Postgraduates work in progress

Speaker: Nicholas Carroll (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Language and politics: A theory of political doublespeak

Abstract: Politicians do not always tell the truth. In fact, we oftentimes see politicians go to great lengths to hide or obfuscate the truth from their audience. This is hardly a contentious claim outside of politics itself, and I daresay that if you were to reflect on your past experiences you would be able to find at least one occasion on which a politician was less than honest with you. According to George Orwell, politicians intentionally hide or obfuscate certain facts from their audience because it allows them to perpetuate power relations and enact certain policies. And, in order to capture the way that this is achieved Orwell introduced the concept of ‘doublespeak.’ Although the concept of doublespeak has become a part of the common parlance with which we discuss political language, it has not aroused any attention in analytic philosophy. Because of this, we lack and understanding of what doublespeak is and what function it serves. This is a problem since any plausible theory of political language would, at least prima facie, need to account for doublespeak. In this talk, I will flesh out the concept of doublespeak by drawing on some of the conceptual tools found in analytic philosophy of language—in particular, speech act theory (cf. Austin, Searle, Langton, McGowan, Stanley) and Grice’s early work on speaker meaning and implicature. In doing so, I will sketch an outline of a theory of political language that I have developed in my research.

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