Negotiations Through Language: Selling a View

From "Why Economic Inequality is Not Good for the Economy" by Rob Urie in Counterpunch.

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Note: Derek Phillips once wrote, "Wittgenstein now argues that human language in a sense creates reality." (Phillips, 1977, p. 30). In this sense, we can influence our actions and our judgements by how we describe events. As they say, there is always more than one way to tell a story.

"The general perception post-modernism is from the political ‘left,’ following from later (Ludwig) Wittgenstein and ‘transactional analysis’ in psychology, post-modern philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard developed his concept of ‘language games,’ the social practice of localized negotiations through language, just as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began selling corporatist imperialism as atomized individualism to an unsuspecting world. Setting aside the Marxian conceit that who has voice in society is a function of political-economic relations, Mr. Lyotard places social ‘negotiations’ in silos where local truths replace the grand ‘Truths’ of earlier centuries. The various disciplines of ‘economics’ constitute such silos."