Fallacies, conceptual indebtedness to visual metaphors, Literalization of metaphors, One-Fold knowledge, Points to ponder, Quotable Quotes, POLITICAL ADVERTISING, DEBATES, NEWS

Fallacies, conceptual indebtedness to visual metaphors,

Literalization of metaphors, One-Fold knowledge, Points to ponder, Quotable Quotes, POLITICAL ADVERTISING, DEBATES, NEWS By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

·        Jealously is because of the lack of capacity not in others, but in ourselves or because of the capability in others that as well we have in ourselves.

Comical fallacies

·       I often hear my teachers complaining to my parents that I am a student of grade 10, and can not read the books of grade 6, I wonder why I should? Student of grade 10 is supposed to read the books of grade 10 not of grade 6.

·       I often hear my teachers complaining to my parents that I am a student of grade 10, and can not read the books of grade 6; I wonder why similar demand is not made to a student of grade 6?: he must as well be asked to read a book of grade 10.

Logical fallacies

·       If no religion is absolutely wrong, then every religion is absolutely right.

·        If no religion except the one’s own is absolutely right; then every religion except the one’s own is absolutely wrong.  

Political marketing through exploiting the conceptual indebtedness to visual metaphors

·       Every nation has its own values and concepts. Characteristics those underlie these values and concepts are the endearing bed-rock. Political marketing consultant can unleash a backlash if he makes the head-on assault on the values nation has weaned on and is carefully nursing them; he, therefore, situates concepts and values in the drab context for dumbing down; and this is the very dumbness of visual metaphors that conceptual beauty of endearing bed rock appears dulled, enfeebled and atrophied. Enervating visual metaphors worm their way insidiously so that values nation cherishes can cease to assert themselves because of the impact of visual trope on mass discourse and the consequent lukewarmness is tapped to wean nation off the values fashioned so far its psychological make-up.

Political marketing through Literalization of  metaphors

·       Metaphoricity of concepts gives meaning to them and makes them a force to be reckoned with: a rallying cry; galvanic and electrifying to create the urge in people to rush lemming- like into dangers. Nation sees itself correlate with its fundamental values and is inextricably intertwined and interwoven with those norms and concepts it believes give meaning to its existence; and, therefore, justifiably see iconoclasm a thinly disguised ignoble attempt to tear down the very fabric of society.

 Political marketing consultant, therefore, goes for bleaching of values from the public tapestry; he literalizes the concepts to tame them and literalized descriptions those make their way into articles, books and talk shows through planted articles and hosts are too drained of potency. People learn their values but they do not learn the meaning of them, as concepts are too impotent to create the lemming- like rush. Political marketing consultant can not change people but the trickle down of water-down version at grass- roots level and its filtering into people can enable him to channel them in his way.

Political marketing through One-Fold knowledge

·       No religion except the one’s own is absolutely right; we can say in other words that one own religion is though absolutely right, the rest are not absolutely wrong. Political marketing consultant guides politician to have the one-fold knowledge: consist only an affirmation of what is true; but not the negation of that which is false to co-opt peoples__ with the attracting the risk of alienating anyone__ of conflicting beliefs and values.

Points to ponder

·       I have devised a very simple test to judge sanity and mettle of modern man. If one sees life seems worth living despite knowing that this attitude of mind can make him definitely unfit to function in a society that tends to break its weeks by fits of poignancy, rage, despair and anxiety, so he has gallantry preserved all sense of perspective.

Quotable Quotes

·       God has afforded you a chance for sprucing up conduct if all of sudden the vices of yours appear to you surprisingly unpleasant.

·       Teaching is rewarding anyway; if it has no effect on the recipient; it definitely benefits the bestower.

·       ‘It is the good reader that makes the good books’ is the right thing to say in case book has intrinsic artistic merit; otherwise bad book turns good reader into a bad reader.

 POLITICAL ADVERTISING

 The ads of Political advertising contain issue as well as image information. Media strategists apply different appeals in ads to highlight issue and develop the image of candidates in relation to them. Devlin; Diamond and Bates have sorted out categories of ads according to various appeals employed in ads and marked out the ads that gained popularity in different campaigns.

The ads of Political advertising are crafted to spark interest in election process and then influence voter’s perception of candidates. Study by Nowlan and Moutray examined the success of political advertising in this regard by looking at the connection between ads of political advertising and vote won.

Political advertising’s function as a tool of candidates overshadows its importance for electorate who rely on it for enlightening themselves regarding candidate and his perception. Joslyn,  analysis the functions and purposes ads serve for the voters and find that in consumer society ads are more than often the only source voters can have to learn about parties and candidates.

Political advertising provides the forum of issues that have already become important and then candidates through political advertising selectively focus on certain issues, thus Political advertising plays a decisive role in deciding the issues of a campaign. Shyles studied this issue-setting function of political advertising and concluded that “political advertising does indeed express the issue concerns of the candidates and of the country”.   

DEBATES

There have been many studies like those conducted by Tiemens, Hellweg, Kipper and Phillips which analyzed the both components of debate: visual and verbal. These studies are important as analysis of visual components gives information about the ways candidates conduct themselves; dress themselves and convey messages through body language and analysis of verbal part explores the significance of  lexical resources and repertoire of words, repartee and performance in give and take of conversation.

 Shields and MacDowell and Sigelaman find in their studies that good performance do not always brings about change in perception of voters. There are numerous factors like preexisting candidate preferences, perception of issues stands of candidates that shape viewers’ judgment of debates.

Benjamin and Meadow in their research attempted to understand the impact of advances in telecommunication on form and substance of debate and found that sensitivity on part of candidates regarding being photogenic and dexterity regarding uttering sentences good for sound bites had sharpened.  

NEWS

News coverage of election campaign has generated many studies not because news simply covers candidates or events or crisis during campaigns; but because news does not simply cover the activities of candidates and events. Readers have selective exposure to selected (by journalists) candidates. Covering candidates selectively means that non-selected are non-existent for audience and focus on particular aspect of personality does not bring out the whole but the part of a candidate, but readers take this part as a whole.

News depictions of political events or crisis as dramas mediates or constructs politics as particular slant__ which is due to particular fantasy of an event or person shared by each network’s news executives, reporters, and editors or due to (if we reverse the direction of causality) the fact that press try to reflect expectations of the community about what is or who is important and what is or who is not __ paints certain players in rosy corners and reflect badly on some.

Black, Jamieson & Campbell; Nimmo & Combs  have research on the interaction between news and politics with conceptual focus how “reality is constructed” through various features of news content and presentation and discover that development of shared meaning and concepts among electorates regarding the part played by different players involved in campaign drama or campaign crisis bears direct relation to news depiction.      

Original argument by McCombs and Shaw that power of media maybe in telling the public not what to think but what to think about, have been taken by researchers  to investigate the dimensions of agenda-setting with respect to news only. The research of Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder is an important extension of agenda-setting beyond the original formulation that dealt with public perceptions of the relative importance of topics covered in the news as it claim that news stories provide not only indications of the importance of their subject matter by concentrating on a particular issue but also contextual cues or frames in which to evaluate those subjects by priming audiences to evaluate particular leader by his particular success or failure.