On the metapragmatics of ‘conspiracy theory’: Scepticism and epistemological debates in online conspiracy comments

Abstract

Conspiracy theories are powerful narratives that can decisively shape people's understandings of the world. Despite a long-standing scholarly interest, however, they have not yet been analysed from the angle of metapragmatics. A metapragmatic approach treats the concept of ‘conspiracy theory’ as a label understood to refer to a certain type of discourse, and the theories themselves as potentially demonstrating specific manifestations of metapragmatic awareness by incorporating the label into their theories.To demonstrate the utility of this approach, the article investigates a conspiracy theory according to which the notion of ‘conspiracy theory’ itself is ruled by government strategy. The analysis, focused on explicit occurrences of metalanguage and metacommunication, reveals that epistemological arguments and notions such as ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘evidence’ come to be interpreted and judged according to the imagined, stereotypical persona uttering them. Some arguments may then be metacommunicatively denied: denied not based on propositional content, but based on them allegedly representing the ‘mainstream’. The article suggests that the label ‘conspiracy theory’ may hinder rather than resolve disagreements, as it will itself become linked to ‘suspect’ personae.