Deliberation through Misrepresentation? Inchoate Speech and the Division of Interpretive Labor*

Abstract

A CCORDING to many philosophers and political theorists, democratic decision-making requires more than a fair aggregation of judgments. It requires that those judgments be informed by public deliberation. 1 However, the ability to make clear and informed contributions to public deliberation seems-at least at first blush-very demanding given modern conditions. Policy questions are often complex and require specialized training to understand, let alone evaluate. Moreover, individuals often hold conflicting values, and they lack time and training to make their political views coherent and precise enough to yield determinate verdicts about various policy disputes. It is therefore no surprise that when we look at actual political speech, we do not just see articulate, informed, and reasoned arguments. Rather, much political speech is what I will call "inchoate," in that it is vague, patchy, haphazardly expressed, and rife with seeming inconsistency. For instance, much political speech takes the form of vague slogans from social movements like Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party, ambiguous messages in artistic works, snarky tweets, or just the normal hazy and underdeveloped arguments of everyday political discussion. Clear, reasoned argument is only a small part of political expression.