HISTORY

Passage 1 is an excerpt from a speech by Senator Everett Dirksen. Passage 2 is an excerpt from
a speech by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Both speeches were delivered on the floor
of the United States Senate in 1964. In 1964, the United States Senate debated the Civil Rights
Act, a bill outlawing discrimination based upon race, color, religion, sex, or nationality. Several
senators opposed to the bill attempted to block its passage, prompting a response from the
bill’s supporters.

Passage 1

Today the Senate is stalemated in its efforts to enact a civil rights bill, one version of which
has already been approved by the House by a vote of more than 2 to 1. That the Senate wishes
to act on a civil rights bill can be divined from the fact that the motion to take up was adopted
by a vote of 67 to 17.
There are many reasons why cloture* should be invoked and a good civil rights measure
enacted.
First. It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, substantially this
sentiment:
“Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.”
The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and
in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.
Second. Years ago, a professor who thought he had developed an incontrovertible scientific
premise submitted it to his faculty associates. Quickly they picked it apart. In agony he cried
out, “Is nothing eternal?” To this one of his associates replied, “Nothing is eternal except
change.”
Since the act of 1875 on public accommodations and the Supreme Court decision of 1883
which struck it down, America has changed. The population then was 45 million. Today it is
190 million. In the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag we intone, “One nation, under God.” And
so it is. It is an integrated nation. Air, rail, and highway transportation make it so. A common
language makes it so. A tax pattern which applies equally to white and nonwhite makes it so.
Literacy makes it so. The mobility provided by eighty million autos makes it so. The
accommodations laws in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia makes it so. The fair
employment practice laws in thirty states make it so. Yes, our land has changed since the
Supreme Court decision of 1883.
As Lincoln once observed:
“The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case
is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must first disenthrall ourselves and then we
shall save the Union.”
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* cloture: a legislative procedure for ending a debate and taking a vote

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Passage 2

Mr. President:*
 Speaking for myself, may I say at the outset that I should have preferred it had the issue
been resolved before my time as a Senator, or had it not come to the fore until after. The Senator
from Montana has no lust for conflict on this matter. Yet this question is one which invites
conflict, for it divides deeply.
But, Mr. President, great public issues are not subject to our personal timetables. They do
not accommodate themselves to our individual preference or convenience. They emerge in
their own way and in their own time. We do not compel them. They compel us.
We look in vain if we look backward to past achievements which might spare this Senate
the necessity of a difficult decision on the civil rights question. We hope in vain if we hope that
this issue can be put over safely to another tomorrow, to be dealt with by another generation of
Senators.
The time is now. The crossroads is here in the Senate.
To be sure, the issue will not be fully resolved by what we do today. Its resolution depends
also on what is done tomorrow and on many tomorrows. Nor will the issue be fully resolved
by the Senate or the Congress. Indeed, it will involve all Americans and all the institutions,
public and private, which hold us as a society of diversity in one nation, and it will involve all
for a long time to come. In truth, it is a universal issue which, for this nation, having begun
with the Declaration of Independence and persisted through the decades, will hardly dissolve
in the Senate of the 88th Congress.
Nevertheless, at this moment in the nation's history, it is the Senate's time and turn.
But, insofar as the majority leader is concerned, he must state to the Senate that it would be
a tragic error if this body, as a whole, were to elect the closed-eyes course of inaction. That
course, Mr. President, would disclose a cavalier disinterest or a legislative impotence on this
issue, and either would be completely inconsonant with the serious domestic situation which
now confronts us.
It is bad enough to evade decision on any major proposal of any President. It is inexcusable
in this issue, which has drawn a curtain of uncertainty and insecurity over the entire nation, and
over which blood has already run in the streets.
In these circumstances, I cannot believe that this Senate will abdicate its constitutional
responsibilities.
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* The presiding officer of the United States Senate is addressed as “Mr. President” or “Madame President.”
 LITERATURE
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a
young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was
sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his
art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he
suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he
sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might
awake.
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry
languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large
and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I
have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not
been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
“I don't think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd
way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I won't send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue
wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted
cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd
chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you
have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in
the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like
this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite
jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too
much of myself into it.”
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I
really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-
black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-
leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an
intellectual expression and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual
expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of
any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or
something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How
perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they
don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he
was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely
delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose
picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless
beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at,
and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter
yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”
 “You don't understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I
know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your
shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual
distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It
is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in
this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory,
they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—
undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever
receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my
art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the
gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

Social Science
This passage is adapted from Niklas K Steffens and S. Alexander Haslam, “Power Through ‘Us.’” ©
2013 Public Library of Science.

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The oratory of great political leaders has been subjected to meticulous analysis by psychologists,
linguists, political scientists, and historians. This research observes that these leaders tend to use
distinct rhetorical strategies. For example, research suggests that successful leaders act as
entrepreneurs of identity such that their speeches serve to cultivate a sense of ‘us’ that is shared with
potential followers. However, prior research has not established whether political leaders' use of such
strategies is actually related to their ability to secure follower endorsement. Here we examine whether
successful candidates in national general elections make greater use of we-referencing language than
their losing counterparts.

In line with common media portrayals, classical leadership research generally focuses on
the (extraordinary) traits and capabilities of individual leaders as “great men.” In these terms, leaders
are understood to be superior beings who succeed because they are different to, and better than, other
more ordinary mortals. However, more recent research has shifted focus away from the leader as a
great ‘I’ by stressing the importance of followers and the group as a whole to the leadership
process. This places greater emphasis on the ‘we’ of leadership, and is exemplified by work
examining the role that a sense of shared group membership plays in allowing leaders and followers
to influence each other.

In this regard, social identity theory asserts that individuals are able to think and act not just as ‘I’
and ‘me’ (in terms of personal identity) but also as ‘we’ and ‘us’ (in terms of social
identity). Moreover, it asserts that when people perceive themselves and others in terms of shared
social identity, this provides the basis for a range of important group and organizational behaviors.
One of these is leadership. In line with this claim, a large body of research has shown that it is leaders'
capacity to be perceived to advance the interests of a social identity that is shared with followers that
enables them to secure support for their vision and motivate others to help turn it into reality. Such
analysis suggests that leaders are successful not because they demonstrate their individual superiority
 or because they think and act in terms of ‘I’, but rather because, and to the extent that, they are
perceived to think and be acting in terms of the collective ‘we’.

Speaking to these claims, empirical evidence indicates that leaders’ increased social identification
with a collective (i.e., the degree to which they have internalized the collective as part of their sense of
self) is positively related to followers' favorable reactions to them. Along similar lines, experimental
studies have shown that when leaders use more we-referencing language followers are more likely to
see them as charismatic. Consistent with the idea that we-referencing language proves helpful to
leaders outside the laboratory, there is also evidence that in the United States over the last two
centuries references to the collective entities ‘we’, ‘people’ and ‘America’ have increased
substantially in both State of the Union and Presidential inaugural addresses.

However, prior research that has explored these ideas has tended to hone in selectively on
exceptional addresses or on the oratory of particularly successful leaders (e.g., those in high political
office). As a result, it is unclear whether we-referencing language is something that is broadly
associated with, and predictive of, leaders' future success. More generally, it is unclear exactly how
widespread such strategies are and there are questions about whether effects produced in laboratory
studies of undergraduate students are applicable to the cut-and-thrust of leadership in the world at
large.

In order to address these lacunae*, we sought to discover whether there is any more compelling
evidence that political leaders' use of collective pronouns has a concrete bearing on their success. One
resource that we identified as having the potential to prove useful for this purpose is recently released
digitized transcripts of all the official campaign speeches made by leaders of the two major political
parties for all general elections held in Australia since the creation of the Federal Parliament in
1901. This provided us with an opportunity to examine whether leaders' use of we-referencing (vs. I-
referencing) language was a predictor of subsequent election victory. Whereas classical leadership
models might lead one to expect that leaders who communicate a strong sense of their personal
identity (through references to ‘I’ and ‘me’) would be more successful, the social identity approach
leads us to predict that success would be more likely to follow from leaders' invocation of shared
group identity in their speeches (through their use of ‘we’ and ‘us’).

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*lacunae: unfilled spaces or gaps

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