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Part of
Persuasion in Specialized Discourse: A multidisciplinary perspective
Edited by Chiara Degano, Dora Renna and Francesca Santulli
[Argumentation in Context 22] 2024
► pp. 249–265

Chapter 12
Engaging conspiracy theories

Reducing the anti-persuasive effects of persuasion

| Carnegie Mellon University

To encounter a conspiracy theory is to enter a dark world where normal rules do not apply. To reason with an upholder of that theory is to come up against a force-field which intensifies at every push, rendering ordinary persuasive strategies counter-productive. In place of such strategies, I appeal to the underlying linguistic structure of moves in a language game as providing a way out from the closed system of a conspiracy theory. This approach constitutes an application of what may be called practical linguistics.

Keywords: conspiracy theories, practical linguistics, closed and open systems, dialogue games, transformations, polarity and non-polarity questions, unbestimmtheitsstellen, basic acts
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Conspiracy theories
  • 3.Accounting for conspiracy theories
  • 4.Dialogue games and conspiracy theories
  • 5.A different kind of dialogue game
  • 6.The shift from content to form
  • Notes
  • References
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