Linguistic Techniques of Propaganda

• Activist

• Building

• Candid(ly)

• Care(ing)

• Challenge

• Change

• Children

• Choice/choose

• Citizen

• Commitment

• Common sense

• Compete

• Confident

• Conflict

• Control

• Courage

• Crusade

• Debate

• Dream

• Duty

• Empower(ment)

• Fair

• Family

• Freedom

• Hard work

• Help

• Humane

• Incentive

• Initiative

• Lead

• Learn

• Legacy

• Liberty

• Light

• Listen

• Mobilise

• Moral

• Movement

• Opportunity

• Passionate

• Peace

• Pioneer

• Precious

• Premise

• Preserve

• Principle(d)

• Pristine

• Pro-(issue) flag, children, environment

• Prosperity

• Protect

• Proud/pride

• Provide

• Reform

• Rights

• Share

• Strength

• Success

• Tough

• Truth

• Unique

• Vision

• We/us/our

• Anti-(issue) flag, family, child, jobs

• Betray

• Coercion

• Collapse

• Consequences

• Corruption

• Crisis

• Decay

• Deeper

• Destroy

• Destructive

• Devour

• Endanger

• Failure

• Greed

• Hypocrisy

• Ideological

• Impose

• Incompetent

• Insecure

• Liberal

• Lie

• Limit(s)

• Pathetic

• Permissive attitude

• Radical

• Self-serving

• Sensationalists

• Shallow

• Sick

• They/them

• Threaten

• Traitors

• Bureaucracy

• Urgent

• Waste

• What is the issue?
• Where do we become aware of the speaker’s attitude to the issue?
• Does the speaker capture our attention at the beginning? How?
• How many points/arguments does the speaker make in support of his/her opinion?
• Does the speaker back-up each argument with evidence? Does the evidence comprise of facts, statistics, personal opinion, anecdote, use of other authority or other means?
• How does the speaker separate one point from the next?
• How does the speaker conclude? (A call for action? A question to leave the audience thinking? An emotive statement, ironically?)

• Personal pronouns: I, you, us, we, ours
• Logical Fallacies
• Rhetorical questions: what do you think?
• Emotional words and ideas that appeal to the feelings of the audience: we all have a right to freedom. These can have positive or negative connotations.
• Statistics and factual data
• Personal anecdotes to emphasise ideas and points
• Repetition of words
• Repetition of sentence patterns (parallel structure) eg. better health, better homes, better opportunities
• Short simple sentences
• Imperative sentences – sentences that start with a verb
• Figures of speech eg. metaphor, simile, personification
• Alliteration – repeated initial consonants eg big, bad, and bold
• Hyperbole – exaggerated statements eg a thousand time worse
• Allusions – references to well know events, films, TV programmes that the audience can relate to