Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 304
•
Trim: 6¾ x 9
978-0-7425-3857-3 • Paperback • July 2005 • $45.00 • (£29.95)
Sharon E. Jarvis is assistant professor of communication studies and associate director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation at the University of Texas at Austin.
Chapter 1 Introduction: Parties and Power
Chapter 2 1 Political Branding, 1948–2004
Chapter 3 2 What Are Parties Worth?
Chapter 4 3 The Enduring Party
Chapter 5 4 The Evolving Party
Chapter 6 5 The Conflicted Party
Chapter 7 6 The Two Major Parties and Everyone Else
Chapter 8 7 Brand Dominance: Consistency Prevails
This book provides a much-needed dissection of critical markers of partisanship in campaign discourse and discussions of governance over the last fifty years. It is the perfect complement to recent and more long-standing efforts to map the linguistic terrain of politics by scholars such as George Lakoff and Murray Edelman. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars, politicians and pundits, offering new insights in the dynamics that have shaped the current language of politics. Jarvis paints a vivid portrait of how terms such as 'liberal' have come under attack, whereas critiques of 'conservative' have been forestalled. This is an important book for anyone interested in understanding political discourse in the twentieth century and beyond.
— Dhavan V. Shah, University of Wisconsin, Madison
For scholars interested in parties, campaigns, and political communications, this is an important book. Jarvis presents thoughtful ideas on the history and evolution of party labels and on how elites use these names in symbolic ways. This book is a readable and up-to-date account of how parties structure civic life in the United States.
— Political Science Quarterly
This book offers a rich store of detail about the way parties are portrayed by the managers of political discourse and how those portrayals have changed over time. Scholars of discourse, political or otherwise, will find an excellent example of a well-executed analysis of political text and the process of branding.
— Perspectives on Politics
Take six words, four sets of political elite voices, three types of political messages, two major political parties, and a group of independent voters, then apply a methodology that mixes them up with questions rising out of communication, political science, linguistic, and marketing theories, and you have a recipe that produces new explanations for the ebb and flow of American political parties' fortunes for the past 50 years. Sharon Jarvis's The Talk of the Party uses analysis of past political talk—and its influence on the public's perceptions of parties and their candidates—to project how technology and traditional communication channels will impact party messages, perceptions, and outcomes in the future. As with all good research, Jarvis leaves us with new questions as well as new insights. This book will find its way into a variety of political communication and political science courses and will be quoted by scholars who study political discourse.
— Diana Bartelli Carlin
—An engaging supplement for courses in political communication, political parties and campaigns, and modern rhetorical criticism.
—Looks at the language of political "elites" over a fifty-year span and what it can tell us about our lives and times.
—Introduces the concept of symbolic capital as a means of tracking how political terms have been portrayed in public messages.
—Observes how at the present time the stability of certain words (Democrat, Republican) is protected; the populist spiritassociated with the term independent is praised; and the ideology increasingly connected with the word liberal is condemned.
—Concludes that groups, particularly Republicans, have successfully demoted the term liberal, placed the Republican brand name closer to citizens, and forestalled critiques of the term conservative.
—Addresses steps Democrats can take to revitalize the term liberal, to position Democrat closer to the citizenry, and to contribute to a richertalk of the party.
—Contains dozens of tables and figures to elucidate the text's coverage of party labels.
—Includes a thorough appendix for readers interested in the research methodology behind the book.