LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘TELOS’-BASED REFLECTIVE SENSE IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The suggested notion of teleological reflective sense in this enquiry is posited as linguistic or mental representation of the ‘purpose’ related moral propriety of an utterance. The conceptual and terminological apparatus of moral teleology is used with a utilitarianist touch for the appraisal of political statements in current political discourse with reference to the basic notion of teleology – the final purpose (‘Telos’). Specifically, teleological reflective sense is viewed as the product of ‘deep interpretation’, as ascribed teleological reflective constituents of meaning in addition to what the proposition of the original utterance refers to. Reflection, along with intuitively engendered meanings, is an intrinsic human attribute. The ascription of teleological reflective sense to the utterance occurs as a result of teleological reflection and intuitive ‘insights’, heuristic semantic ‘constructs’ associated with the embedded moral code. In the domain of I. Kant’s moral teleology, teleological reflection denotes moral assessment of actions from the point of underlying purposes, motives or consequences. Linguistic representations of facts of reality in political discourse are subject to teleological reflective judgement and to meaning attribution in line with the tenets of moral teleology. The ascription of an ‘additional’ meaning may signify the semantic, moral and ethical mismatch between the intended ‘speaker’s meaning’ and the meaning recovered by the addressee. Teleological reflection is latent and tacit as mental representation of the fact of reality, but in political discourse it may assume linguistic representation in the form of teleological explanations, descriptive digressions, commentaries or relevant analytical texts. Without discarding the plausibility of minimalist treatment of meaning, we tend to rely on the teleological methodology and heuristic principles of contextualism, given the opacity of the concept of ‘Telos’ and fluidity of moral premisses. Linguistic representations of teleological assumptions in political discourse may express purposefulness explicitly, implicitly or in the form of the overt and covert reflective sense ascribed to the utterance. The number of teleological reflective senses that can be assigned to an utterance is potentially infinite. This fact is accounted for by incalculable objective, subjective, dependent and independent ‘Telos’ related variables. Teleological reflection which brings about meaning creation in political discourse is essentially meta-teleological since it represents the teleological reflective judgement about the moral propriety of somebody else’s reflection. For reasons of moral impropriety or political expediency covert teleological assumptions eliciting meaning attribution may be left latent and unarticulated creating semantic gaps to be filled in by the addressee.