Page "Doublespeak" Paragraph 10

Due to the inherently deceptive nature of doublespeak as well as its prominent use in politics, doublespeak has been linked to the sociological perspective known as conflict theory.

Conflict theories detract from ideas of society being naturally in harmony, instead placing emphasis on political and material inequality as its structural features.

Antonio Gramsci's concepts on cultural hegemony, in particular, suggest that the culture and values of the economic elite – the bourgeoisie – become indoctrinated as ‘ common sense ’ to the working-class, allowing for the maintenance of the status quo through misplaced belief.

Being himself one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Italy, ( CPI ), his theories had, in turn, been strongly influenced by the German social thinker Karl Marx, and have their ideological roots grounded in Marxist theory of false consciousness and capitalist exploitation.

While Gramsci's views argue that culture ( beliefs, perceptions and values ) allows the ruling class to maintain domination, Marx's explanation is along more economic lines, with concepts such as commodity fetishism demonstrating how the ideology of the bourgeoisie ( in this case, the existence of property as a social creation rather than an ' eternal entity ') dominate over that of the working classes.