Louis de Saussure
Université de Genève
Louis.deSaussure@lettres.unige.ch

Manipulation, cognitive pragmatics and discourse analysis

This talk posits that manipulative discourse is not a discourse type according to pure linguistic criteria. The hypothesis is that there is no linguistic feature (element or structure) which is purely dedicated to manipulation. From this starting point, it is argued that manipulative discourse cannot be captured or identified on pure linguistic grounds and that manipulative discourse is a pragmatic problem: it's a type of usage of natural language.

According to hypothetic-deductive methodology, we posit an a priori axiomatic definition of manipulative discourse. This definition implies that the conveyed propositions present certain characteristics, and that some specific means are used to gain sincere consent. Notably, it is recalled that within a realist view, it is assumed that the propositions conveyed by a manipulative discourse present defects on the truth-conditional aspect of meaning (on the level of what is said) and on the truth-fonctional aspect of meaning (the level of what is implicated). Other defects of the propositions conveyed are about consistency with moral scales of values. In other words, a manipulative discourse presents defective propositions as far as actual states of affairs or desirable states of affairs are concerned.

The means used to convey these propositions are assumed to be directly related to a constraint coming from the need to obtain sincere consent. It is posited that manipulation is basically a matter of power / force / constraint applied by the manipulator to the manipulated. Since direct force and power can not produce sincere false beliefs, except in very specific cases of mental manipulation (that appear in various types of brainwashing, be it in cults or in "re-education" programs in totalitarian regimes), it is suggested that the force that applies is built on a relation of dependancy, which  is created by the manipulator. The need for the manipulator is to operate on the natural ability of the human mind to check information for likeliness, and to check moral statements for compatibility with other beliefs in the cognitve environment. The manipulator needs to short-circuit these cognitive operations. We consider in this talk that among the means the manipulator uses to achieve this goal, an action is taken to place the addressee in a mental state of confusion, in which these mental abilities are blocked and managed by the manipulator himself. This implies in turn a number of linguistic means, such as fuzzy metaphors, obsessive repetitions, and other features that have been widely documented. This implies also a specific type of representation of the manipulator himself, described as a god-like genius. The addressee is left with unsolved contradictions and is then set in a position of dependency: only the genius can solve these contradictions in re-establishing an appearently stable system after the previous destruction of the former set of beliefs.

As a conclusion, this talk evoques the fact that the manipulative intention is not discovered by the addressee because the manipulator orients (or even acts as a substitute for) the mind-reading device of the addressee by this relation of dependancy together with this representation of a more-than-human-genius. In other words, the theory of mind itself is perturbated since this device is aimed to represent a human mind and not a god-like mind; the addressee is then unconfident to his mind-reading ability and is perturbated in all critical checking, be it about reality, moral scales of value, consistency of beliefs and intentions of the speaker.