Political Philosophy and the English Language or The Bullshit Lecture GVPT241 Lecture 2 4 14 Demos Kratia Bullshit Harry Frankfurt on Bullshit The slowing of job growth impacted consumer sentiment Candidate x blasted candidate y in order to galvanize their base Lying is different from bullshit because in order to lie you have to know the truth while bullshitter completely indifferent to truth of subject matter Bullshitter worse than liar because has at least some concern about what truth actually is bullshitter cares about appearing knowledgable The slowing of job growth impacted consumer sentiment o We don t know the sentiment the consumer o Impact is extremely vague only indicates causal relationship but not descriptive kind of impact Candidate x blasted candidate y in order to galvanize their base o Galvanize means multiple things originally meant to stimulate muscle with electricity or coat metal with zinc to strengthen it o Why say blasted instead of criticize or insult Sounds violent powerful catchy military connotation Harold Laski excerpt from Orwell essay Laski one of most important political scientists of 20th century Interested in group politics Pluralism political decisions need to be understood as result of competition among different interest groups Orwell chooses him to show that issues with political language not related to how intelligent you are Humanization and Galvanization of BBC Excerpt Pretentious language Passive voice Zombie nouns humanization and galvanization make noun out of adjective becomes meaningless because we make it into generalized noun Timidity here will be speak excerpt Bad metaphor as gentle as sucking dove weird doesn t make sense Rhetorical appeal to emotions of reader but borders on silly Pretentious language timidity here will be speak canker and atrophy A Virile new Britain excerpt Fluff that doesn t make sense Has symmetrical syllables so basically made wordy Author not mainly concerned with most appropriate word but rather syllables Auditory Visual non specific choice of metaphors Orwell thinks passive voice is bad in political writing because agent can be hidden by construction covers over who is responsible for what Dying Metaphor Ex Toe the line Political effect not investing in mental image not investing in word choice to properly explain the issue Writer isn t present Thoughtlessness Pretentious Diction Ex see above Political effect investing claim with more authority than it deserves gives more weight to claim than it deserves Meaningless Words Ex Democracy Fascist Political effect removes your responsibility muddles meaning of what you re saying so many different meanings attached to the word Essentially contested concept meaning constantly subject of debate because no consensus Operators or Verbal False Limbs Orwell s 6 Rules seeing in print 1 Never use a metaphor simile or other figure of speech which you are used to If it s possible to cut a word out always cut it out 2 Never use long word when short one will do 3 4 Never use passive where you can use the active 5 Never use a foreign phrase scientific word or jargan word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent 6 Break any of these rules sooner than saying outright barbarous The Goals of Philosophical Writing Clarity supports Precision and vice versa and generates Elegance
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