Wednesday Wildcard: How to identify manipulative language

There is an English language skill that you can develop that will really help you understand the meaning behind the words people use. Everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, and everything you read will try to influence how you feel in some way. Sometimes that wish to influence is for ‘good’ for example to encourage you not to drink too much alcohol. Sometimes this wish to influence is more worrying. This exercise will help you begin to develop an internal (inside your body) feeling for when someone is trying in manipulate you (influence your feelings), and how you feel about a subject.

1.       Get 2 or more articles from different news sources about the same event. Make sure these are from a range of different types of new source (liberal, moderate, religious, right-wing etc.)

2.       Read through each article and highlight the adjectives and verbs with a brightly coloured pen.

3.       Compare how the articles describe:

a.       The people and organisations involved.

b.       The places involved.

c.       The decisions made.

d.       How things were before this incident vs how they now are afterward.

e.       The future.

Comparing the adjectives, adverbs, and verbs shows you the different ways in which description can be used to try and influence your feelings. Let’s take a crime as an example and compare the following:

a)       “Ex-con Jason Johnson brutally slashed Christine Sims, scarring her beautiful face forever”

b)      “Jason Johnson is accused of using a knife to assault Christine Sims, leaving facial injuries”

In (a) Jason is described as a criminal, as brutal, and as slashing and scarring a victim forever. In (b) Jason is described as an accused individual, who may have assaulted Christine using a knife. In (a) Christine is described as beautiful, and now scarred “forever”. In (b) Christine is described as having facial injuries. There is a large difference in tone here describing the same situation. You can clearly identify the intentions of each article. Article (a) is manipulating the reader to see Jason as a violent person causing permanent and horrific harm to an innocent beautiful woman. Article (b) is reporting the facts of an incident with no particular attempt to manipulate using influential descriptions.

These skills will help you out hugely in English-speaking situations in life. You can identify how the news companies, your colleagues, friends, adverts, and the guidelines you come across in life try to manipulate your feelings. This gives you the freedom to collect all the information, and decide for yourself how you should feel. It’s not easy to do, but it will help you identify manipulation before it has too large an effect on your life.