Discussing the Boundaries of Science. Science* as a Sociopolitical Keyword in Debates on the Covid-19 Crisis Management
(2023) International Pragmatics Association Conference — Location: Brussels (9.July.2023)
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- Abstract
- In contemporary democracies, where evidence-based policy prevails, science has the rhetorical capacity to establish uncontested truths insofar as it allegedly “lets the facts speak” without being affected by external influences, such as political interests (Boswell 2008). Yet, what is acknowledged as “scientific” by the scientific community is of political interest. It indeed articulates the political debate: firstly by constituting in part the shared and undisputable truths upon which the discussion takes root, but also by occasionally being used to naturalize policy proposals, based on the premise that science is invested with a normative force per se. The spread of covid-19 greatly enhanced the appeal to science in political communication (Amossy 2022), and thereby its lexical salience in public discourse, including the integration of “scientific” into several syntagmas (e.g. scientific evidence, scientific fact, scientific truth, scientific proof). Without undermining the rhetorical strength of “scientific”, the numerous epistemic dissensions that emerged in the wake of the pandemic have, however, given rise to the problematization of its signified in the public sphere. The meaning of “scientific” has actually been the site of a more or less explicit struggle in which experts, but also politicians, took part to define what can be labelled “scientific” or not. By doing so, they (de)legitimized objects and hierarchized them as holding a greater or lower political relevance for the decision-making process. In this respect, “scientific” may be considered to have functioned as a political keyword (Schröter et al. 2019) during the pandemic. Through a pragmatic lens, this presentation will tackle the use of “scientific” by Flemish and French-speaking politicians and experts to answer the following questions: What do politicians and experts consider to be scientific or not? On what basis, if any, do they make such judgments? How do they (de)construct the notion of “scientific” in their discourses? In what context and for what argumentative purposes do they use this keyword? To do so, the analysis will rely on several pragmatic tools (e.g. Verschueren 2012) applied to discourses produced during the first two years of the pandemic (Jan. 2020 - Dec. 2021) in three distinct areas of communication: on the social media Twitter, in 6 national newspapers (Le Soir, La Dernière Heure, De Standaard, Het Laatste Nieuws, Metro Fr, Metro Nl), and within the federal and federated entities’ Parliaments.
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Rondiat, C. (2023). Discussing the Boundaries of Science. Science* as a Sociopolitical Keyword in Debates on the Covid-19 Crisis Management. International Pragmatics Association Conference, Brussels. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/275428