In a college linguistics course, I first encountered the work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), a pre-World War II organization — we’d probably call it a think tank, nowadays — which (per Wikipedia):
…formed with the general concern that increased amounts of propaganda were decreasing the public’s ability to develop their own critical thoughts. The purpose of the IPA was to spark rational thinking and provide a guide to help the public have well-informed discussions on current issues. “To teach people how to think rather than what to think.” The IPA focused on domestic propaganda issues that might become possible threats to the democratic ways of life.
I’m not going to use RAMH for political commentary, in one direction or the other. But in light of the political atmosphere in the US this year, I thought it might be useful to reiterate, briefly, the seven categories of propaganda techniques which the IPA identified:
- Name-calling
- Glittering generalities
- Transfer
- Testimonial
- Plain folks
- Card stacking
- Bandwagon
Each category is covered separately in links from the Wikipedia article. Another couple of excellent resources for further reading on this subject are:
- Dr. Ronald B. Sandler’s 2005 essay, “Propaganda and How to Recognize It”
- Aaron Delwiche’s propagandacritic Web site (which is where I found the image at the top of this post, “Glitter,” by Carol Lay)
For now, though, I wanted to highlight one specific tactic which politicians of all persuasions are especially fond of. It’s a sub-category of category 2, “glittering generalities,” and it’s summed up in a phrase which I still remember from that linguistics course: mere assertion.
Mere assertion is exactly what it says: the propagandist says that something is the case — is true — (that’s the “assertion” part) but does not offer any sort of substantive support for the claim (hence the “mere”). This tactic most often becomes useful when the politician is speaking under time constraints; the implication is, I could cite numerous pieces of evidence for that claim, but unfortunately I don’t have time.
I’m not going to quote mere-assertion examples from last night’s Vice-Presidential debate, although it wouldn’t be difficult. Instead, I’ll direct your attention to the transcript, available from numerous sources:
And, of course, don’t forget to visit the FactCheck.org site to help sort out the wheat of fact from the chaff of fiction and propaganda.
Edit to add: Bear in mind that FactCheck, and sites like it, seldom point out the true statements; they focus on the false, questionable, and/or fuzzy ones. So knowing that two debaters have a roughly equal number of bogus claims doesn’t mean much unless you account for the overall number of factual claims made by each of the two. (That is, for example, if both “teams” made 10 erroneous statements but one of them made a total of 50 factual claims while the other made only 10 — well, you see where this is going.) Also note that these sites don’t weight the importance of a false claim: someone who’s wrong on the average household income in Country X, but otherwise right, isn’t at nearly as much fault as someone who’s wrong on Country X’s ties to terrorism (and hence on its invasion-worthiness), but otherwise right.
marta says
Thanks for this. I may use this in my reading class–assuming I can get the attention of my students. But this is fascinating stuff.
John says
@marta – I confess: simple though it is, the phrase “mere assertion” has always been a secret favorite of the snob in me. Very convenient to wave it like a yellow flag in one’s head when involved in conversations that have nothing to do with propaganda. Arguments with the bonehead at work, mentally “talking” with the author of a self-help book, etc.
Of course this works only if you disregard such a casual use of the phrase, which makes of it a mere assertion in its own right. I’ve always found it easy to hold inconvenient thoughts at arm’s length, though.