“To this day” As you watch this video, your task is to jot down any words you feel are powerful throughout. You get to define what powerful means for you. And then we will discuss as a class why these words seem influential. 1

Words Matter (Pre-Assessment 1) For this task, I’d like you to examine the “World Splash” on the following slide. You must then create a book jacket narrative, meaning you must imagine and summarize the story of what this book might be about. You will have 7-10 minutes to consider plot or any characters or themes in this imagined book, and you must use every word on the slide at least once. Remember, words matter, and authors pay close attention to how they can get words to work for them and what tone and mood they can create. So be intentional with your own word choice.

echoing rampant decay anti-flag spectacularly traitors rotten tactic corrupt betray lie cheat sick anti-family radical pathetic bizarre Word Splash

echoing rampant decay anti-flag spectacularly traitors rotten tactic corrupt betray lie cheat sick anti-family radical pathetic bizarre Now let’s hear from the class, paying close attention to the choices they’ve made. AND let’s listen for those other words they’ve chosen to see how language functions.

Where did the diction come from? Excerpt from It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism by Thomas E Mann and Norman J Ornstein As the 1994 midterm elections approached, Gingrich toured the country recruiting congressional candidates to run against incumbent Democrats and to pursue relentlessly the charge that Congress was corrupt and needed to be blown up to change things. He provided candidates with speeches and language echoing his own themes of rampant corruption in Washington and a House rotten to the core. This tactic included a memo that instructed them to use certain words when talking about the Democratic enemy: betray, bizarre, decay, anti-flag, anti-family, pathetic, lie, cheat, radical, sick, traitors, and more. It worked more spectacularly than he could have imagined. 5

Words and Women (Pre-Assessment 3) Let’s make a class list of the words we associate with women. Then I’m going to show some pictures and we’ll see just how our words compare to the images… 6

What do we see? What words work here? What would we need to change or add? 7

Now, what do we see? 8