Truth and fiction. Literature and politics

Abstract

The logical status of a literary statement is different from that of a standard act of communication, both written and oral. This distinction refers to two basic principles of linguistic pragmatics, that of cooperation and that of sincerity. When we communicate with someone, we not only tend to believe what they tell us, but reject the idea that their behavior in this regard might be the opposite. By contrast, in reading a novel, we voluntarily assumed the «willing suspension of disbelief» as defined by Coleridge. This is, in short, the fundamental difference between fiction and reality or truth. But such a distinction, so clear, can be the subject of revisions, contradictions and manipulations, the incidence of which is intensified when from the literary universe we make the leap to the use of language in political communication.