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Corpora and Rhetorically Informed Text Analysis: The diverse applications of DocuScope
Edited by David West Brown and Danielle Zawodny Wetzel
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 109] 2023
► pp. 240–263

Strategic language as a family
of identity-based discourse registers

Hillary Clinton and the president’s task force
on national health reform, 1993–1994

 | University of Maryland
 | Carnegie Mellon University
Since antiquity, the study of strategy has aspired to a military science predicting outcomes. An alternative, rooted in classical rhetoric, focused on language strategically deployed to increase targeted outcomes. That said, the intersection of strategy and language remains understudied. We establish that strategic language in campaigns represents a multiplicity of discourse registers reflecting distinctive strategic role identifies and outcomes. We apply this framework to the Clinton administration’s health care campaign from 1993–1994. Using methods from the digital humanities and close reading of private memos, we extract four registers (architect, tactician, advisor, coach) that capture the Clinton strategy across the campaign. We argue that the failure of the campaign is partly explained by registers used too frequently and others used not enough.
Keywords: Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton, strategy, health care, discourse register, role identity, interest groups, automatic text analysis, digital humanities
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.“Text as data” movement as guide for close reading
    • 2.1The data
  • 3.Clinton memos controlled by four strategic registers
    • 3.1Architects: Formulating and protecting foundational principles
    • 3.2Tacticians: Scanning the ever-changing partisan battlefield
    • 3.3Advisors: Compromising on details to convince stakeholders
    • 3.4Coaches: Teaching campaign leaders to personify strategy on stage
  • 4.Audience and register competition
    • 4.1Competition among registers and audience attention
    • 4.2Interest group politics in the health care debate: Going tactical on opponents
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 29 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.109.11par
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