„Wooden language”, persuasive definitions, and inferentialist semantics
„Wooden language”, persuasive definitions, and inferentialist semantics

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to reformulate in pragmatist and inferentialist terms some of the critical arguments stated by Françoise Thom (1993/1987) and Roger Scruton (2006) against what the former calls „wooden language”, and the latter calls „Eurospeak”. It will be argued that such a reformulation is more helpful in analyzing political discourse, if the use of value judgments – according to the two authors, a distinctive feature of wooden language – is seen as a rhetorical tactic called „persuasive redefinition” in informal logic and argumentation theory.

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