“The Concept-Forming Words We Utter”: Extremism and the Formation of a Political “We”

Abstract

This article takes off from Wittgenstein’s observation that “When language games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change” (Wittgenstein, On certainty. Anscombe GEM, von Wright GH (eds), Denis Paul (Trans). Blackwell, Oxford, 1969, §65), and Murdoch’s related observation that “We cannot over-estimate the importance of the concept-forming words we utter to ourselves and to others. This background of our thinking and feeling is always vulnerable” (Murdoch, Metaphysics as a guide to morals. Vintage Classics, London, 2003, 260). I want to show that these two sentences contain an accurate observation about how our uses of words, and more importantly, how shifts in our uses of words, partake in transforming the moral landscape itself. Taking these two lessons to heart enables us to see more clearly that political and moral changes in public opinion are not simply rooted in people changing their opinions but must be traced back to conceptual changes that a community has “accepted”, as it were, unwarily. I discuss two examples of how the undercurrent of language has been altered with rather massive effects on the more familiar and visible level of “moral discourse”: the alt-right movement in Sweden, and political election strategies in Sweden.