Abstract
According to one authority (English academic Lincoln Allison), “Words do not merely describe politics, they are part of the politics they describe”. That is why political discourse—what politicians say in public—is endlessly fascinating. But to get all the fascination on offer, you need to learn how to decode the sentences, because they have subtexts, and sometimes even sub-subtexts. Indeed, political discourse is the closest thing in the world to a semanticist’s wet dream.
Words do not merely describe politics,
they are part of the politics they describe.
Lincoln Allison
In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2009), p. 298. Full disclosure: for me, how politicians use words is the most fascinating of all political topics. For me, this chapter is key.
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Notes
- 1.
See “A Semantic Parable” in Language in Thought and Action, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., (London: 1952), pp. 1–7.
- 2.
Author’s recollection.
- 3.
Interpretation of Dreams (1900), chap. 4.
- 4.
Shooting an Elephant (1950), in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Anthony Jay, ed. (Oxford: 1997), p. 279.
- 5.
Letter to his son, 1648, ibid., p. 280.
- 6.
Little, Brown and Company (Boston: 1945), p. 338.
- 7.
Op. cit. Jay, p. 179.
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Machiavelli, N. (2020). Concerning political discourse. In: The Politician. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_21
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