Andrea Rodríguez
University of Granada
This paper aims to analyze a mechanism of manipulation that consists of the covert promotion of harmful evaluative content through seemingly factual statements. This phenomenon, called “naturalization of ideologies,” plays a fundamental role in radicalization processes.
The naturalization of ideologies involves erasing the political or moral content of discourses, typically tied to specific political agendas, and presenting them in the public sphere as ostensibly factual and neutral information grounded in scientific research. The result is an apparently descriptive discourse that conceals its evaluative nature. One example of this is race science. Stereotypes and practical commitments are thus covertly transmitted through seemingly factual statements, shaping and mobilizing the audience’s attitudes. At the core of this linguistic mechanism lies a strategic confusion between two uses of language: evaluative and descriptive uses, which operate in discourse in substantially different ways. To account for this, it is essential to distinguish these two uses. We need a theory that endorses the Bifurcation Thesis (BT): the commitment to distinguishing in discourse two uses of language that differ substantially in meaning and semantic function. In this regard, I argue for a dynamic semantic model that addresses limitations in traditional accounts of these uses, such as the Frege-Geach problem.
This model explains the distinctiveness of evaluative versus descriptive uses by focusing on the different ways in which the information conveyed by each type updates the common ground. Descriptive uses eliminate subsets of possible worlds and place us within a specific region of logical space, whereas evaluative uses convey information that reorganizes logical space and puts forward a particular perspective. If the audience accepts the information conveyed by evaluative uses, it tends to mobilize its attitudes, and thus its courses of action, along the lines proposed by the speaker. Indeed, this model adequately accommodates the BT and enables us to analyze how the strategic confusion between these two uses operates in discourse and the role it plays in processes of radicalization, understood as a gradual process involving the intensification of negative conative attitudes towards members of other political groups.
Chair: Irene Lo Faro
Time: 03 September, 14:00 – 14:30
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 