Political Style

This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.

Stylistics has become the most common name for a discipline which at various times has been termed 'literary linguistics', 'rhetoric', 'poetics', 'literary philology' and 'close textual reading'. This Handbook is the definitive account of the field, drawing on linguistics and related subject areas such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, educational pedagogy, computational methods, literary criticism and critical theory. Placing stylistics in its intellectual and international context, each chapter includes a detailed illustrative example and case study of stylistic practice, with arguments and methods open to examination, replication and constructive critical discussion. As an accessible guide to the theory and practice of stylistics, it will equip the reader with a clear understanding of the ethos and principles of the discipline, as well as with the capacity and confidence to engage in stylistic analysis.

Understanding style as the intersection of communication, culture, commodification, and aesthetics, The Politics of Style and the Style of Politics focuses on the numerous connections between style and politics. In the first section of the book, the contributors reflect on style in the rhetoric of politics. In today's political arena, commentaries on the styles of political candidates seem to outpace serious discussions of policy and credentials: For example, politicians and commentators alike parse Barack Obama's ability to manipulate stylistic dimensions of race, class, and national origin. Elsewhere, many critics debate about whether a ôfeminine styleö can ever carry a national election. The book's second section focuses on style in the politics of culture. These chapters consider politics in the sense of everyday struggles over power, as exemplified in situations such as France's political battles regarding whether Islamic women may wear head coverings. Overall, The Politics of Style and the Style of Politics makes a powerful argument for the strong connection between style and politics in all of its forms. Book jacket.

In this book, Robert Hariman demonstrates how matters of style—of diction, manners, sensibility, decor, and charisma—influence politics. In critical studies of classic texts, Hariman identifies four dominant political styles. The realist style, as found in Machiavelli's The Prince, creates a world of sheer power, constant calculation, and emotional control; this style is the common sense of modern political science. The courtly style, depicted in Kapuscinski's The Emperor, is characterized by high decorousness, hierarchies, and fixation on the body of the sovereign; this style infuses mass media coverage of the American presidency. The republican style, reflected in Cicero's letters to Atticus, promotes the art of oratory, consensus, and civility; it informs our ideal of democratic conversation. The bureaucratic style, as captured in Kafka's The Castle, emphasizes institutional procedures, official character, and the priority of writing; this style structures everday life. Hariman looks at effective political artistry in figures from antiquity to modern politicians such as Vaclav Havel, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He discusses the crises to which each style is susceptible, as well as the social and moral consequences of each style's success.

Populism is the key political phenomenon of the 21st century. From Trump to Brexit, from Chávez to Podemos, the term has been used to describe leaders, parties and movements across the globe who disrupt the status quo and speak in the name of ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’. Yet the term remains something of a puzzle: poorly understood, vaguely defined and, more often than not, used as a term of abuse. In this concise and engaging book, leading expert Benjamin Moffitt cuts through this confusion. Offering the first accessible introduction to populism as a core concept in political theory, he maps the different schools of thought on how to understand populism and explores how populism relates to some of the most important concepts at the heart of political debate today. He asks: what has populism got to do with nationalism and nativism? How does it intersect with socialism? Is it compatible with liberalism? And in the end, is populism a good or bad thing for democracy? This book is essential reading for anyone – from students and scholars to general readers alike – seeking to make sense of one the most important and controversial issues in the contemporary political landscape.

"I suggest that although at any given place and moment the aesthetic expressions of a political system just are that political system, the concepts are separable. Typically, aesthetic aspects of political systems shift in their meaning over time, or even are inverted or redeployed with an entirely transformed effect. You cannot understand politics without understanding the aesthetics of politics, but you cannot understand aesthetics as politics. The point is precisely to show the concrete nodes at which two distinct discourses coincide or connive, come apart or coalesce."—from Political Aesthetics Juxtaposing and connecting the art of states and the art of art historians with vernacular or popular arts such as reggae and hip-hop, Crispin Sartwell examines the reach and claims of political aesthetics. Most analysts focus on politics as discursive systems, privileging text and reducing other forms of expression to the merely illustrative. He suggests that we need to take much more seriously the aesthetic environment of political thought and action.Sartwell argues that graphic style, music, and architecture are more than the propaganda arm of political systems; they are its constituents. A noted cultural critic, Sartwell brings together the disciplines of political science and political philosophy, philosophy of art and art history, in a new way, clarifying basic notions of aesthetics—beauty, sublimity, and representation—and applying them in a political context. A general argument about the fundamental importance of political aesthetics is interspersed with a group of stimulating case studies as disparate as Leni Riefenstahl's films and Black Nationalist aesthetics, the Dead Kennedys and Jeffersonian architecture.

Gale Researcher Guide for: A New Political Style is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times