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COVER Front -- CIP Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1: American Youth: Who They Are and Why They Matter -- Notes to Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2: American High School: Teenagers and Scholastic Journalism -- Notes to Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3: Dislocated Cosmopolitans -- Notes to Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4: Removed Volunteers -- Notes to Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5: Protective Critics -- Notes to Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6: Independent Joiners -- Notes to Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7: American Evolution, Democratic Engagement, and Civic Education -- Notes to Chapter 7 -- Notes -- Index -- COVER Back.

This article examines the numerous conversational appeals made by candidates during the 2008 presidential elections. Specifically, this essay explores the way in which Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama talked about the importance of democratic discussion as a central theme in their bids for the White House. Ultimately, this study argues that the conversation being appealed to was one that emphasized a friendly dialogue that could help people overcome their differences and disagreements, and then it suggests several possible reasons why politicians might believe the American people find such conversational appeals appealing.

This article examines George W. Bush's campaign rhetoric in both 2000 and 2004 and compares his style to that of his predecessors. Using DICTION, a computerized language analysis program, the study finds that Bush was quite tentative during the 2000 campaign and eschewed use of a narrative style. By the time his reelection campaign began, however, Bush had dramatically increased his hortatory and narrative scores, meaning he had found both an important story to tell and a forceful way of telling it. Because these qualities increased steadily with time, and because they seem to have been initiated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, they signal important epistemological, sociological, psychological, and political aspects of the Bush presidency and perhaps, of the national electorate itself.

This article reexamines the first author's work over the last three decades in the area of presidential rhetoric, focusing particularly on verbal certainty—the extent to which a speaker depends on resolute and totalistic language. The study then explores the first three years of the George W. Bush presidency along this dimension. Although verbal certainty has declined across presidential administrations during the past 50 years, the Bush presidency has resurrected it, perhaps because of personal or philosophical reasons and perhaps because of the unique circumstances created by the war on terrorism.

"It's not what you say, but how you say it. Solving problems with words is the essence of politics, and finding the right words for the moment can make or break a politician's career. Yet very little has been said in political science about the elusive element of tone. In Political Tone, Roderick P. Hart, Jay P. Childers, and Colene J. Lind analyze a range of texts--from speeches and debates to advertising and print and broadcast campaign coverage-- using a sophisticated computer program, DICTION, that parses their content for semantic features like realism, commonality, and certainty, as well as references to religion, party, or patriotic terms. Beginning with a look at how societal forces like diversity and modernity manifest themselves as political tones in the contexts of particular leaders and events, the authors proceed to consider how individual leaders have used tone to convey their messages: How did Bill Clinton's clever dexterity help him recover from the Monica Lewinsky scandal? How did Barack Obama draw on his experience as a talented community activist to overcome his inexperience as a national leader? And how does Sarah Palin's wandering tone indicate that she trusts her listeners and is open to their ideas? By focusing not on the substance of political arguments but on how they were phrased, Political Tone provides powerful and unexpected insights into American politics."--Publisher's website

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1 activism and public campaigns -- 1 Facing Ghosts, God, and Nature: Affect, Naturalization, and the "No Más Cruces" Border Campaign -- 2 Faithful Sovereignty: Denationalizing Immigration Policy in the 2003 Pastoral Letter on Migration -- 3 Protecting LGBT Migrants: Th e Rhetoric of Identity and the Expansion of the Prison- Industrial Complex -- Part 2 identity struggles and DREAMers -- 4 Dropping the "I- Word": A Critical Examination of Contemporary Immigration Labels -- 5 "American" Children's Success and Global Competitiveness: Th e Racial Paradox of Bilingualism as Cultural Capital -- 6 Documenting Dreams: A Rhetorical Performance of Inclusive Citizenship and Collaborative Expertise -- Part 3 (hi)stories of exclusion -- 7 Constituting Enemies Through Fear: The Rhetoric of Exclusionary Nationalism in the Control of "Un- American" Immigrant Populations -- 8 Defining the Right Sort of Immigrant: Theodore Roosevelt and American Character -- 9 Immigration as Histories of Mob- ility: Personal Storytelling in the Where Are You From? Project -- Part 4 affect and media imagery -- 10 Battling Identity Warfare on the Imagined US/México Border: Performing Migrant Alien in Independence Day and Battle: Los Angeles -- 11 Affect, Emotion, and Immigration Rhetoric, or What Happens When a Minuteman Lives with Unauthorized Immigrants? -- Afterword: Tracking the "Shifting Borders" of Identity and Otherness; Productive Complications and Ethico- Political Commitments -- About the Contributors -- Index