Semantic Traps Seminar: June 2016

A Seminar for Scholars, Journalists and Entrepreneurs

“One must always repeat the truth, because even the error around us is preached again and again. And not from individuals but from the crowd.”
J.W. von Goethe

When political speech writers pen speeches for presidents, prime ministers, and other influential dignitaries, they choose their words carefully, knowing that rhetoric matters.

A classic case of an intentional deception of words, according to Schumpeter was the hijacking of the term liberal. In a similar fad, the market economy is increasingly condemned as a system of crony capitalists, the empty notion of social justice turned into a general verdict on our society’s moral status, or the dramatic slogan climate change became a substitute for the effect of greenhouse gases. In chapter 7 of The Fatal Conceit, “Our Poisoned Language,” F.A. von Hayek lists over 100 words before which we put social ranging from social accounting to social property to social waste, and in each case obfuscate their meaning.

Have you ever wondered how many of our habitual political terms have assumed quite different meanings or, maybe deliberately, have even taken on undertones that suggest something detrimental to what we want to get across?  It seems as if the old Confucius warning “when words lose their meaning people will lose their liberty” has more relevance today then ever before.

With Confucius’ admonition in mind, PERC, LAF (Liechenstein Academy Foundation), and ECAEF (European Center for Austrian Economics Foundation) have teamed up to organize a seminar on “Semantic Traps: Politics with Loaded Terms”. Details including the agenda are seen below. If you are interested in finding out more about the seminar, contact co-directors, Terry Anderson (tla@perc.org) or Kurt Leube (kleube@stanford.edu).