MODERN POLITICAL LANGUAGE AND ITS HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT

Modern political language has a colorful historical record of development. For example, prominent American lexico­grapher S. B. Flexner reports in his book "I Hear America Talking" that the term the New Deal is a phrase actually taken from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 2, 1932: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people."

With these words Roosevelt had not only a campaign slogan but named the first five years of his presidency and an era of American life. Roosevelt won the 1933 presidential election promising "a new deal" for "the forgotten man"'¹:

Roosevelt and his New Deal were to have Americans talk­ing about it for years and introduced many new ideas and phrases. Brain trust² was the first new term used. It was coined to describe the group of professors who advised Roosevelt during that 1932 election campaign. It was soon applied to all the new president's close intellectual advisers (who in­cluded social-welfare organizer Harry Hopkins) whose pro­grams introduced the terms underprivileged ³, social worker, welfare, welfare worker, and welfare recipient to millions of Americans.

On March 6th, two days after his inauguration, Roosevelt declared the famous four-day bank holiday. Bank "runs" and failures had abounded early in the Depression and most banks had already been closed by state action. Now the new president suspended all banking and gold transactions while Congress rushed through the Emergency Banking Act on March 9th, ratifying Roosevelt's bank holiday and providing for the reopening of sound banks.

After the four-day bank holiday and a two-day weekend, on March 12, 1933, the new president gave his first evening radio talk. It was to announce that the banks would be reopen­ing the next day and was entitled "An Intimate Talk with the People of the United States on Banking". It was the first of the famous fireside chats ⁴.

If the New Deal didn't cure all the problems of the De­pression, at least it took America's mind off it and had Ame­ricans talking about present plans and future hopes. During the early* days of the New Deal people began to talk about the succession of new alphabet agencies (government agencies, administrations, authorities, offices, and corporations created for relief and recovery), their coordinators and the directives they issued, and the paperwork and other work they expedited, implemented, and processed.

An interesting history of origin is associated with the word to stump ⁵. Usually when an Indian chief had impor­tant news to relate, he stood on a tree stump in the village square. Contemporary politicians rarely depend upon tree stumps, but stumping and, by extension, grass-roots ⁶ cam­paigns are integral to American politics.

Politicians tap many sources for votes and for words. When Governor Elbridge Gerry unfairly redistributed voting districts in Massachusetts to assure his party an overwhelming victory, he reshaped the county map. Since that election in 1812, such illegal manipulation has been known as gerry­mandering.

"It's the bunk," candidates frequently reply to charges or claims made by their opponents. Bunk is a slang derivative of the colloquial buncombe, meaning "nonsense or claptrap".

The term filibustering (probably from Dutch freebooter) is a dilatory strategy often used by a minority party to ob­struct legislative action.

During the administrations of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, many political Americanisms, as we see, have entered the language and have since remained: big stick, a policy based upon threats of force, muckraker (in reference to those who relentlessly expose political and social corrup­tion); trust buster (those who seek to dissolve illegal business combinations); and open door policy (an econo­mic principle that opens the door to equal trading for all nations).

The Works Progress Administration that was once set up to combat unemployment, led also to the revival of the term boondoggling. During the Civil War, Northerners who favored slavery were copperheads; desperate political leaders often sponsor a dark horse, assuring voters that he really knows his oats; disreputable officeholders keep a well-larded pork barrel. And, of course, the elephant and the donkey have continued to trumpet and bray daily.