having a conversation!

2) Technology fails. It runs out of batteries, it malfunctions, it can’t find a satellite, the cell phone gets dipped in coffee by a baby. However, a good plan always includes a back-up plan: “If we get separated, our first meeting spot will be inside the Tim Fire ‘Em’s at the Shmell rest-stop outside of Cobourg. We will meet between 12:00 and 1:00. If I am not there by 1:00, our next meeting spot will be the Salmonburger’s off of highway 13 for dinner between 5:00 and 6:00.”

3) You’re distracted by your toys. Instead of cranking the latest Stone Gods track, and checking out the ladies on the street corner, you’re looking at your stupid screen, missing out on all that eye candy, probably about to get side-swiped by a fat chick driving a Windstar.

People who rely on their GPS are lazy. They are zombies. They leave the house not really knowing the route they will take, drooling as they close the door behind them, eyes rolled back, keys dangling lazily, penis hanging out. They let their GPS do the work. They follow directions. They shut their brains off. Even when all their senses are telling them they are lost, they follow the instructions of their GPS: “turn right at next intersection”, “take next exit”, and “wink at this girl pulling up on your left”.

Here are some forum messages by people who obviously rely too much on their GPS:

“A map won’t tell you all the Chinese restaurants within 5 miles with phone numbers to call to see if they are still open at 10pm on a Sunday (when the event is over) or where the closest all night copy shop is.”

“It has become and very valuable tool not only for directions but giving you phone numbers for hotels, restaurants, car dealerships etc.”

This is information you could have gained with a few phone calls, no more than a few minutes on the phone, and a scrap piece of paper to record information.

“I’m looking for something that will talk me through the route”

Get a girl. Or, and I know this is complicated, write down where you have to go. Write down the street names, directions, and times and distances if necessary. Google-map it.

“The one feature that I am looking for is the preventive/real time traffic function that supposedly will give me alternate routes to get to my destination (I live in Denver where there is traffic coverage).”

Sure, you can buy a GPS for hundreds of dollars, or you can determine your alternate routes in advance – for free!

“I’ve been in Seattle for the past few days with a group in a large charter bus (45 feet long, 12 feet tall). The Nuvi had me going down narrow neighbourhood streets and wanting me to take impossible hairpin turns.”

This person took on the responsibility of navigating and driving a charter bus without mapping his routes in advance. That is not only lazy, it is incredibly irresponsible. I am no bus-driving expert, but I thought a pre-requisite for driving a bus full of people was knowing the way.

What are you going to do with a “favourites” feature on your GPS? If you’ve been there once or twice you should know the way. So now you’re sitting there in your car, programming your “favourites” into your GPS while your wife’s gone back into the house to have cyber sex with her facebook boyfriend. Think about how sad that is. You’re poking an LCD screen with your fat fingers, and some banker is “poking” your wife on facebook to get into her pants.
Why do you need to program “waypoints”? You’re not a Boy Scout. Get a grip. The only reason you want that GPS on your dash is because it’s an accessory that looks cool. A status symbol. You felt the same way about a calculator watch when you were in elementary school. Wow, a watch and a calculator… in one! It looks like I have a super-computer on my wrist.

Cell phones.

I can spend anywhere between $30 and $50 a month to text and call people. Or I can make plans, and dump a few quarters into pay phones. And nothing says “I might be a criminal or secret agent” (both bad-ass occupations) like talking on a pay phone.
Unless you need to be reached at any time for work-related reasons, there is no need for a cell phone. Try to justify it all you want. Unless you’re stranded on the highway because your busted-ass Ford broke down again, there’s nothing you can do with a cell phone that you can’t do by planning and using pay phones. For emergencies, get a damn pre-paid phone, keep it in your car or whatever.
There’s nothing worse than having a boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or husband that can get a hold of you any time of the day.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting groceries”
“… so… when are you coming home?”
“When I’m done getting groceries”

People that use their cellphones this way are usually control freaks. What do you think your partner is going to say?
“What are you doing?”
*heavy breathing* “Uhh… nothing…” *slapping sounds*
“Oh my god, you’re having sex with somebody else!”
“Busted! Why did I pick up the phooooooone???”