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The Power of Articulation: Language, Identity & Political Strategy

Progressives in the U.S. political arena have no shortage of good intentions. But these are not enough. Turning these good intentions into concrete political realities requires articulation - the use of language in strategic ways to create clear links between core values and social priorities. This workshop will teach participants about how to engage in successful articulation by extending and applying some of the principles discussed by Professor George Lakoff, in the following ways:

- show participants how to identify their crucial points of commonality - what might be called the "golden thread" of progressive values ;
- explain how participants can effectively link these core values with powerful, engaging language;
- illustrate how contemporary mass media function as an "echo chamber" for political messages;
- demonstrate how to connect values, language, and political messages in strategic action plans.

Workshop facilitators
David Domke and Crispin Thurlow research and teach in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. A former journalist, Professor Domke's work focuses on the ways political leaders strategically craft their public communications and how news media cover these messages; he is author of God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (2004). Professor Thurlow has an academic background in psychology and critical linguistics, and his work examines the ways people use language and other communication modes to negotiate various boundaries of difference. Specifically, he is committed to understanding how relations of power and ideologies of privilege/ inequality are sustained in everyday human interaction.