Political rhetoric can manufacture group associations purely through sufficiency of similarity

Evidence

In his critical discourse analysis of a speech given by President George W. Bush in Cincinnati in October 2002, Hodges finds that Bush used the relation of adequation to effectively create an association in listeners’ minds between President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the terrorist network Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 76

Categorization

• XREF: Further evidence that adequation need not rest on real similarity — chimes with the Sulekha/Jin examples above and with the general point that false equivalence is ethically dangerous precisely because it works. — connects to: Ideological unity forms through connotative condensation and an axial interpellation; Flimsy group affiliation conjures presumptive filiation and presumed familiarity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 70; Polarized social contexts may require focusing on similarity rather than overlap complexity — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 541

Broader Connections

• Flimsy group affiliation conjures presumptive filiation and presumed familiarity #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 70
• Ideological unity forms through connotative condensation and an axial interpellation #expands (0.78)
• Polarized social contexts may require focusing on similarity rather than overlap complexity #qualifies (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 541