ABSTRACT
The trouble with the metaphorical imperative that has increasingly taken over US political reporting is that one can hardly tell when figures of speech end and hard electoral figures begin. If the prose-style leader in American journalism, the most serious Times of New York, feels the need for snap-shot prose, for short sentences with a few words of one syllable, little wonder that the tabloids, in turn, strip communication even further and have to make do with elongated over-exposed photographs to seduce a mass circulation. In rare moments of self-conscious introspection, there is a flash of concern whether this kind of mumbo-jumbo is actually grasped in some meaningful or reflective way by the great American public and especially by listeners and readers abroad. A suspiciously similar phenomenon can be detected in Britain where the so-called political culture has fed itself for centuries on diverging Anglo-American linguistic traditions.
