Politics as Symbolic Action

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Politics functions , in part, by controlling the
symbolic containers, providing MEANING to events
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Symbolic interaction is the Reality in Which we
Act
What is Democracy

• What is Government?

What is Freedom?
What is Nation Building?
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Point of View

• Not a Political Science point of view
• structure of institutions, e.g. parties,
• tactics, strategies, socialization, etc..
• Not a Sociological point of view
• statues, groups, socio-economic determinate
• Not a Psychological point of view
• motives, drives, traits, as determinate
• Rather a Symbolic/Communicative approach

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Politics as Ritual
People Symbolically involved in a common
enterprise voting, inaugurations, debates,
conventions, collective grieving

• Politics in America is the binding secular
  religion. Theodore White, Historian/Journalist

A National Campaign is better than the best
circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism (the
convention) and a couple of hangings thrown in.
It is better, even than war. H. L. Mencken
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• Politics is quintessentially a language game.
  Political campaigns consist primarily of
  talk--the challenger for a political office can
  do very little but talk. And once elected, talk
  will be a major concern of any politician.
• Michael Geis

• If there is no conflict over meaning, the issue
  is not political, by definition.
• Murray Edelman

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• It is language about political events and
  developments that people experience even events
  that they are close to take their meaning from
  the language used to depict them. So political
  language is political reality there is no other
  so far as the meaning of events to actor and
  spectators is concerned. Edelman, Constructing
  the Political Spectacle

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• It is not "reality"' in any testable or
  observable sense that matters in shaping
  political consciousness and behavior, but rather
  the beliefs that language helps evoke about the
  causes of discontents and satisfactions. Edelman

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• Language is only one aspect of the material
  situation but a critical one the aspect that
  most directly interprets developments by fitting
  them into a narrative account that provides a
  meaning for the past, the present, and the future
  compatible with an audience's ideology. Edelman

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• . . .There is an important sense in which
  language constructs the people who use it, a view
  manifestly in contrast with the commonsensical
  assumption that people construct the language
  they use. For every political problem and
  ideological dilemma there is a set of statements
  and expressions constantly in use. In accepting
  one or another of these a person becomes a
  particular kind of subject with a particular
  ideology, role, and self conception a liberal or
  a conservative, a victim of authority or a
  supporter of authority, an activist or a
  spectator, and so on. Edelman

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Liberty

• . . .Language offers a logic to defend any
  position regardless of contradictions, and it
  does so subtly. In the domain of political
  language there are many mansions, and they often
  defy the laws of physics by occupying the same
  semantic space. i.e. "True Freedom" Edelman

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Rhetorical Fictions

• Real Fictions combining matters of faith fact.
• Advise with regard to public conduct
• Want no suspension of disbelief yet, they do not
  anticipate acceptance as immutable truths
• Related terms
• Persona, fantasy theme, rhetorical vision,
  social reality, political myth, ideology
• Symbolic in nature, have rhetorical force,
  inherently dramatic,intersubjectively constructed
  meanings,
• Ethos The key to the ethos of Presidents is
  their conception of their relationship to the
  people, for in this conception lies their image
  of themselves and the role of the Presidency.
• Images of the President are
• (1) Symbolic
• (2) Not only depict the president, they also
  imply an image of us
• (3) We respond to the implied image of us in
  relations to our self-concept, and
• (4) the degree to which the implied image and
  self-concept correspond determines the degree to
  which we will be believe and follow the president.

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POLITICS AS MYTHS

• The Founding Fathers
• The American Dream
• Free-enterprise
• Wisdom of the Common Man

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Kenneth Burke

• THE SYMBOL USING (SYMBOL-MAKING, SYMBOL-MISUSING)
  ANIMAL
• INVENTOR OF THE NEGATIVE (OR MORALIZED BY THE
  NEGATIVE)
• SEPARATED FROM HIS NATURAL CONDITION BY
  INSTRUMENTS OF HIS OWN MAKING
• GOADED BY THE SPIRIT OF HIERARCHY (OR MOVED BY
  THE SENSE OF ORDER)
• AND ROTTEN WITH PERFECTION
• Definition of Man in Language as Symbolic
  Action Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

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Dramatistic Perspective

• Inherent to symbolic life is tension between
  identification division.
• Identification. consubstantiation--become the
  other symbolically
• Naming - is inherently rhetorical
• Motive toward perfection, order, hierarchy
• The Negative invokes a moralistic world,
• People are Rotten with perfection Piety,
  Guilt, Redemption, Victimage, Salvation

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• What must be made absolutely clear is that
  politics is not somehow unreal or false because
  it is freighted with symbols and visualized in
  images. We cannot somehow dismiss showmanship,
  political ritual, speeches, and televised debates
  as mere politics. Politics, after all, is a
  human or social activity. Arthur Miller Bruce
  Gronbeck, 1994.