How People Talk About Politics: Brexit and Beyond by Stephen Coleman

Author:Stephen Coleman [Coleman, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Media & Internet, Political Science, Political Process, Communication Studies, Language Arts & Disciplines, Communication Policy, General
ISBN: 9780755618811
Google: B5oJEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51591669
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

6

We need to talk – but how?

Political talk, once regarded as a defining expression of popular sovereignty, has come to be thought of as a feel-bad activity – a nervous, cacophonous, resentful flow of public grumpiness. It is as if people have lost confidence in their ability to talk about politics. They expect it to go wrong. They sense that it is tainted by a debasement of language and coarseness of tone that sets it apart from more congenial social interaction.

The depth of this unease is illustrated by the frequency with which people claim that political discourse is poisonous. In 2018, the Oxford English Dictionary chose the word ‘toxic’ as its ‘word of the year’: the word or expression that they ‘judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance’. Equating political talk with poison has become commonplace:

Whether political violence is rising or simply getting more attention, there is no doubt that we face an extraordinarily toxic political climate. (The Hill, 22 June 2017)

Yes, we disagree constantly. But what makes our disagreements so toxic is that we refuse to make eye contact with our opponents, or try to see things as they might, or find some middle ground. Instead, we fight each other from the safe distance of our separate islands of ideology and identity and listen intently to echoes of ourselves. We take exaggerated and histrionic offense to whatever is said about us. (New York Times, 24 September 2017)

How did the language of politics get so toxic? (The Guardian, 21 July 2016)

Is it possible to resurrect civility amid a tsunami of toxicity? (Washington Post, 11 January 2019)

So how do we make our political conversation less toxic? How do we stop bad faith preventing us from discussing politics with people on the other side? (New Statesman, 29 August 2018)

Are Toxic Political Conversations Changing How We Feel about Objective Truth? (Scientific American, February 2018)

Caught up doubly in this pathological plight, both as vulnerable victims of noxious discourse and as the apparent source of the contagion, there seems to be no way out for everyday citizens. Unless they express themselves, they are doomed to political irrelevance, but when they do so they cannot stop producing infectious toxins that pollute the public sphere. Faced with such an impasse, some wonder whether democracy is sustainable. Former BBC Director General Mark Thompson (2016: 19) states that ‘For me, the critical risk is not in the realm of culture but that of politics and, in particular, democracy – its legitimacy, the competitive advantage it has historically conferred over other systems of government, and ultimately its sustainability’. The popular sociologist William Davies (2018: 118) suggests that ‘As the language of politics grows more violent, and attacks on the “elites” becomes more vociferous, democracy starts to inch closer to violence, with more instruments and institutions being “weaponised”’. In her final speech as the British prime minister, Theresa May 2019 asserted that ‘Today an inability to

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