Use short words, one or two syllables whenever you can. This is what you normally do, in everyday conversation; but sometimes, when writing or talking to someone, we drift into using longer words. The reason we do that is that these long words often are a kind of shorthand—but our audience probably won't understand the shorthand.
For example, the word "environment" has four syllables.
In general, it means everything around us. In politics, it usually means the air, water, wildlife, forests — things we want to protect — so it’s shorthand for all of those things. Using the long word may save us a little time or save us having to use a few extra words, but it sacrifices any emotional connection. As our brains develop, we form associations in our heads about air, especially clean air, about water, about all the things that become familiar to us.
When we use the shorthand term, it may fly right over people’s heads, making no connection in their brains. When you consider using a long word, think about whether anything concrete, any picture, pops into your head immediately when you hear the word. Too often, there’s nothing, until your brain goes to the extra time and trouble of translating it. And the people we want to reach may not go to that trouble.
For another example, the word "regulations" (four syllables) should be replaced with the word "rules."
Everyone understands "rules," because every game has them; and there were usually "rules" for behavior at home and at school. "Regulations," on the other hand, are something alien and complicated; which is why anti-government conservatives love to almost spit the word out, as something imposed on us by a tyrannical government.
"Inequality" is a very important concept that covers disturbing trends in our economic life, but the five-syllable word has NO emotional content, because it is not an every-day word. A person hearing it has to stop and think what it might contain. We must use more short words rather than this shorthand.
And here’s a big one: "government" (three syllables). Each of the many specific ways in which government provides opportunity and security for us evokes positive associations in our heads — safe drugs, pure food and water, and so on. But the word "government" itself has no emotional content, except as Republicans take advantage of that lack of emotional content and try to make it, in the public’s minds, a code word for everything bad. They attach every bad adjective to it with constant attacks — out-of-control government, bloated government, tyrannical government, and so on. They avoid saying what’s actually wrong with government by constantly associating those bad words with the word "government" in people’s minds.
Use short words. Be specific in what you’re talking about. [Back to top]
Use repetition. That is, when speaking or writing, repeat your key words, phrases, and ideas.
There’s a rule-of-thumb in political campaigns that a message must be repeated at least five (5) times before the target of our message hears it for the first time.
And cognitive science tells us that the neural pathways in the brain are physically reinforced by hearing the subject of that pathway repeated multiple times. When something is reinforced in the brain, that means that it will have more influence on the person’s behavior.
Cognitive science also tells us that when people hear something repeatedly, they may forget the source of the message (who said it), but they’re more likely to remember what they’ve heard as being TRUE — even if, factually, it is NOT TRUE. That’s the power of repetition.
Use repetition not only over time, in a series of messages, but also within the same message.
There are many kinds of repetition. For example,
"The Republicans drove the car into the ditch. Now, after the Democrats pushed it out of the ditch, the Republicans want the keys back."
This is a metaphor, and President Obama used this metaphor to describe what happened, following the Great Recession, with the politics of the economy. A car in the ditch is a physical object and a familiar one, so it evokes a picture in our heads. The "economy in recession" is just an abstract idea — nothing that we can picture.
Cognitive science tells us that our brains are structured to understand metaphors — that is, when new information comes in to our brains, our brains try to connect it to what’s already stored there — the physical world that we experienced as we grew up. Because of the extra memory hook of pictures, metaphors are easier to remember than literal statements that mean the same thing. Churchill coined the metaphor "an iron curtain" to describe the Soviet Union taking over the governments of Eastern Europe after World War II.
If your words evoke a picture and the words are not to be understood literally, you’re probably using a metaphor. [Back to top]
For example, if Republicans call us "tax & spend Democrats," we must avoid responding, "We do not tax & spend."
What happens in people’s minds is that the negation, the "NOT," fades in memory; and what’s remembered are the key words — the Republican framing. By repeating "tax-and-spend," even by negating it, we’ve reinforced the Republican frame, that Democrats just "tax-and-spend."
Instead of being defensive, trying to negate an attack, respond with something positive, such as "Democrats are building for this generation and the next!" Use our framing instead of the Republicans’ framing. [Back to top]
"As a theatrical device, the essence of foreshadowing can be found in Anton Chekhov’s advice to a novice playwright: 'If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.' Create anticipation and then fulfill the listener’s desire.
"Foreshadowing is the flip side or, more accurately, the prequel of repetition — and of irony, as well, for if a person’s words or deeds are to become ironic, they must be foreshadowed, they must be hinted at early on. When a scheme is hatched in the first act of a Shakespeare play or the opening minutes of a sitcom, it must—must—backfire in the end." [Back to top]