When consequences are causes : Texts as guided paths

Abstract

Causation is a very important structuring principle of our perception of reality, but causation is, very often, imposed, and it basically depends on the observer and his or her perspective. It will be illustrated here how causation can be manipulated, as well as the relevance of this fact for language and communication. In scientific texts, the reader is guided through an evaluative process whose main goal is persuasion, but in this kind of message there is little room for manipulation concerning the ordering of causes and consequences. Logical fallacies, which may appear in ordinary conversation but also in more specialized varieties of linguistic usage (e.g. political language) illustrate it better. However, where this manipulative resource excels is in messages constructed around big metaphorical mappings. This is exemplified with the case of the treatment of the Gulf War in the mass media, as Lakoff (1992) very clearly explains. Moreover, we have that mass media exchanges between two different sides normally try to assign causes and consequences in a manipulative manner too, and there is a last example presenting this fact. Finally, our conclusion shows how all these possibilities share some configurational properties.