Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
ISSN 2237-6984
Rodrigo Seixas
Doutorando e Mestre em Estudos Linguísticos pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
(UFMG), Brasil.
rodrigoseixaspb@uol.com.br
Abstract: Oxford’s 2016 “Word of the Year”, post-truth is the qualifier of circumstances in
which objective facts are less influential on public opinion than emotional appeals and
personal beliefs. Of course, post-truth would not only be synonymous with fake news, but
especially with conviction (ANGENOT), because, true or false, pieces of information are
either disclosed or excluded not by their veracity, but by their adaptation to beliefs/values
of each individual. Such unavailability of verification would in theory be due to the type of
pragmatic and utilitarian rationality (BOUDON) that shapes the cognition and rhetoric of
individuals. The interest of this article is therefore not the operation/circulation of post-
truth discourses, but rather the questioning of contemporary rationality as the cause of
the phenomenon, to the point of becoming a concept much debated in the human and
social sciences as a whole.
Keywords: Post-truth. Conviction. Rhetoric. Fake news.
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