6 - Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
With respect to social change language use is manifestly crucial. It helps determine beliefs about the past and present and what specific changes will mean for various groups in the future, and it shapes beliefs about which interest groups and public officials should be regarded as allies and which as threats or enemies. It bears on such phenomena as lying, the evocation of overt and covert prejudices to shape public opinion, the use of allegations about public opinion to influence actors, the role of predictable, ritualized language in politics, and the striking absence of rationality in most political language deployment.
DIVERSITY IN INTERPRETATIONS OF LANGUAGE
Although a written or spoken text is a stimulus to audiences to construct meanings, such texts inevitably evoke diverse interpretations. Meanings do not depend solely on the dictionary definitions of words or phrases but rather on the social situations, experiences, ideologies, and current psychological needs of those who process and those who originate language. Seemingly clear and noncontroversial terms such as “judge” and “law” are likely to stand for entities that are viewed favorably or as entities that are feared or detested. “Law” can be seen either as rules that must be obeyed or as an ambiguous set of beliefs that can be manipulated to one's advantage. Terms such as “guns,” “war,” and “regulation” are often highly controversial both in their denotations and in their connotations.
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- Information
- The Politics of Misinformation , pp. 78 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001