{"title":"The parasites of language","authors":"Aubrey Tang","doi":"10.1075/ld.00110.tan","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This article examines how “parasitical” political language can help explore a new understanding of oppositional\n opinions in a global context of political polarization. By parasitical political language, I refer to what speech act theorist\n J.L. Austin calls “infelicitous speech acts”, language that is used unsuccessfully. Jacques Derrida argues that these “incorrect”\n utterances can escape from an already determined context and extend to a more liberated kind of communication. To explore the\n potentially “positive” effect of parasitical language, this article examines the utterances of Hong Kong protesters prior to the\n 2020 US elections as infelicitous speech acts. Their radical political approach, surprisingly, spawned an anti-globalist activist\n subculture shared by protesters in other parts of the world.","PeriodicalId":244145,"journal":{"name":"When Dialogue Fails","volume":"25 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"When Dialogue Fails","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00110.tan","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article examines how “parasitical” political language can help explore a new understanding of oppositional
opinions in a global context of political polarization. By parasitical political language, I refer to what speech act theorist
J.L. Austin calls “infelicitous speech acts”, language that is used unsuccessfully. Jacques Derrida argues that these “incorrect”
utterances can escape from an already determined context and extend to a more liberated kind of communication. To explore the
potentially “positive” effect of parasitical language, this article examines the utterances of Hong Kong protesters prior to the
2020 US elections as infelicitous speech acts. Their radical political approach, surprisingly, spawned an anti-globalist activist
subculture shared by protesters in other parts of the world.