No, there is nothing inherently deceptive within political discourse.
No, for a reason I will elucidate in a post.
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Before I post I would like to get a feeling for how everyone else veiws political discourse. I’m afriad if I post first I may taint the sample. I will, however, mention that I think many people may veiw the topic superficially.
Political discourse understood as meaning anything said by a politician or media outlet dealing with politics.
That was my answer, but I’m only referring to present political discourse rather than all political discourse per se. Present political discourse is vastly hypocritical because, put simply, most politicians speak hackneyed bull that they’ve got from someone else but pass it off as their ‘freely chosen’ beliefs.
Add to this the fact that most politicians are crap at dealing with the press (I often think that I’d do a better job of avoiding answering questions posed by journalists), have poor vocabularies and rhetorical skills and lack the heart, mind and courage to actually develop imaginative solutions means that we go around and around in the same economic and political circles, all the time calling it ‘democracy’ and ‘progress’ and ‘freedom’. Yeah, free to completely fritter away any chance of improving the world. Great, isn’t it?
Just curious, but how does one discern what is and what isn’t political discourse? It seems possible that anyone with an ‘agenda’ who enters into discourse is being politically motivated. Perhaps I’m casting a wide net, but it just seems that there is very little that isn’t ‘political’ discourse.
I think many people fail to take into account linguistic attributes of political discourse, and as such they set themselves up to be deceived. The turn design of press conferences and political shows greatly influence what is conveyed to the viewer. More specifically if one fails to take into account the linguistic frame and the subsequent turn design, they miss an important part of discourse in general, not to mention political discourse. Given the nature of politics and it’s dealings with controversial issues, turn design is particularly important as it will determine to some extent what can be said, how it can be said, and meta-pragmatic awareness. Meta-pragmatic awareness being the main point of deception in political discourse. Influenced by the audience, and the frame, meta-pragmatic awareness determines how frank once can be. Political discourse lends itself to a high sense of meta-pragmatic awareness based off the frame and the turn design, and if one fails to recognize this, then one misses the underlying context and motives of speech. A good way to determine the level of meta-pragmatic awareness of a given speech or politicain in a given framework is to catalogue or have an awareness of code-switching(which is quite proliferate in the political world). This demands alot from the viewer, but it will ultimately allow you to decipher political discourse.
So, what the heck is ‘meta-pragmatic awareness’ and why are you insisting on alienating people from your discussion of political discourse by using nonsensical terms?
Meta-Pragmatic awareness is directly tied to communicative competence. It is the ability to recognize what frame/setting you are in and adjust your speech patterns from there. Say you go to a Marxist meeting, the language you use is going to be neutral and non-combative based on what you know about marxists. The community will be offended or turned off if you use broad sweeping generalizations. So you formulize your speech in a way that you wouldn’t normally use it. For example if you’re talking about LGBT issues, and you don’t like the topic, you would use “gay” rather than “queer” or “faggot”. Whereas if you are in an intimate gathering of friends or an NRA meeting and the topic comes up, and you don’t like the issue, based on what you know about these groups, you might decide to use more derogatory words. Meta-Pragmatic awareness is when you are aware of the words you are using, and consciously decide to use certain words that you might no normally use. It is an increased conscious sensitivity to the linguistic frame you are in.
I refrained from posting untill the thread was dead for a reason…
I think it depends on what you define as political discourse- if we’re strictly talking about issues ( the economy, the war, social issues), then I don’t think there’s any great motivation to lie in the United States- there are enough people on either side of every issue that a politician can say what they believe. Even if they lie about their stance on an issue, they are still expressing a view that plenty of people would agree with, so there’s nothing really lost by that. There have been a few notable exceptions, politicians who seem embarrased or uncertain of their opinions, and either refuse to give them or give something different every time, but again, I think that’s an exception.
Politicians lie when many of us would lie- when asked questions about their personal and business activities. They especially lie when asked these questions unexpectedly in front of large groups of people, and especially when the answer they give may potentially destroy their careers. They don’t seem any more dishonest than the rest of us in that regard.
And where did you get the term ‘meta-pragmatic awareness’ and how is it meta-pragmatic? Also, what distinguishes it from Austin’s pragmatics? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin
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That sounds quite alot like an academic circumvention of the principle communicative error known to laypersons, as lying.