Political Vocabularies

the long version

Conal Condren's fifth and final volume in a decades-long examination of political language, Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics is a study of the mechanisms of change in political vocabularies over time. Though the main focus of the study is on English political vocabulary, Condren also compares political terms in other languages, such as French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Japanese, and discusses how some of these terms are imported into English. Considering concrete examples of extension and intension of meaning, neologism, euphemism, translation, loan words, and metaphor as used in political discourse, Condren constructs a theoretical model of the political that describes what precisely goes on when political words are used or when words are used politically. Thus Condren's analysis in this study is not merely linguistic but it bears on perennial questions about the nature of politics.The book will thus appeal not only to linguists and political scientists but to a broad readership of those interested in history, politics, and philosophy.