arleeshar's picture
Mon, 22/10/2007 - 1:05pm — arleeshar

One of the least commented upon rhetorical devices currently in vogue within the Rudd PR corps is the use of the phrase “the little one/s”, to refer to a child or children. It pops up everywhere, in every imaginable media or policy circumstance where children are even remotely involved, and is designed to make an emotional appeal in a way that talking about “family welfare”, “kids” and even “children” does not.

I first remarked on this phrase in Rudd’s speech to National Conference this year, but I took it to be merely an idiosyncracy of speech. My mistake. It’s since been seen floating around the kevin07 site, mostly in the get shirty section where True Believers can send in pictures of their “little ones” wearing the dedicated Kevin07 gear, which will then be posted on the site via the australianlabor flickr feed with sinister captions like “A shy smile from this little one in her KEVIN07 gear”.*

It popped up again today, predictably, in the childcare policy announcement, and got mega media hits:

Sending a little one to child care is one of the toughest decisions that parents have to make. When they do, they want to make sure child care is high quality and affordable.

I am suspicious of this kind of emotional use of language, as it’s often used to justify and persuade punters to jump on board bandwagons that have been less than savoury. Witness the “Children Overboard” affair. So I’m quite wary of the commodification of the little ones, which I actually thought was pretty sweet in my initial encounter with it. This phrase, along with the omnipresent “working families” that seem to have taken over the election process, are currently First on arleeshar’s List Of Annoying.

* disclaimer: I own a Kevin07 tshirt. Also, my parents took various pictures of myself wearing different contemporary unionist propaganda as a small child. I used to hand out how-to-votes, letterbox, and ride pillion in the Election Loudspeaker Car for various members of my family who were running for office, from the young age of two. When they won, I was encouraged to make precocious speeches from their shoulders at the victory party. This experience somewhat uniquely qualifies me to comment on the emotive exploitation of the concept of childhood in the political arena. I might write some more about it sometime.