Language and Truth - What Makes Communication Reliable in a Post-Truth World

The nature of truth is a current preoccupation both in political and social debates. The emergence and consequences of fake news and misinformation are at the core of what some call a post-truth world.
Divided into two parts, Language and Truth develops the theoretical framework of language, truth, and communication. The book illustrates the way in which fake news is adhered to or rejected using case studies taken from political discourse such as the recent use of the word's "genocide" and "denazification" by Vladimir Putin. It explores sources of information such as gossip and the everyday as well as exceptional uses of language such as humour.
This is vital reading for scholars, researchers, and students of pragmatics, semantics, philosophy of language, cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, language and communication, and language and politics within linguistics, psychology, and communication studies.

List of contents

Foreword
Acknowledgment
Introduction
Part 1: Language, truth, and meaning 
Chapter 1: What is language?

Chapter 2: What is truth?
Chapter 3: Truth-condition and non-truth-conditional meaning
Part 2: Discourse, propagation of information, and complexity of meaning
Chapter 4: Truth and political discourses 
Chapter 5: Truth and information propagation

Chapter 6: A pragmatic explanation to meaning complexity

Chapter 7: Truth, expertise, and dissemination of science
General conclusion
Glossary
Index

About the author

Jacques Moeschler is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Linguistics, University of Geneva where he specializes in semantics and pragmatics. He is one of the co-authors, with Sandrine Zufferey and Anne Reboul, of Implicatures (2019) and the author of Non-Lexical Pragmatics (2019) and Why Language? (2021).

Summary

Language and Truth develops the theoretical framework of language, truth, and communication. This is vital reading for scholars, researchers and students

Product details

• Authors: Jacques Moeschler, Moeschler Jacques
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.05.2024
• EAN: 9781032399270
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3239927-0
• No. of pages: 178
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Philosophy of Language, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology, PHILOSOPHY / Language, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Sociolinguistics, Cognition & cognitive psychology, Social, group or collective psychology, Cognition and cognitive psychology, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Semantics, discourse analysis, etc