Self news: the fiction that mirrors you

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate, for a History of Linguistic Ideas, the concepts of "post-truth" and fake news. The hypothesis is that there would already be a proto-image of this kind of contemporary linguistic skepticism in sophistic rhetoric. To support this interpretation, we will analyze fake news from the Foucaultian perspective of language, especially the one expressed in The Order of Discourse. As the field of the History of Linguistic Ideas is, by definition, an interdisciplinary undertaking, this investigation is an analysis of discourse that calls into question the so-called "disciplines" of Linguistics, Literature and Philosophy of Language, as it calls into question "truth"/"false", "fiction"/"nonfiction". Finally, there is the defense of the thesis that if there is any embryo of “The Post-Truth Era" in classical antiquity, in contemporary times there is a cynicism and an ultra-narcissism that redefine this linguistic idea. Therefore, this paper proposes the self news concept to contemplate this (new?) Contemporary Linguistic Idea.