Opening Comments
As calendar years come to an end, the general public in local nation-state contexts as well as worldwide are bombarded with lists of âthe top 10 songs of the yearâ, or âthe top ten films of the yearâ, or âthe top ten novels of the yearâ, and so on. In many parts of the world, there is also âman of the yearâ and âwoman of the yearâ, or the more gender-neutral âperson of the yearâ. Probably not so well known to many people around the world before the end of 2016, there is also âthe word of the yearâ, published annually by the Oxford English Dictionary. I recall how in November 2016, newspapers and online news outlets around the world published headlines along the lines of ââPost-truth â declared word of the year by Oxford English Dictionariesâ (BBC 2016), often providing the following definition of the word from that much-venerated source:
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. (OED 2016, n.p.)
The relative importance of being declared word of the year by the OED is difficult to discern. As regards post-truth , it was the English language press that broke the OED story, followed by the press in other languages. This means that while many people around the world now know that the OED names a word of the year at the end of each year, few people outside of Germany and Austria probably know that the Gesellschaft fĂźr deutsche Sprache (Society for the German Language) has done the same since 1971. Interestingly enough, in 2016, that word was âpostfaktischâ (post-factual), which looks not dissimilar to post-truth , although we could debate for hours on end about the difference between âfaktischâ in German and âfactualâ in English, and further to this, between âfactsâ and âtruthâ.
It is always good to see a language-related issue achieve frontstage status in the media worldwide, when normally the use of a particular word does not merit much attention. However, we might also ask ourselves how important such an announcement really is. I say this upon noting that the word of the year in the previous year, 2015, was the âface with tears of joyâ emoji :â-), and that in the year after, 2017, it was âyouthquakeâ, defined as âa significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young peopleâ (OED 2017, n.p.). So, as regards post-truth , are we in the realm of lasting importance or just the capture of a fad? My answer to that question leans towards the former view as well beyond 2016, post-truth has survived as a frequently used word. I see this in the languages in which I function regularlyâCatalan, Spanish and Englishâand I see it in others languages, ranging from French to Russian. Nevertheless, with time and use across a range of contexts, word meanings evolve. And so, with post-truth, there is the loss of novelty accompanied by a rise in its use in a growing number of domains as its original meaning becomes stretched and mangled. For example, in Spain, the word posverdad (a literal translation of post-truth) is becoming a simple epithet to apply to oneâs interlocutor when disagreements over politics arise. More locally, in the Catalan-speaking context in which I live, the same applies to the word postveritat. And if I move back to English-speaking contexts, and beyond this to other language contexts, I see a similar trend.
So why am I writing this short book about post-truth ? What can be said of interest about it once its novelty has worn off and it has become mainstreamed?
A short answer to the first question is opportunity and happenstance. In the autumn of 2016, I was asked to give a talk to a group of Ph.D. students at my place of work, the University of Lleida. The talk and the event of which it formed part were scheduled for March 2017. The audience would be mixed with all university faculties represented. This meant that there would be students from the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), medicine, agriculture, and architecture, as well as the social sciences and humanities. The topic was left open, for me to decide; however, it had to be sufficiently broad to be of interest to this diverse audience.
The invitation to give this talk coincided fairly closely with the aforementioned announcement of post-truth as the OED word of the year for 2016. It also came at a time when I was immersed in the study of political discourses in Spain. In my research, I was finding, among other things, that mendacity was as pervasive as it was perverse in Spanish politics. In the end, I decided that my talk for Ph.D. students would be my first attempt at seriously studying post-truth , the idea being that I could treat this matter in a broad, cross-disciplinary way, and thus more effectively cater to the interests of the audience. The preparation for this paper led me for the first time into realms of academic discourse, discussion and argumentation with which I had previously had only minimal and fleeting contact. I am thinking about debates about the links between smoking and lung disease and all of the controversiesâreal or imaginedâaround global warming. But the big issue was that by delving into post-truth , I had opened up a can of worms, or a Pandoraâs box, depending on oneâs preferences. In effect, the more I read about the topic, the bigger the scope and depth of what I had decided to explore became.
As I take on the task of offering my particular angle on post-truth in this book, I am all too aware that it was journalists around the world who got their two-cents in first, as in 2016 and 2017 there was a spate of articles and full-length books on the topic. If I just focus on the UK, a country I know well (having lived there for 16 years, from 1996 to 2012), I can cite three key books, all published in the first half of 2017: Ewan Davisâs Post-Truth : Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It; Mathew dâAnconaâs The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back; and James Ballâs Post-Truth : How Bullshit Conquered the World. As the British journalist Stuart Jeffries (2017) points out in his review of this trio of books, all three are chock-full of topical examples (especially with regard to Trump and Brexit) to make the point that good old-fashioned lying has become more extensive and difficult to contest or refute in recent years. And all of this is due to the rise of social media and related social phenomena such as echo chambers and filter bubbles (see Chapter 2 for a discussion), along with relatively unrelated phenomenon such as the crisis of confidence in political establishments in countries around the world. But beyond the tut-tutting and finger wagging, the three authors in different ways manage to touch on the key point of why recent developments actually matter. As Jeffries explains:
The point of all three books is to argue that we should care. We should care that we have allowed Trump and others to push us into the post-truth trough. We should care that among the 50 top performing fake news stories of 2016 on Facebook was not only the lie that President Obama had banned reciting the pledge of allegiance in US schools, but also the hilarious story headlined: âPro-lifers declare: ejaculation is murder, every sperm cell is a lifeâ. We should care that we are living at a time in which, as dâAncona argues, we prioritise the âvisceral over the rational, the decep...