The Politics of Language

”[An] important book by two prominent scholars.” * Choice *““The Politics of Language is a massive accomplishment — novel, nuanced, and timely. It is especially impressive for its rich synthesis of disparate literatures from outside of analytic philosophy, ranging from information theory to social identity and critical race theories…It thereby offers a fertile resource for explaining a wide range of phenomena that are typically ignored by philosophers and linguists, such as gestures, music, and monuments. It also offers a powerful tool for illuminating the politics of language, understood not just as speech produced by politicians or about politics, but all speech – indeed all action – that involves communal coordination and contestation.””—Elisabeth Camp, Mind““[Stanley and Beaver] have taken it upon themselves to forge a connection between semantic theory and the intellectual outside world. Where many have speculated, they have done the work and come away with a concrete theory of the thing. What is more, they have made a sustained interdisciplinary case for the importance of properly linguistic notions in the analysis of meaning and politics… . The book is sure to be a key reference for scholars working on lexical semantics, philosophy of language, linguistic ideology, and meaning writ large for years to come.” Nicholas Fleisher, Language”—Nicholas Fleisher, Language

David Beaver is professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the UT Cognitive Science Program. His books include Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics and Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning.

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and How Propaganda Works, among other books.