Would like to get an anlaysis of opinions by the intellecutual elite
and the blue collar or lower economic classes on such subjects as:
their personal opinons of President George W. Bush: their opinions of
the present U.S. administration's foreign policy and their opinions
onf the question of the morality of abortion. The purpose of this
question is to test out the theory that such opinions from different
classes of people will,when stripped of their indiginous language be
the same. That is: the personal opinion of an academic
about George Bush and the personal opinion of the lower classes will
be basically and fundamentally the same except that the language of
the academic will be more refined and the language of the lower
classes will be more commonplace

---

Request for Question Clarification by politicalguru-ga on 16 Feb 2004 14:08 PST

Dear Didom, 

Your theory sounds very interesting, but I have a small problem with
my Research, and I'd be pleased if you could help me here:
- There are intellectuals who support Bush and ones that oppose him
(let's say "liberal" and "conservative" intellectuals).
- Similarly, and given other factors in identity and opinion shaping
in the USA (religion, ethnicity, level of urbanisation, etc.), you
have lower classed individuals who support Bush, and those who oppose
him.

Now, if I gave you, for example, opinions of liberal intellectuals and
of liberal working class individuals, their opinions would probably be
similar, but this is tautological, since from the beginning, we chose
people with similar opinions. If I compare conservative and liberals,
even in a four-tailed analysis (such as:

class:            working               intellectual
------------------------------------------------------
leaning 
=======================================================
"liberal"       |                |
-------------------------------------------------------
"conservative"  |                |
-------------------------------------------------------
(apologies if the "chart" did not go through)

We'll still have some tautological compliance between our initial
division and the results. We'll also have no way to know for sure, if
working class and intellectuals express similar arguments because
there is a mutual (or one way) influence between the groups (for
example, ideas expressed by intellectuals are "dripping" to the media,
and received by working-class, ratifying their already existing views,
but adding arguments), or that each of the groups (or individuals)
examined formed their opinion idependently.

I hope you understand the problems with finding supporting evidence to
support your theory. To sum up, they are:
(1) What to look for (opinions by whom?), in order not to turn it into
a tautological argument
(2) How to prove, if possible that the similar opinions were shaped
independently of each other.

If you would like me to, I could of course, seek liberal intellectuals
and working class individuals; and do the same with conservative ones
- given the limitation of the validity of such information.

Alternatively, ou could offer a solution to this methodological problem.

---

Clarification of Question by didom-ga on 17 Feb 2004 12:08 PST

I think I will be satisfied if you follow the suggestion you gave in
your last paragraph,as follows:"If you woud like me to,I could of
course,seek liberal intellectuals and working class
indidivudals--------" In fact I will be completely satisfied with this
answer.