Political Language - Words that Succeed and Policies that Fail

Department of Political Science and Institute for Research on Poverty, 1977. — 184 pages.Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail examines the role of everyday language, governmental rhetoric, and professional language in creating dubious beliefs about the causes, nature, consequences, and remedies for poverty and related social problems.The book analyzes the nature and dynamics of complex cognitive structures engendered in public officials, professionals, administrators, and the general public through recurring categorizations, metaphors, metonyms, and syntactic structures.The focus is on the emergence and change of political cognitions that are nonempirically based and on the consequences for public policy of reliance upon symbolically engen dered perceptions and beliefs. Considerable attention is given to the role of the helping professions. The analysis helps us understand the reasons governmental and professional actions contribute to poverty and related social problems while trying to ameliorate them.