ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

An extract from a very interesting article (with the same title) by Janadas Devan in The Sunday Times today:

The hottest concepts in American politics are not liberalism or conservatism, preventive war or globalisation. Rather, the concept which exercises professional politicians and their handlers most is framing.

According to Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, framing is “the attempt to define the debate so everyone knows what everyone else is going on about…” Known as framing, as in ‘framing the debate’, this sometimes occurs as a storm of criticism intended to kneecap adversaries rhetorically, to force them into inflexible political stances, or to goad them into reputation-damaging statements”.

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