Communicative effects of the empty word: the paraological foundations of sociological postmethodology

• Main Authors: Vladimir Nikolaenko, Nikolaenko Leonid, Yuriy Yakovenko
• Format: Article
• Language: Ukrainian
• Published: V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University 2018-10-01
• Series: Український соціологічний журнал
• Online Access: https://periodicals.karazin.ua/usocjour/article/view/11552/11398

The article is devoted to issues related to the maximum possible violations of the principle of accuracy in the content of words, leading to empty talk in verbal communication, giving rise to specific communicative effects. It is emphasized that when such happens in social sciences, empty concepts (concepts with zero volume) arise that do not correspond to the criterion of scientificness, actualizing its illusion: science passes into the state of post-science (post-sociology in our case). In consequences the social and historical practice in the eyes of scientists loses the value of the criterion of truth; the connection between the socio-historical development of society and the science about it is torn; there is a discrediting of the so-called general concepts - theoretically significant categories of knowledge; an increasing number of methodologies are not able to provide a theoretical synthesis and give society a knowledge of its historical perspective. In sociology such criterion silently recognizes the success in the market of sociological information, closed to private practices and then the concepts of completeness, accuracy, etc., connected with the word truth, turn into glosses - they sound, but are empty, and words related to sociological empiricism, such as validity, reliability, representativeness, verification acquire special value.