Politics and Ideology
- Persuading people into something can be more effective than mere force because it is much more subtle
- "Politics is power and to secure power, it makes sense to persuade everyone else that what you want is also what they want. To achieve this, an ideology needs to be established: one which makes the beliefs that you want people to hold appear to be 'common sense', thus making it difficult for them to question the dominant ideology (Jones/Peccei 2004: 38). In political debates, politicians strive topersuade their audience of their basic claims in order to influence people's political and ideological views. It is observed that our varying understanding of reality is mediated, often, by the language and the system of signs available to us. This system of signs is not an unbiased reflection of the world but a product of the ideologies of our culture. It can also be used to establish and maintain ideologies (Fairclough 1991; van Dijk 1998)." (Salami, Oladipo. Ayoola, Kehinde. "The 'War' of Appropriate Pricing of Petroleum Products". Linguistik Online 42, 2/2010)
- An extreme view: Elimination of critical thought by cleaning language of its unwanted representations (Newspeak in George Orwell's "1984")
Presuppositions and Implicature
- Presuppositions are background assumptions embedded in a sentence
- Implicatures concentrate not only on a speker's intend to communicate but also on the additional meaning conveyed in a conversation. For additional information, click here
Persuasive Language: Rhethoric devices
(Jones/Peccei, Language and Politics. In: Thomas/Wareing/Singh et al (eds.), Language, society and power: an introduction. London 2004.)