The Politics of Language - by David Beaver & Jason Stanley

About the Book

"In much of the theory of meaning, philosophers and linguists have focused on the use of language in conveying information in cooperative informational exchanges. As a result, political uses of speech, of the sort that political propaganda exemplifies, have not been taken to be a central case of language use. In this book, Jason Stanley and David Beaver focus on the political use of speech as a central case, which leads to a foundational rethinking of the theory of meaning. By focusing on the political uses of speech, one arrives at better (and more general) tools to describe speech, as well as a more accurate view of its central functions. More dramatically, it enables us to see the ways in which virtually all speech is political-a fact that is masked by much of the theory of meaning. Stanley and Beaver's topic is speech generally-its function and how best to represent that function. Political propaganda serves as a window into that topic, since its function is not obviously to share information, or even misinformation. They emphasize the importance of understanding how political propaganda works via the topic of the justification of free speech and argue that political propaganda poses a problem for a broad range of justifications of free speech. Stanley and Beaver argue that it is not possible to compartmentalize the political aspects of speech from the non-political aspects of speech, nor is it possible to carve out a neutral deliberative space of evaluating reasons qua reasons. Speech is invariably political"--

Book Synopsis

A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language

In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role.

Drawing on a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech--whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication--is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language--from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality.

At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest.

Review Quotes

""The Politics of Language is a massive accomplishment -- novel, nuanced, and timely. It is especially impressive for its rich synthesis of disparate literatures from outside of analytic philosophy, ranging from information theory to social identity and critical race theories...It thereby offers a fertile resource for explaining a wide range of phenomena that are typically ignored by philosophers and linguists, such as gestures, music, and monuments. It also offers a powerful tool for illuminating the politics of language, understood not just as speech produced by politicians or about politics, but all speech - indeed all action - that involves communal coordination and contestation.""---Elisabeth Camp, Mind

""[Stanley and Beaver] have taken it upon themselves to forge a connection between semantic theory and the intellectual outside world. Where many have speculated, they have done the work and come away with a concrete theory of the thing. What is more, they have made a sustained interdisciplinary case for the importance of properly linguistic notions in the analysis of meaning and politics. . . . The book is sure to be a key reference for scholars working on lexical semantics, philosophy of language, linguistic ideology, and meaning writ large for years to come." Nicholas Fleisher, Language"---Nicholas Fleisher, Language

"[An] important book by two prominent scholars."-- "Choice"

About the Author

David Beaver is professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the UT Cognitive Science Program. His books include Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics and Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning. Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and How Propaganda Works (Princeton), among other books.