"His opponent" and "my opponent" and "the opponent"

[Vickers]

After somebody pointed this out in a Bush rally speech the other day, I have noticed this a lot more. I was just watching Fox News (yeah, yeah) and TWICE folks have done this. They will refer to Bush as "the President" or "Mr. Bush" and then say "opponent" for Kerry.

Fair and balanced. Heh.

It must be some kind of coordinated effort. To dehumanize Kerry? To not boost his name-recognition?

:shrug:

Anyway, I propose that Kerry and Edwards do the same thing.

[Kierkegaard]

1. I would personally like to see the Kerry campign begin referring to *

as 'that asshole.' Works OK for me...

[LizW]

2. A psychological technique

It's used to de-personalize an adversary. For instance, prosecutors are taught to refer to a defendant always as "the accused" or "the defendant" and never by name when they're talking to a jury. Conversely, hostage negotiators are advised to refer to the hostages by name over and over to try and personalize them to the hostage-taker.

The idea is that personalization by name (or lack thereof) has a subtle psychological effect on decision-makers.

This is most definitely intentional on the part of Fox News (sic).

[H2O Man]

3. That's right!

It gives you a pretty good idea what type of people the republicans are.