Cover Image
QR Code

Lexical Silencing: How to Suppress Speech with Negative Words.

This paper will introduce "lexical silencing" as a new linguistic phenomenon, i.e., positive statements about something are made more difficult to express when the only (or the predominant) word for it in a language is a negative word. A good example is the term "political correctness," which carrie...

Full description

Published in:Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy Vol. 45; no. 1; pp. 5 - 16
Main Author: Liu, Chang
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Mar2026
Subjects:
Political correctness
Constraints (Linguistics)
Discriminatory language
Censorship
Public communication
Functional linguistics
Persuasion (Rhetoric)
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost