Is This Us? The Cultural Conceptualization of Individualization in American Political Speeches

It is a commonly held view of political communication studies that politics has become personalized. The personalization of political communication means that it is the political actor who takes the center stage rather than political collectives, including parties. Personalization in politics is a process which was brought about by the mediatization of politics, changes in the functioning of parties, and the individualization of society. Individualization means that people started to view themselves as individuals rather than members of groups such as social classes. Thus, society’s cultural cognition of how group membership can be conceptualized has changed. This study discusses whether this pattern of cultural change can also be detected in political communication via language use in American presidential nomination acceptance speeches between 1952 and 2020. First-person singular and first-person plural pronouns are analyzed to determine whether presidential nominees conceptualized themselves as individuals or group members. The chapter also explores how third-person plural pronouns are exploited in the speeches to construe the ‘out-group.’ The results show that politics was increasingly personalized in the observed period; however, candidates focused on emphasizing a national ‘in-group’ identity rather than pointing to the ‘out-group.’