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modern class societies based on (never fully realised) ideas of legitimisation
through consent (Eder 1973).
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Habermas insists that this must not be understood in terms of a teleological
model. Although evolution is directed to a certain degree, it is reversible and
interruptible (1975: 140f). On the one side, „learning processes – through
which we acquire theoretical knowledge and moral insight, extend and renew
our evaluative language, and overcome self-deceptions and difficulties in
comprehension‟ (1984: 22). On the other side, these new „organisational
principles‟ (1975: 153) also create new problems (1975: 164f). Solutions for
these problems are not automatically based on unrestricted communication
but can be pathological too.
3.6 Pathological Communication
Social learning takes place through communicative action which is based on
rather universal and egalitarian forms of communication. Thus, critique must
reveal what distorts communication and makes a lifeworld dysfunctional.
Such pathologies derive from a deformation of the lifeworld (1987: 142ff) due
to an instrumentally biased rationalization which negatively affects the
reproduction of shared meaning. Following Freud‟s conceptualisation of the
abnormal, Habermas adopts the term pathology in order to describe such
conditions. Normal conditions are those in which a subject is able to deal with
conflicting situations and perform the proper exchange of arguments.
Through such a normative conception of Ego, pathological communication
gets defined as unconscious distortions of the structure of communication
itself via suppression and self-defence mechanisms (1974b, 1984: 21). For
example, the colonization of the lifeworld works against the free development
of a strong Ego through pressure generated by capitalism on families which
hinders the reproduction of shared meaning (1987: 318, 386ff). At an
individual level, the resulting distortion leads to „the overburdening of the
internal organization of speech in terms of the pressure exerted by problems
that stem from conflicts of identity and that initially overtax the external
organization of speech‟ (1974a: 169).
On a collective level, identities become uncertain, societal orders lose
legitimisation and individuals lose motivation or even become
psychopathological.
Social pathologies are not to be measured against “biological” goal status but in
relation to the contradictions in which communicatively intermeshed
interaction can get caught because deception and self-deception can gain
objective power in an everyday practice on the facticity of validity claims.
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(1987: 378)
However, in contrast to conservative critics, Habermas does not understand
rationalisation as automatically causing lifeworld deformations. Rather, the
rationalization of the lifeworld can set free new opportunities for the well-
being of humans and re-enchant our world (1987: 313f). As society is a
product of struggles (in the widest sense), the direction rationalisation can
take is open – this is where critical social sciences and in particular the DHA
can step in.
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4. Habermas’ Formal Pragmatics Supporting the DHA?
4.1 Theory…
We can now conceptualise how formal pragmatics can affect the DHA.
Habermas‟ concept provides a theoretical basis for critique which is
foundational and normative as it is grounded in interaction. He can do so,
because his reconstruction reveals the very basics of communication: every
communicative act contains a bit of idealisation, of undamaged
intersubjectivity. Thus, the possibility of emancipation is built into any
meaningful conversation. The way in which new meaning is created via the
justification, acceptance or refusal of validity claims (truth of a proposition,
normative rightness and personal truthfulness) therefore gives information
about the level of distortion.
However, in order to make Habermas‟ language-philosophy applicable, we
have to be aware that the ISS cannot serve as a point of departure – as
Habermas himself has become increasingly aware (section 3.4). It is hard to
imagine to what extent a linguistic or sociological analysis could benefit from
comparing real texts with an imagined ISS: after all, real texts always fail to
meet the standards of an ISS. In contrast, analyses should draw on Habermas‟
more basic concept of validity claims in order to deal with real existing texts.
As Habermas noted himself, validity claims and their immanent striving for
cooperation „transcend any local context; at the same time, they have to be
raised here and now‟ (Habermas 1990: 322). Normally, speakers perceive
their argument as being true, right or truthful while hearers have other beliefs
and must be convinced by the first person (with better arguments). Such
praxis is still orientated towards truth, rightness and truthfulness based on the
assumptions of formal pragmatics. However, it is the interaction between the
first- and the second person alone, their claims and justifications which
generates a (always fallible) dynamic towards truth, rightness and
truthfulness (2003: 45). Before giving an example, I will now summarise
previous findings with regards to Reisigl and Wodak‟s three dimensional
model of critique.
Immanent critique refers to text-internal contradictions and is more or less
independent from the investigator‟s point of view. For example, an argument
is contradictory from a logical point of view if the speaker brings forward two
logically opposing opinions. To that extent, Habermas‟ stance does not
necessarily affect this kind of critique. However, he has outlined an immanent
critique of texts. For example, inconsistency as well as ignoring others‟
arguments might signal wider societal (or individual) communication
pathologies (1974a).
Sociodiagnostic critique intends to demystify discourses, e.g. rightwing
populism. Accepting a progressive consensus, critique of such populism
might seem unproblematic and comprehensible but could be perceived as
biased, as being not able to „validate its own critical standards‟, from another
position. An explicit reference to Habermas‟ formal pragmatics alleviates such
reproaches as particular texts, e.g. a speech by a politician, can be checked
with regards to claims it raises. Are these claims justified, are they true, right