Reducing Polarization Through Language
A guide for translating between political groups and finding common ground.
Competing Realities & Political Polarization in the United States
In the midst of another election cycle in the United States, the American public is inundated with the narrative that Republicans and Democrats are fundamentally different kinds of people. Political parties seemingly represent lifestyle brands that are chosen by groups with different kinds of beliefs. This perception of difference is both the reason for and the result of increasing political polarization—and political polarization’s radiating impacts in our homes, workplaces, and communities.
Longstanding social science research shows that our perceptions of the world are socialized. Our socialization shapes big things, like how we experience time or imagine the cosmos, as well as smaller more mundane things, like what we label as appropriate clothing for a particular event or how we show someone care and respect. Socialization research shows that we can be socialized to perceive and experience the world similarly, or very differently. The socialization of difference can keep us from understanding one another and achieving common ground and, over time, we may even develop the perception of specific kinds or groups of humans as fundamentally and irrevocably different from ourselves.
This socialization process that we know and understand well is at the heart of political polarization. Based on our political leanings, we may encounter divergent media and social environments, which shape and reinforce party-based beliefs and divisions. We may be provided with different kinds of information and misinformation about the world around us, generally, and about politics, specifically. Political campaigns can and do exacerbate this polarization through their messaging and voter outreach tactics. Given these differences, everyday political interactions, especially with those who do not share your political worldview, might feel daunting or be characterized as problematic. You may even avoid them.
However, regardless of our differences, longstanding research also shows that all humans have the capacity to understand one another and to translate between realities if and when we are willing to do so. Together, we can also shift problematic conventions, including those that perpetuate polarization.
Finding Common Ground
This document provides tools and guidelines to encourage us all to create meaningful change. We know from the literature that to foster change we need to create structures, provide direction, and motivate individuals to engage in new practices. This guide starts by asking us to rethink our political interactions to actively create new ways to communicate in order to build common ground across party-identities—and for some of us—to re-establish or strengthen connection with our co-workers and/or loved ones. As individuals we can make tangible positive impacts in society. We can take one step by practicing and normalizing these ways of interacting, to conventionalize more inclusive and less polarizing forms of political engagement.
Political interactions, overall, are often characterized as individualized expressions of political opinion. They are framed as almost sacrosanct, embedded in a right to free speech that sits at the heart of American democracy. Political interactions are also frequently regarded as argument and conceptualized as war, a discursive and/or logic-based fight that has a clear winner and loser.
Individual statements of opinion and an impetus for persuasion will always key to dialectic political discourse. However, it is possible to engage in these interactions without thinking about winning or war. Instead, everyday political interactions can also be conceptualized as collective endeavors through which we co-participate to solve problems, build collectivity, foreground compromise, and create consensus, and in which we embrace differences of perspective.
Admittedly, there are many difficulties inherent in navigating potentially problematic worldviews that dehumanize or discriminate against others. This does not mean that we should avoid rethinking how we conceptualize everyday political interactions, as well as our goals when in engaging in them, especially when interacting with those who hold political worldviews that differ greatly from our own. As such, reducing existing political and social polarization requires us to find common ground via a combination of self-reflection and interactional work.
1. Consider Your Goals, Consider Your Audience
Notice how you conceptualize political talk and rethink your goals and expectations. Our goals often determine the form that our interactions will take. If your goal is to authoritatively express your opinion or win an argument, the way you make statements or choose to interact with others may look different than an interaction in which your goal is to collectively solve problems, build community, establish consensus, and find common ground to reduce polarization. A shift toward community and consensus may require changes in the form of your communication, for instance, by using fewer authoritative statements and by foregrounding questions that invite others to share their opinions, even if you can anticipate that they will be potentially conflicting to your own. Consider the audience when determining the form that your statements and interactions will take, as you want to choose an interaction style that makes it more likely that you will be persuasive and that your opinion will be heard and understood by others. As indicated by the foregrounding of asking questions in the example above, one important tool in attempting to establish common ground is to engage in more active listening, to identify others’ opinions, what is important to them, and how they frame issues.
2. Identify Difference in Assumptions
The Monster Under My Bed Has Fangs.
In simplest terms, presuppositions are underlying assumptions that you believe and that you assume the person who you are talking to believes as well. Existing linguistics and socio-pragmatics research tells us that we cannot talk about anything substantial if these underlying assumptions are not aligned or addressed because what we are saying will not make sense to our listeners.
Consider the example statement the monster under my bed has fangs. With this statement, I intend to talk to you about my surprise about seeing fangs on the monster under my bed. However, if we do not share a belief in monsters, we will get hung up on an argument about the existence of monsters (and my claim to have seen one under my bed). We will never have a substantive discussion about my intended topic: my surprise in seeing the fangs.
As mentioned, current research indicates that a belief in divergent social facts and realities have become emblematic of party-based group membership; however, building common ground requires first recognizing when you do and do not share a set of underlying beliefs and assumptions with someone with whom you want to engage before attempting to find ways to (re)structure your interactions (in terms of form and content) so you can try to speak from a place of common belief and reality. Here again, active listening and asking questions can be a useful tool.
3. Foreground Shared Identities & Issues
As a Parent, I See Franks as a Sandwich Resource Distribution Issue.
Existing research tells us that how listeners perceive others in terms of their identity may lead them to shut down and not hear or process what someone else has to say. Foregrounding shared identity markers in a politically polarized environment can, therefore, create opportunities to have more substantive and persuasive conversations about political issues.
To reduce polarization, present yourself based on an aspect of identity that may align or connect with the person to whom you are speaking. Here, you might focus on kinship terms, locally salient identity categories, or job roles (e.g. parent; Steelers fan; teacher). Avoid labels and word choices that foreground your identity in terms of your political affiliation, which may include considering the way you talk about or raise issues, as certain word choices, problem-areas, or ways of talking about issues may be seen as emblematic of party-based membership. Avoid scripted talk, as scripted talk is often read as inauthentic, where you may be assumed to be the animator for the words and voices of others.
Active listening can be used to determine what problems or issues are most salient to others, as well as how they talk about issues. For instance, imagine that, through listening, you discover that monsters with fangs are less important to your audience, but that they are particularly interested in hot dogs as sandwiches. Through listening you also discover that when they talk about hot dogs, they refer to them as “franks” and that almost everyone you talk to is certain that hot dogs are, indeed, sandwiches. Instead, they frame the issue around hot dogs and sandwiches not as you do, as one of semantics—whether or not hot dogs are a sandwich—but as a problem of limited resources: their local deli sells sandwiches, but they do not have hot dogs, which is problematic, because they are sandwiches.
By first noticing and then using the same words and by framing issues in a similar way, you may be able to engage in longer and more substantial conversations.
4. Tell Stories & Encourage Storytelling
I Once Met a Monster That Had Fangs.
Stories can be useful in many ways as part of political interactions. As a great deal of research indicates that storytelling often increases participant engagement by appealing to more experiential knowledge bases and by inviting second stories, which can be used strategically. Because political interactions often focus on competing opinions about existing social problems or issues, they are frequently aimed at problem-solving. Collective storytelling not only invites participation, but also leads to feelings of co-ownership over problems solved, knowledge created, and/or consensus-based outcomes reached in interaction.
Furthermore, research indicates that as part of our polarized political environment, media consumption patterns, and landscape of alternative facts and deep fakes, an over-reliance on the use of “facts” to persuade can be counterproductive. Presenting a series of facts as evidence can also be read as authoritative lecturing. While this does not mean that you should avoid all facts, this does mean that you should consider centering storytelling when possible, to support research-driven evidence and facts with experiential knowledge.
Finally, sharing personal narratives also present opportunities for more authentic and unscripted presentations of self that can help to build rapport between participants.
5. Have Multiple Conversations
Let’s Revisit That Conversation About Hotdogs and Monsters.
One moment of contact and one conversation will likely not be enough to build the trust and rapport necessary to reach common ground to reduce polarization and/or to persuade. And, as we know from common learning models, it often takes several contacts for a concept to be learned and understood. You will also encounter those who seek only to troll because they are not ready or willing to engage. One conversation, even with a troll, is not necessarily in vain, as it may plant a seed or shift a perspective. However, also consider investing your efforts, when possible, in situations where you can have multiple conversations or contacts with the same persons or groups over time.
Feeling Empowered
By pausing to deconstruct our own assumptions and expectations and carefully considering how we engage with one another–about politics explicitly, but also about broader conceptualizations of the world around us–we can work to disrupt and shift communication norms. This is one way to make a collective impact to reduce polarization. While talking about politics in ways that disrupt harmful norms to reduce polarization, and in ways that may actually be substantive, can be empowering, it can also be draining, so consider your capacity. Take care of yourself. Decide where and when to strategically engage others, if at all, so that you do not get burnt out in such a politically fraught environment. And acknowledge the moments in which it may be more empowering, and indeed necessary, to state your opinion, loudly and forcefully, in your own style and in your own voice.
We offer this guide with a caveat: there is not one method for engaging in less polarizing political interactions with all individuals in all communities and contexts. However, the tools and focus-areas provided present potential points of consideration for finding common ground among a wide range of conversational partners when engaging in political interactions in a polarized United States.
