A provocative and timely look at how language is used to manipulate the truth, how our gullibility leaves us susceptible to manipulation, and what we can do to reverse these trends.
The Rhetoric of Manipulation looks behind the curtain of political and social communications in the age of “fake news” and the “post-truth” to show how the perversely engineered semantics at work today shapes culture and undermines reality. While language has always been manipulated to direct or anesthetize thought, today's semantic perversions orient opinion and subdue political action to an alarming degree. Under such conditions, we are particularly susceptible to demagoguery.
Arguing that too many of us have let our critical faculties wither, Robert Harvey opens our ears and eyes to an insidious impediment to free thinking by unflinchingly examining five realms of semantic perversion: the contemporary vocabulary of war; the recently evolved language tool known as scare quotes; the terms used to peddle white supremacy; the phenomenon of so-called cancel culture; and the jargon deployed in the corporatization of higher education.
The wager of The Rhetoric of Manipulation is that a frank exposé of bad faith discursive practices and our accompanying gullibility can contribute to reversing the trend, remedying the current situation in view of a far more ethical immediate future, and remediating some of the damage already done.
The Rhetoric of Manipulation looks behind the curtain of political and social communications in the age of “fake news” and the “post-truth” to show how the perversely engineered semantics at work today shapes culture and undermines reality. While language has always been manipulated to direct or anesthetize thought, today's semantic perversions orient opinion and subdue political action to an alarming degree. Under such conditions, we are particularly susceptible to demagoguery.
Arguing that too many of us have let our critical faculties wither, Robert Harvey opens our ears and eyes to an insidious impediment to free thinking by unflinchingly examining five realms of semantic perversion: the contemporary vocabulary of war; the recently evolved language tool known as scare quotes; the terms used to peddle white supremacy; the phenomenon of so-called cancel culture; and the jargon deployed in the corporatization of higher education.
The wager of The Rhetoric of Manipulation is that a frank exposé of bad faith discursive practices and our accompanying gullibility can contribute to reversing the trend, remedying the current situation in view of a far more ethical immediate future, and remediating some of the damage already done.
Płać wygodnie kartą, Klarną, Apple Pay lub Google Pay. Nie jesteś zadowolony? Zawsze masz 14-dniową gwarancję zwrotu pieniędzy. Więcej przeczytasz w naszych warunkach. Masz pytania? Napisz do nas na hello@memmo.org.
Memmo ułatwia naukę – gdziekolwiek jesteś na świecie. U nas znajdziesz podręczniki i sprytne narzędzia do nauki w jednym miejscu: streszczenia, quizy, podcasty i fiszki. A do tego Ted, Twój kumpel do nauki, który odpowie na wszystko, co Cię nurtuje. Ponad 50 000 studentów już tu się uczy – stworzone, byś uczył się szybciej i mniej stresował.