Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and the American Presidency

by Michael Lempert, Michael Silverstein

It's a common complaint that a presidential candidate's style matters more than substance and that the issues have been eclipsed by mass-media-fueled obsession with a candidate's every slip, gaffe, and peccadillo. This book explores political communication in American presidential politics, focusing on what political insiders call "message." Message, Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein argue, is not simply an individual's positions on the issues but the craft used to fashion the creature the public sees as the candidate. Lempert and Silverstein examine some of the revelatory moments in debates, political ads, interviews, speeches, and talk shows to explain how these political creations come to have a life of their own. From the pandering "Flip-Flopper" to the self-reliant "Maverick," the authors demonstrate how these figures are fashioned out of the verbal, gestural, sartorial, behavioral―as well as linguistic―matter that comprises political communication.

Genres: Anthropology, Political Science

284 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2012

Reviews

[Mike Mena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists...I have strong doubts this book will be accessible to general reading public. That's unfortunate because its such a good book and really entertaining!

[versarbre]

The introduction is good. The rest..well..maybe it's because I am not an American audience and this book isn't intended to anthropology specialists but instead to the general American public?

[Nina]

Oh my god I'm finished! I wouldn't have read this book otherwise (or, if I had picked it up for some reason, wouldn't have finished it) but we had to read this for my English class. And don't get me wrong, I freaking love reading. But this was such a drag and clearly not aimed at college students (thus I have decided not to rate it). This might be a good read for you if you already know something about the field (maybe you're actually a linguistic anthropologist) but if you just want to know about how communication in politics works, read something else.