Murray Edelman

Political language : words that succeed and policies that fail

An update of the poverty picture plus a new look at relative burdens The final volume of the three-volume series on The New Jersey Income Maintenance Experimentwill be out in early December, and Volumes I and II have already been published. It thus seemsappropriate to include in this issue of FOCUS an overview of the experiment and its results.

Contestable categories and public opinion

Abstract The social world is a kaleidoscope of potential realities, which can be readily evoked by altering the ways in which observations are framed and categorized. Classification schemes are therefore central to political maneuver and political persuasion. Typically, they are driven by the dominant elites ideology and prejudice rather than by rigorous analysis or the aspiration to solve social problems. This article provides examples of common questionable categorizations of government policies and contestable metaphors used for public figures.

Political Language and Political Reality

The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The “linguistic turn” in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises. While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.

Language, myths and rhetoric

Political language can evoke a set of mythic beliefs in subtle and powerful ways.

Law and psychiatry as political symbolism

The conventional view of law, and of psychiatry as well, focuses on how they change the world and people’s lives, usually for the better. Both law and psychiatry do have that effect, but it is not their only consequence and often not their paramount one. Both influence perceptions of the social world as well as actions and conditions. Their evocations of beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions constitute their most important political and social consequences, though not necessarily their most important clinical or legal effects. The publicized, discussed, and debated legal and psychiatric actions concentrate on procedures to change individuals, often people defined as offenders, as anti-social, or as otherwise pathological. They create public expectations of social change and confidence in amelioration, though accounts of successes by practitioners are chiefly anecdotal. Research that concentrates on the long term, on outcomes (rather than procedures) and on social structure (rather than individuals) typically finds a high degree of stability in social structure, and in the inequalities and problems that publicized legal and psychiatric programs promise to improve or eliminate. These studies typically conclude that social programs often fail, that recidivism is common, and that successes are problematic. What law and psychiatry are in modern society, as well as what they do, seems to hinge on the presuppositions of observers, on their methods of observation and analysis, and on their positions and roles. But some presuppositions, methods, and roles are more adequate than others. The more adequate ones, in my view, justify the conclusion that law and psychiatry as professions chiefly influence public beliefs and perceptions rather than social conditions or personal well-being. Their paramount effect is to encourage acceptance of established institutions, partly by creating an expectation of future change to correct inequalities and ameliorate grievances, and partly by encouraging people to define themselves as getting what they deserve. So far as these political effects are concerned, law and psychiatry display some intriguing similarities. In their most publicized forms, both promise improvement in the lives of distressed and disadvantaged people and a more equitable society. The legislation and litigation that are constantly in the news deal with problems growing out of inequalities in income, status, and power: civil rights, affirmative action, welfare policy, and regulation of business to protect consumers, workers, and neighbors. In spite of continuous governmental activity and public discussion, these are also the problems that are never solved and the forms of law that are largely symbolic and tokenistic. These laws bring im-

Constructing the Political Spectacle

Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

International Relations Inge Deutschkron. Bonn and Jerusalem : The Strange Coalition. Pp. x, 357. Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1970.

Rapid, Orwellian shifts among nations from friendly to hostile relationships, and vice versa, are commonplace; it is as if the most widely supported policies could be most readily reversed. The rapprochement between Israel and West Germany within a few years after the Nazi holocaust is certainly one of the more dramatic examples of this paradox. Inge Deutschkron’s book recounts in detail the pertinent diplomatic initiatives, obstacles, and developments in this story from the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 to the establishment of diplomatic relationships between the two countries in 1965. These include the negotiation of the first treaty between Jews and Germans, dealing both with individual claims against the German government and with German compensation payments to Israel; the meeting in New York City in 1960 between David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer; the Eichmann abduction, trial, and execution ; the issue posed by German scientists working on Egyptian rockets; and the painful negotiations for establishment of diplomatic relations. The reasons for ambivalence and the strong incentives to reach an accord both emerge clearly from this chronicle. On the Israeli side these included the memory of six million Jews recently murdered and continuing German ties to the Arab states, offset in the view of the leading political parties and policymakers by the need for German economic and arms help. The close dependence of the German-Israeli relationship upon wider cold war maneuvers and developments also comes into some perspective in the course of this narrative. The book’s chief value for social scientists lies in making the facts conveniently available. Much of this story will doubtless be suggestive for students of political psychology and for analysts of the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy ; but the reader will have to bring his own theoretical framework to bear to analyze these wider implications. MURRAY EDELMAN