Page 24 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

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POLITICS IN THE AGE

OF MEDIATION

This chapter:

• Introduces the concept of political communication
• Identifies the range of political actors involved in
communication.

Any book about political communication should begin by acknowl-
edging 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

pure 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).

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