Framing Political Messages with Grammar and Metaphor: How something is said may be as i... - 4 views
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Lara Cowell on 16 May 13Both metaphor and grammar influence how people think about political candidates and elections. voters' attitudes can be influenced by a number of factors, including which information the media chooses to emphasize and how it is slanted. Framing, how a message is worded to encourage particular interpretations and inferences, can influence the perception of political candidates. Negative framing is often used to make opposing candidates seem weak, immoral and incompetent. It is persuasive because it captures attention and creates anxiety about future consequences. Grammar, though seemingly innocuous, also encodes meaning and is linked to mental experience and physical interactions with the world. Information framed with past progressive caused people to reflect more on the action details in a given time period than did information framed with simple past. Using grammatical aspect to frame campaign information, positive or negative, appears to be an effective tool for influencing how people perceive candidates' past actions. It may also be tweaked to invite inferences about what candidates will do in the future because it influences inferences about how events transpire.