The Language Of The Candidates

My friend Linda teaches writing at the University of Chicago. One of the folks she works with is Larry MacEnerney, the Director of the University Writing Programs. The other day the two of them got into talking about Obama and McCain. Here is what they discussed:

Larry MacEnerney came into the office because he was going to do a lecture on the speeches of Obama and McCain and he was having a lot of trouble figuring out the level of specificity of McCain's warrant in his claim "I will fight for you" being in support of the argument that people should vote for him. We spent some time thinking through the ways in which McCain interchanges "you" with "country" as well as how he puts emphasis on "fight" and "you" at different times. We finally concluded that McCain was using "fight" to draw a contrast to Obama, who has no literal fighting experience.

Obama's warrant was much more apparent: "If you vote for me, things will change," with his intended audience being the American people who are clearly unhappy with how things are currently going. But McCain's warrant was way less transparent, at least to us.

This meshes well with Rene's post about McCain's difficulties during the debates connecting to his audience. Obama is doing a superior job articulating a precise idea and delivering it to a targeted audience. McCain is much more muddled.

Monday, October 13, 2008