Page 20 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

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POLITICS IN THE AGE OF
MEDIATION

Any book about political communication should begin by
acknowledging that the term has proved to be notoriously difficult
to define with any precision, simply because both components of the
phrase are themselves open to a variety of definitions, more or less
broad. Denton and Woodward, for example, provide one definition
of political communication as

public discussion about the allocation of public resources
(revenues), official authority (who is given the power to
make legal, legislative and executive decision), and official
sanctions (what the state rewards or punishes).
(1990, p.14)

This definition includes verbal and written political rhetoric, but not
symbolic communication acts which, as we shall see in this book,
are of growing significance for an understanding of the political
process as a whole.
The American writer Doris Graber advances a more all-
encompassing definition of what she terms ‘political language’,
suggesting that it comprises not only rhetoric but paralinguistic signs
such as body language, and political acts such as boycotts and protests
(1981).
Elsewhere in the work cited above, Denton and Woodward
characterise political communication in terms of the intentions of
its senders to influence the political environment. As they put it

the crucial factor that makes communication ‘political’
is not the source of a message [or, we might add, referring

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