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ABSTRACT
More than sixty years ago, T. D. Weldon (1953) published an influential book entitled The Vocabulary of Politics. In it he affirmed a common belief among philosophers of language that words which could not be connected to objective, measurable objects and rendered the legitimate study of scientific investigation deserved to be dismissed as merely emotive utterances unworthy of serious consideration. They, he said, were either "boo" words that registered displeasure or "hurrah" words that expressed pleasure. Whichever they were, however, they were meaningless, since there was no externally observable referent to which an unbiased observer could appeal. They might, of course, fulfill some emotional need or communicate a personal preference; but, they were philosophically useless beyond that. So, for example, my statement that I like chocolate ice cream and your statement that you like Tutti Frutti ice cream may describe our different tastes, but they are useless insofar as determining which flavour is somehow "better." What goes for ice cream goes equally well for justice, beauty and so on. Weldon argued that normative or evaluative concepts, in the absence of some basis for empirical falsification, were not worth a single philosopher's breath. This discussion paper invites readers to consider whether there is more to "just semantics" than that. Readers are invited to consider some of the philosophical underpinnings of what our words mean and, indeed, to ponder what meaning might be. In fact, it comes close to asking what "meaning" might be. It also implies that it is incumbent upon anyone from patricians, plutocrats, prime ministers and presidents, plebeians, peasants, proletarians and even lumpenproletarians to use care when discussing politics.
Keywords: democracy, essentially contested concept, meaning, semantic differential, Gallie
Introduction
Political scientists and others whose job it is to study democracy have a number of questions that they must ask and answer before their hypothesizing, theorizing and philosophizing can begin in earnest. Among other things, they must get comfortable with their basic approach. For the empirically inclined, that means that they must decide what specific aspect of democracy they want to study, from which theoretical perspective and with what methodological techniques. There are ample options. Among the potentially fruitful domains of inquiry are the relationships between democratic governance and economic, geographic, psychological and...