Examining Emotion as Discourse: Emotion Codes and Presidential Speeches Justifying War

Observers commonly argue that emotional appeal is critical for persuasive communication in mass media, science and social policy hearings, social problem advocacy, and politics. This raises a practical question: How can appeals to emotion be accomplished in mass audiences characterized by heterogeneity? I explore this question by theorizing emotional persuasion to be encouraged by the artful use of “emotion codes,” which are sets of socially circulating ideas about which emotions are appropriate to feel when, where, and toward whom or what, as well as how emotions should be outwardly expressed. As an illustration, I examine an instance of presidential communication surrounding war, the “Story of September 11” crafted by President George W. Bush in his first four nationally televised speeches after the events of that day. I explore how this melodramatic tale contains multiple and interlocking reflections of emotion codes which encourage audience members to feel in particular ways about the Good American victim and hero and the evil terrorist villain who are the primary story characters. In the conclusion I speculate about ways in which deploying elements of socially circulating ideas about emotion might encourage persuasion in large heterogeneous audiences as well as the necessities for examining emotion as discourse in other arenas of social life. My goal is to develop a model for empirically examining emotional meaning as social phenomena.