„Limba de lemn” și cercetarea istorică
Newspeak and the Historical Research

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the issue of the utility of the framework generically named “Newspeak” („Limba de lemn”). The first part refuted some fundamental propositions of the “Newspeak” theory as a theory of communication in the totalitarian states: “Newspeak” distorts reality and promotes the lie, “Newspeak” is a language which communicates nothing and it is through “Newspeak” that those in power consciously manipulate „the masses”. Following Patrick Seriot, the term of discourse is proposed instead that of “Newspeak”. The second part of the paper deals with the relationship between the “Newspeak” theory and the traditional theories of historical research (especially the Positivist tradition), underlining some reasons for which the “Newspeak” theory is widely accepted by the historians of totalitarianism and refuting these reasons along the same lines as those used in the first part. At the same time, the paper emphasizes the potential benefits of the „new” historical research (post-Linguistic Turn) for the research of totalitarian/authoritarian systems.

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