ABSTRACT
My concern in this book is, then, with certain uses of language, namely those which occur in political justification and argument. This being so it seems natural to ask next whether any general characterization of these uses of language can be given. For example, some people might want to say that they are ‘evaluative’ rather than ‘descriptive’ uses of language, and that this in turn can be found out by noticing that special ‘evaluative’ words occur in them. I shall try to show in this chapter why I believe that such a view is, if not strictly mistaken, at any rate not very helpful for my purposes. Although I hope I have succeeded in avoiding technicalities this is in a sense a technical discussion. Let me therefore say here that anyone who is willing to take my word for it that little is to be gained by trying to divide the words with which I shall be dealing into ‘descriptive’ and ‘evaluative’ ones or the latter into their ‘descriptive’ and ‘evaluative’ components may safely skip the bulk of this chapter and start reading again at the beginning of Section 5 (page 32) without missing anything essential to his understanding of the rest of the book.
