Moral Politics in the 2008 Presidential Convention Acceptance Speeches

Abstract

This study examines the 2008 presidential party convention acceptance speeches from the perspective of George Lakoff's (1996, 2002) theory of moral politics, which argues that a metaphor of the nation as a family guides the adoption of a political ideology and facilitates persuasion. We coded speeches for instantiations of Strict Father and Nurturant Parent morality and for the social and political issues they contained. We found, as expected, that Democrats referenced more Nurturant Parent themes than Strict Father themes but that Republicans used instantiations from both moral worldviews at similar rates. Democrats, but not Republicans, framed party-owned issues in terms of their corresponding moral worldview. We discuss implications for Lakoff's theory and avenues for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Jenna Heath and Sandra Stenerson for coding the contents of the convention speeches, and Brad Lippmann and Jennifer Filson Moses for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Finally, we also appreciate the helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

¹Although Lakoff has served as a political advisor to Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama (Trish, 2008), we do not know whether they heeded his advice and do not address the reasons for or consequences of their explicit incorporation of his advice. That is, we were interested in the content of the speeches as the public saw them, regardless of the particular origin or intent of the moral metaphors they contain, which would be purely speculative.

²Lakoff's (2002) use of the gender-neutral “parent” to refer to the Liberal family and moral system is intended to convey the relatively greater credence given to “natural” hierarchies in the Strict Father family, in which women are subordinate to men, children are subordinate to women, and animals and nature are subordinate to humans. It is not intended to imply that men are more likely to subscribe to the Strict Father view of the family, or that Conservatives or Liberals follow divergent parenting practices in their own families.

³For example, Cienki (2005) directly examined the occurrence of metaphorical expressions in the 2000 presidential debates and found few overall. Consequently, he went on to examine nonmetaphorical expressions in the debates, concrete language that logically follows from abstract Strict Father and Nurturant Parent metaphorical themes. See Cienki (2005) for a complete discussion of the relation between metaphorical expressions and their nonmetaphorical entailments, along with examples of each from the 2000 presidential debates.

⁴Political science research has measured issue ownership using a variety of methods, including analysis of media coverage, surveys of voters’ perceptions of party issue-handling, and content analysis of issues that are actually raised in candidates’ speeches and advertisements. Parties’ issue-handling reputations are not invariant: A party can lose its advantage on an issue as a result of recent political events. Party ownership of the issue topics that are the focus of our analysis, however, is fairly stable due to long-term consistency in constituency pressures, party rhetoric, and policy platforms. As a result, over time, Republicans have consistently been viewed as competent to handle security issues, whereas Democrats are seen as protectors of social programs for vulnerable populations (Petrocik et al., 2003).

⁵Anecdotally, the Republican Party is also associated with taxes as an issue topic. Sulkin et al. (2007) found that although prior research on issue ownership identified taxes as a Republican-owned issue during the 1980 s (Petrocik, 1996), their own data from 2000 indicate only a slight Republican advantage on this issue—a finding that is consistent with research by Sides (2006).

⁶The formula for computing concordance estimates was as follows: C = 2(C_1,2)/(C₁ + C₂), where C = concordance between coders for each speech, C_1,2 = number of identical categories assigned by both coders, and C₁ and C₂ = total number of categories assigned by first and second coders, respectively (see Holsti, 1969). Concordance ranged from a low of 0.72 for John McCain's speech to a high of .80 for Joe Biden's speech, with a mean concordance rate of 0.76 across all four speeches. Discrepancies in coding were resolved by the first author prior to data entry. The total number of elements in Republican speeches was 466 and the total number of elements in Democratic speeches was 486.

⁷At first thought, it may seem that a chi-square of independence would be the most appropriate simultaneous test of between- and within-party differences in the use of Strict Father and Nurturant Parent language. However, this test requires that variables (i.e., speaker party, Strict Father and Nurturant Parent codes) be mutually exclusive. Speakers’ parties were certainly mutually exclusive, but because any given text element in candidates’ speeches could be assigned a Strict Father code, Nurturant Parent code, or both, these variables are not mutually exclusive. Because a chi-square test of independence is inappropriate in this case, we opted for a less efficient but more appropriate series of tests.

⁸Tests of the difference between two proportions were performed using the formula: z = (p ₁ − p ₂)/_√[p ₁(1 − p ₁)/n ₁ + p ₂(1 − p ₂)/n ₂], where (p ₁) is the proportion of coded elements for Group 1, (p ₂) is the proportion of coded elements for Group 2, n ₁ is the total number of coded elements in Group 1, and n ₂ is the total number of coded elements in Group 2 (see Daly & Bourke, 2000). Significance values for each calculated z value were derived from a table of the normal z-distribution (Fisher & van Belle, 1993).

Note. “Republican issues” are defense, foreign policy, terrorism, and war. “Democratic issues” are education, environment, health care, and social programs.

^†Democratic and Republican speakers differed significantly in the proportion of references contained in their speeches, p < .05.

Note. “Republican issues” are defense, foreign policy, terrorism, the war. “Democratic issues” are education, environment, health care, social programs.

Note. “Republican issues” are defense, foreign policy, terrorism, and war. “Democratic issues” are education, environment, health care, and social programs.

Note. “Republican issues” are defense, foreign policy, terrorism, and war. “Democratic issues” are education, environment, health care, and social programs.