Abstract:

Habermas’s work The Theory of Communicative Action can be regarded as an attempt to unite social sciences with linguistic concepts. In the words of Habermas, social world is an organized linguistic form of society in a sense. To state differently, since social domain bears the traces of a linguistic logic, it is quite plausible to treat the norms of social action the same way as linguistic norms. Habermas argues that the normative and rational dimensions of such norms of communicative action involve; claims for validity, argumentation procedures, discourse ethics and communicative rationality. Equating such norms of communication with the norms of social/political action corresponds to equating a valid and effective action with another valid and effective speech. Nonetheless the tight link that the dimensions of speech and communicative action build with “life world” culture necessitates conducting language analysis in socio-linguistic style. The researches on political communication within Turkey view political communication basically as a paradigm of voter persuasion. Yet, in reality, political communication should be handled in a farther aspect as the political dimension of social communication. Furthermore while conducting political language analyses the scope should be extended beyond style, rhetoric and ethics and attention should be paid to discursive structure of the life worlds where the constituting political culture and their connections with the presented political discourse are embedded. Indeed the range and impact of political message is contingent upon not only verbally transferred expressions as the conveyor elements but also the transfer and share of unspoken meanings (statements that are not expressed but shared) pertaining to life worlds. Such “unspoken meanings” are actually basic components constituting the life world and language where communication takes place. Should the subject matter involves politics and ideology- phenomenons with intense meanings- the language and communication analysis is required to take into account socio-linguistic background of political language and its actors. In that respect the concepts and principles of communicative action which Habermas describes as a democratic and ideal state of speech shall provide major developments in the analysis of political language grammar which is quite a problematic case in Turkey. As an attempt to test political communication in Turkey via communicative action, by structuring its perspective on a political communicative form that can build connections with the language of our life worlds, present research aims to render contribution to the analyses focusing on current political discourse.

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