The dark arts of good people: How popular culture negotiates ‘spin’in NBC's The West Wing1

This paper argues that the popular American TV series The West Wing provides, within popular culture, a sympathetic and realistic view of the work of the political ‘spin doctor’. This enterprise is sociolinguistically interesting because of the extensive range of metalinguistic and metacommunicative reflection which it involves. The West Wing centres its storytelling within the world of the spin doctor, thus making such characters central to the narrative: further, it constructs them as likeable, virtuous characters who are also clever. Their cleverness is a matter of sociolinguistic performance expressed in dialogue which displays their professional writing craft skills and their spontaneous witty badinage.