phosphorusPoliticians on all sides like to complain about the lack of content in the campaign.In the current campaign, the green prime minister candidate’s resume appears sloppy. Annalena Balbok Or a few years ago, the “examination event” of Federal Chancellor Armin Laschet (Armin Laschet) played a greater role than climate protection or digital issues. Social media, which is often excited, is often criticized for this.
But obviously the political party itself should be blamed, especially the editorial collective that drafted the election plan. According to a study by Frank Brettschneider, a communication scientist at the University of Stuttgart Hohenheim, all elective courses lack intelligibility and clear German. The scientist and his team evaluated 83 election options for 20 federal elections since 1949 (including the election in September next year).Only the plans of the participating parties Bundestag Was or was represented. In addition, during this period, only parties that entered the three state assemblies were considered.
According to this research, it was only in 1994 that the election plan was more difficult to understand than it is today. Linguistically, these texts are characterized by “compromise phrases”, nested sentences, and technical terms that are completely incomprehensible to ordinary citizens.The researchers cited some examples for this: this is Social Democratic Party “Life Chain”, the alliance is the “Agricultural Food Technology Venture Capital Fund”, FDP is “Carbon Leak Protection”, and AfD is the “Supranational Immigration Agenda”. These plans have never been more extensive than they are today.
The most difficult green party
Brettschneider and his team use the “Hohenheim Comprehensibility Index” (HIX) for text analysis. It ranges from 0 for difficult to understand to 20 for easy to understand. The most difficult, complex, and longest program was written by the Green Party (HIX: 5.6 points), and the easiest to understand is the Left Party (HIX: 8.4 points). Brettschneider said that there has never been a green environment Election plan It is as difficult to understand as it is now. In the early years, the Green Party even tended to use populist language because they defined themselves as an “anti-party party.” You can’t find any of these in today’s Green Bundestag plan, on the contrary, it is strongly influenced by the language of professional politicians.
Used today AfD Clearly populist language. Words such as elite, establishment, betrayal or scandal often appear in their programs. For all other parties, the proportion of expressions of anti-elitism or populism has fallen. The Green Party uses terms such as “climate protection”, “climate crisis” or “junk” more frequently than other political parties; the FDP plan is characterized by an astonishing number of clauses in economic policies; in the Social Democratic Party, terms in social and employment policies , Such as “part-time bridge” or “work”, as expected, played a greater role. Brettschneider believes that the parties’ failure to improve the intelligibility, short sentences, and language clarity is wrong: “These are wasted opportunities for communication. Citizens who do not pay attention to politics often have little incentive to deal with the political statements of parties before the federal election. judge.”
Every Tuesday
Political scientists often deal with the importance of election planning. Basically, they only attribute the indirect effects of voting decisions to the program. What is more important today is the evaluation of top candidates, personal issues, and basic identification with political parties. A survey conducted in Baden-Württemberg many years ago showed that even party members rarely read the long version of their party programs—if they do, they also know the short version.
Prose by the Expert Working Group
But even if only a few voters make a decision after hours of time-consuming reading the program, their language is not meaningless: the program serves the integration of the party, can restrain ordinary voters, provide goals for political opponents, and is negotiated by the alliance. After the basic elections. In addition, the importance of the plans of the supporters of different political parties may also be different: Green vegetables In the EU election declaration, a comprehensive statement on climate and environmental protection is definitely more important than a basic statement on education policy.
“A clear statement is always more helpful than a compromise phrase,” Brett Schneider said, “because part of the long version of the show is distributed by the politicians themselves through social media and websites.” Ma Teng, party show Is the foundation. Since all programs are now available on the Internet, and every citizen can enter search terms and find more information about sub-fields, the importance of programs and their languages should not be underestimated.
“Parties often leave the planning work to the expert working group, not for the sake of clarity. And they are often difficult to understand tactically, that is, popular measures are written in short sentences with a clear subject-verb-object structure and then And unwelcome things are found in sentences that are difficult to understand,” Brett Schneider said. A politician who has perfectly mastered the principle of tactical incomprehensibility is the former prime minister Gerhard Schroeder.
