Discourse Power Address

The Politics of Public Communication

Stuart Price

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351943789
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Studi sulla comunicazione

'Discourse Power Address' identifies the existence of 'directive' address, a form of strategic communication which is employed in a number of dominant practices, including Advertising, Politics, Public Relations and Corporate representation. Stuart Price argues that the simulation of intimacy in authoritarian address masks a drive to power, in which the creation of propositions by powerful social actors is based on the 'timeliness' of utterance rather than any real adherence to truth or genuine explanation. Election broadcasts, political speeches, TV commercials and corporate advertisements are all scrutinised in order to evaluate competing perspectives on the creation and circulation of meaning; particular reference is made to theories of discourse, ideology and address. In the course of his argument, the author proposes an original method for determining how authoritarian address attempts to make an impact on audiences. Providing a cross-disciplinary contribution to the fields of Communication, Language, Media and Political Studies, this book provides an original, clear-sighted contribution to the debate on language and power, and will provide an essential resource for lecturers, researchers, students, activists and policy-makers.

Chapter 1
Theoretical Background: Critical Theory and Commercial Culture

According to critical perspectives on commercial culture all discourses, especially those which are promotional in character, share essential qualities, based upon their clear intent to achieve ‘self-advantaging’ ends (Wernick, 1991, 181). Such a proposition runs parallel to descriptions of political propaganda as a mode of communication which serves the interest of the propagandist (Jowett and O’Donnell, 1986, 13). such views may suggest linear models of uninterrupted process,¹ in which a passive observer is placed as the recipient of a cohesive, ‘mass produced’ message (schiller, 1986, 186). Yet these positions may also be located within a larger critical tradition, often associated with the Frankfurt School, which argued that twentieth-century media strengthened ‘habits and attitudes’ which made individuals and groups more susceptible to the blandishments of right-wing ideology (curran and Seaton, 1997). The critical tradition is, according to Hearfield, characterised by ‘an emancipatory interest’, while traditional theory is more interested in ‘the efficient control or manipulation’ of existing social structures (Hearfield, 2004, 2).

The 'culture industry', a term which describes the entire organisation of culture under capitalism from Adorno's perspective, 'intentionally integrates its consumers from above' (Adorno. 1991, 55). A central function of this industry was to ensure conformity to social norms; as Adorno and Horkheimer argued, 'something is provided for all so that none may escape' (in Muller-Doohm, 2005, 285). The Frankfurt School thus seemed to regard the social meaning of all cultural products as 'entirely determined by [their] commodity status' (Buxton, 1990, 2). It is therefore possible to discern some continuity of thought between a conception of strategic communication, whether commercial or political, which is founded upon an industrial system embodying unequal power relations, and another view which characterises all conceptual or symbolic products as necessarily expressive of ruling ideas.

Forexample, Mills' radical critique of American society describedthe vulnerability of ordinary individuals as they encountered a cultural landscape dominated by media and strident forms of publicity like advertising (Mills, 1956). Later examples of critical theory seemed to concur with this view. Marcuse. for instance, believed that audiences are incorporated into mass society through a process of homogenisation, noting that intellectual freedom would mean the ‘restoration of individual thought’ which had been ‘absorbed by mass communication and indoctrination’ (Marcuse, 1964, 4). Using a theme which becomes more fully developed in the work of Habermas,² Marcuse called for the ‘abolition of “public opinion”’ (ibid.) as a means of returning to independent modes of understanding. According to this theory, consumer demands are conceived as ‘false needs’, the function of which is to create dependence on mediated culture, while capitalism itself is based on the reconfiguration of human desire. Agger, for example, describes the ‘libidinal depths to which capitalist alienation has penetrated’ (Agger, 1992, 96).

A broad characterisation of the ‘culture industry’³ as the instrument of ruling elites,⁴ re-emerges in more contemporary studies as a critique of cultural imperialism. Fairclough’s description of ‘the power of the media to shape governments and parties’ and ‘to beam the popular culture of North America and Western Europe into Indian agricultural communities which still depend upon bullock-power’ (Fairclough, 1995b, 2), produces a very general and rather indiscriminate conception, which implicitly compares notions of imperial and cultural force.⁵

This book, however, works to establish a more detailed conception of power, based on an understanding of social relations as these are embodied in texts and expressed through a particular form of address. Such a project requires a close explanation of the typical mechanics of interpellation,⁶ but also reference to established conceptions of dominance and typifications of effect.⁷ Exactly because such theories are often highly abstract in the way they model relationships of power, part of this investigation must also entail a study of the contextual circumstances in which texts appear.

‘Saturation’, dominance and agenda-setting

The position adopted here is that certain long-established conceptions of social control, particularly those which posit an all-pervasive media presence, obscure the true character of public address. A simple transition, from media ‘saturation’ to notions of dominance, is often proposed. The following, taken from an introductory text on media power, is an example of this tendency; ‘we are saturated by media of different forms, shapes, and sizes ... the dominance of the mass media in our lives has led people to blame the media for a range of social ills’ (Eldridge et al., 1997). This unconvincing movement from presence to effect is repeated in other sources, compounded by theories of cultural dependence (O’Sullivan et al., 1998, 19).

Another commonly cited reason for forms of dominance is at least a little more concrete; this is the process of ‘agenda-setting’, the notion that the media, as an instrumental force, decide which issues are worthy of public attention, or which should achieve special prominence. This issue is considered later in more detail; in the meantime, a brief overview of literature in this field finds a general adherence to a particular view of the phenomenon. The correlation of public agendas and media content was asserted by McCombs and shaw in 1972 (in Lenart, 1994; in Manning, 2001, 213) based upon initial observations made in Los Angeles in 1967 (in McCombs, 2004, xi).

Agenda-setting developed into an essential feature of media studies, described by a number of popular authors such as Watson and Hill, who argued that the media 'set the order of importance of current issues' (Watson and Hill, 1989.3), followed by Gill and Adams who mentioned 'the ways in which the media decide which information and which issues are most important for the public' (Gill and Adams, 1992. 6). O'Sullivan and his co-authors described agenda-setting as the process through which the media 'wittingly or unwittingly structure public debate and awareness' (1994. 8).⁸ The present work finds such general descriptions unsatisfactory, also treating with caution the apparently more complex view of authors like Cohen, who famously expressed the belief that the press 'may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think' but that it was 'stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about' (Cohen, 1963, in Lenart, 1994, 15; in Manning, 2001, 212). As I indicate in a later chapter, the work of Dealing and Rogers (1996) and Tedesco (2005) may provide a more secure description of the mechanics of power and agenda-setting. These authors draw attention to the competition between distinct social forces and in Tedesco's case, following Gans, whether it is the source which actually leads the process (Tedesco, 2005, 198).

In the meantime, it is important to distinguish between the character of directive address as a technique, and the general degree of influence exerted by the media as an instiution. The growth of an industrialised social order in which new ‘mechanisms of social cohesion’ must be sought, for better or worse, in mass media forms (Robins and W ebster, 1999, 131), has led to the assumption that mediated communication has come to dominate cultural expression, providing in turn a locus for theories of both domination and resistance (Hall, 1980). This perspective, which divides forms of power between competing classes or cultures, is perhaps a little crude in its representation of the mechanics of contestation (Price, 1998), but is at least more productive than the notion that a commodified consciousness completely negates the possible generation of progressive meaning.

Belief in the dominant power of commodification may be traced back to the conviction that the commodity is, in Mosco's words 'the most explicit representation' of capitalist production (Mosco, 1996, 141) and thus also an embodiment of its attendant values. In line with this conception. Catephores argues that what in fact dominates producers in a market economy is 'not commodities as material objects but unacknowledged social relationships set up and resolved through commodity exchange' (Catephores, 1989, 134). Goldman makes a similar point, noting that awareness of the meanings attached to goods produces commodity-signs which 'have become every bit as socially real as the products they ride upon (Goldman, 1992, 6). Thus, in rather dramatic terms, a parallel to 'natural reality' is created, which Catephores calls a 'second material reality' (Catephores, op cit). This is the 'world of commodities' which, escaping the control of individuals, manifests itself through the 'invisible hand of the market' to 'strike down' and dominate human subjects (ibid.). The origins of such a commentary lie in observations made by Marx, who used religious analogies (taken from Feuerbach) to describe the fetishistic character of 'the world of commodities' (Marx, in Hawkes, 2001, 52).

It is possible to discern in Catephores' remarks an ideological framework, in which the real conditions of existence are disguised and thus able to exert a malign and unexpected influence on subordinate classes. There are, however, other useful lessons to be learned from the notion of the commodity form. In discussing, for instance, early examples of eighteenth-century goods and symbolic power, Wernick makes a remark which provides an insight into the economic and social features of the process, noting that the sign-value of Wedgwood products became 'indistinguishable from what these products materially were' (Wernick, 1991, 15).

That the commodity is conceived as a material symbol of a social and economic system is a useful concept,⁹ demonstrating the way in which objects and entities, as items of exchange, re-enter the signifying system of lived cultures as bearers of meaning (Miller, 1987, 59; Morley, 1992, 214; Dant, 1999, 36). However, the idea that such a process is merely fetishistic, making human relationships appear simply as connections between things (Barrett, 1991, 15), does not help in evaluating the cultural significance of objects or of assessing the possibility of the circulation of 'progressive' meanings.¹⁰ When Baudrillard characterises consumption as 'the stage where the commodity is produced as a sign and signs (culture) are produced as commodities' (in Horrocks and Jevtic, 1996. 35), the structural power of representation in capitalist society is usefully acknowledged. The danger, however, is that the study of content is neglected, and the significance of particular signs is subsumed within a general law of oppressive consumption.

Symbolic intervention and referential power

An urgent question however, concerns the status and use of 'propagandistic' address within contemporary cultural formations, and the possible fusion of politics and commercial promotion. Democracy, according to this view, no longer expresses the will of the people but offers instead 'consumer choice in the rotation of elites' (Dahlgren, 1995, 3), while the media are thought to assume considerable responsibility for shaping forms of public consciousness, or of legitimising certain values. The problem which emerges here is one of representation, both in its political character and its symbolic sense; discussion of the two is, indeed, difficult to conduct separately, as electoral representation depends upon the mobilisation of symbolic references and propositions¹¹ (Mazzoleni and Roper, in Kaid and Holtz-Bacha, 1995, 89).

The tensions which exist between, on the one hand, notions of powerful symbolic intervention, and on the other audience indifference to the more grandiose political claims, highlights the difficulty of attributing straightforward effects to public messages. Political advertising, for example, appears to be ineffective in securing popular approval, and seemingly powerless to reverse a current of disillusion and disengagement¹² (described by Dahlgren as ‘declining levels of citizen participation’, op cit.). Texts alone do not, therefore, offer reliable evidence for the unequivocally successful exercise of unitary address.

The present study, while acknowledging this development, does not depend for its argument upon the demonstrable achievement of textual ‘objectives’ (even where they can be identified), as it does not seek to prove the operation of foolproof rhetorical techniques.¹³ It proposes instead the existence of a multi-discursive referential and propositional power within all forms of public communication, based upon the use by issue proponents of discourse as a resource. It adheres, in addition, to the argument that ‘uni-directional’ interventions, whatever their frame of reference, continue to be made within the context of public interaction. This recognises the persistence of hierarchical modes of social organisation and inequalities of power,¹⁴ while drawing attention to the wide range of ‘available discourses’ from which coherent messages are composed.

The production of coherence must be understood in the context of a decline in the ability of authors (as originators of ideas or events) to control wider social and discursive circumstances (to realise or properly effect relations of authority through persuasion as such¹⁵). Idealised depictions of allocution¹⁶ have given way to ideas about the spread of conversationalisation (Fairclough, 1995a) and the production of more dialogic constructions of meaning.¹⁷ The existence of such a complex discursive environment militates against the success of the unitary or interpellative voice, as described by Althusser (1971/1984). One consequence of this development has been a marked reluctance on the part of advertisers and politicians to maintain a paradigm of dominant address, and the production inst...