ABSTRACT
This book discusses the uses and abuses of political communication in contemporary society. It discusses the ways that governments, politicians, corporations, terrorists, special interests, highly paid lobbyists, and others manipulate words, pictures, events, and one another to get what they want; about how and why that manipulation works; and about what it means for the people who live in an ostensibly free and open democratic society. The key to understanding how and why strategic political communication works so effectively is to realize that words and pictures generate images that do shape popular perceptions of political reality. That is why politicians and others are able to use them to create and exercise political power. Hortatory language is a language of exhortation, one that appeals to the emotions and that may be deliberately vague. It is a language used by individual politicians to establish a claim to leadership of some segment of the public by forging very personalized bonds of support.
