The Language Ideology of Silence and Silencing in Public Discourse

Abstract

This chapter deals with the unsaid as a discursive strategy in antipolitical correctness discourse, where the unsaid is framed as something that can be said and needs to be said but is prevented from being said through silencing and taboos. Antipolitical correctness discourse is described as a language ideological debate. This metadiscursive debate involves notions of language taboos, denial of voice and representation, accessibility, and limitations of public discourse. It thereby negotiates issues not so much of language use, but of national identity, democratic representation, and purported cultural hegemony with the aim of changing public discourse. The strategy of claiming to be silenced to increase the acceptability of contested propositions rests on the extent to which silence is at odds with public discourse in modern mass democracies. Its functions will be exemplified using the example of the antipolitical correctness discourse perpetuated by Germany’s New Right. The chapter also aims to show how analyzing metadiscourse can on the one hand be a fruitful way for empirical textual analysis of the unsaid and on the other hand also provides scope for studying the language ideology of silence.

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