The paper aims to investigate the mechanisms of incorrect and misleading reasoning with particular reference to the argumentative fallaciesideas which many people believe to be true, but which is in fact false because it is based on incorrect information or reasoning-widely present today in information and communication policies, highlighting the strategies used to influence the behaviour of people and direct the formation of opinions in accordance with guidelines functional to systems of power.
The paper aims to investigate the use of euphemism in the political communication as one of the most interesting strategies used to influence the behaviour of people and direct the formation of opinions in accordance with guidelines functional to systems of power. Euphemism is a a figure of speech in which an appropriate expression is replaced with words or phrases that have a weaker meaning, so as to soften or conceal its excessive violence or crudeness for the sake of social expediency, or for religious, moral or even political concerns. This figure is based on the evocative power of words which leads people to believe in the representation of reality developed by the orator, even when it is not based on verisimilitude. In this way the description of reality is often misleading and untruthful. To identify and expose these strategies of misleading manipulation is one of the crucial tasks of critical thought today. On it hinges the possibility for citizens to be more than just passive spectators of the spectacle of communication and defenceless targets of propaganda techniques.
In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke set out to offer an analysis of the human mind and its acquisition of knowledge still very current and important today. Locke offered also an empiricist theory according to which we acquire ideas through our experience of the world. The article examines Locke’s views on language and his principal innovation in the field of linguistic theory, represented by the recognition of the power of language with respect to the classification of the world, and its relative independence from reality. In particular the following topics are discussed: a) the polemical contrast with Cartesian philosophy b) the criticism that Locke levels against innatism c) the function of abstraction of the mind d) the concept of semiotics as a theory of thought and its expression e) the radical concept of arbitrariness f) the pragmatic factor intrinsic to Locke’s linguistics described as “communicational scepticism”.
Il saggio si propone di illustrare le idee di Leopardi sulla crisi della lingua e della cultura italiana del primo Ottocento, contrassegnata da un provincialismo intellettuale che non le ha permesso di partecipare in modo adeguato allo sviluppo delle scienze e della filosofia che ha caratterizzato l'Europa del XVIII secolo. Dallo Zibaldone al Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degli italiani viene ricostruita la critica lucida e disincantata dei problemi che affliggono l'Italia della Restaurazione: il divario tra lingua parlata e lingua scritta, tra letteratura e scienza e tra cultura alta e cultura popolare, la mancanza di senso civico e di coesione sociale, lo scarso sviluppo dell'opinione pubblica, l'arretratezza culturale, la mancata modernizzazione della lingua. La posizione critica di Leopardi ha anche un significato politico e sociale e presenta elementi di evidente attualità che sono ancora di grande interesse per i lettori del XXI secolo.
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