Popular Press
How Plausibly Deniable Is It?
Anthropology News
(2017)
Abstract
We are accustomed to watching politicians play the language game of plausible deniability, but Donald Trump takes this game to a new level. A prime illustration is the way Trump—with the help of surrogates—has refused to take full ownership of his mocking insult of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski on the campaign trail. Plausible deniability is central to political discourse. What makes deniability oftentimes plausible is the ambiguity between what a speaker says in so many words and what a speaker intends to convey. Whether the plausible deniability actually convinces anyone or not is really beside the point. Playing this plausible deniability game allows Trump to reinforce an overriding message of his populism: the supposed obsession “liberal elites” have with enforcing “political correctness.” The question remains, how to effectively counter Trump in his language games? Perhaps it starts by exposing the absurd assumptions required to play these games with a straight face.
Keywords
- plausible deniability,
- conversational implicature,
- Donald Trump,
- performance,
- indexicality,
- political discourse
Disciplines
Publication Date
February 1, 2017
DOI
10.1111/AN.335
Publisher Statement
Copyright 2017 American Anthropological Association
Citation Information
Adam Hodges. "How Plausibly Deniable Is It?" Anthropology News Vol. 58 Iss. 1 (2017) p. e211 - e215 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/adamhodges/64/