In contemporary democracies, political conversations often seem impossible. A progressive and a conservative talk past each other. A libertarian and a liberal find themselves in fundamental disagreement about what matters most. Yet what if these apparent incompatibilities are not signs of unreasonableness or bad faith, but rather different languages speaking to the same world? This is the elegant insight offered by Arnold Kling’s 2013 book, The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides. Kling argues that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians operate according to three distinct axes of moral reasoning. Progressives, Kling argues, generally hold to an oppressor versus oppressed moral paradigm while conservatives are largely along the moral axis of civilization versus barbarism. Finally, libertarian moral reasoning is largely focused upon a dichotomy of liberty versus coercion.
Understanding these three languages, Kling suggests, can transform political discourse from mutual demonization into genuine cross-cultural dialogue. Yet Kling himself acknowledges a crucial limitation: his framework is designed specifically for “politically aware contemporary Americans” and is “not designed to apply to other time periods or other countries.” This essay asks what happens when we extend Kling’s framework beyond American borders, and specifically, what emerges when we examine how his three languages manifest in cultural contexts, where the pursuit of reputation and collective dignity operates according to entirely different rules than those of Kling’s American languages.
If Kling’s three languages are indeed universal features of political reasoning, we argue they must take on different forms in different cultural paradigms. More specifically, we propose that non-American cultural frameworks, which emphasize reputation, family standing, and collective dignity rather than individual guilt or innocence, reshape not just how political issues are debated, but which political language becomes dominant in any given context. In these cultures, when issues directly threaten core cultural values, the civilization vs. barbarism language becomes the lens through which all political questions are filtered, while the oppression vs. innocence and liberty vs. coercion frameworks recede into the background. This essay demonstrates that Kling’s three languages are indeed present in every political culture, but underlying cultural framework determine which language achieves dominance when stakes are highest.
To ground this argument, we must first examine the foundational framework of cultural worldviews. Early anthropological and psychological research categorized countries into major cultural paradigms (Nisbett and Cohen, 1996; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997). These paradigms represent fundamentally different approaches to social control and moral reasoning: guilt-innocence cultures rely on internalized conscience and codified law; honor-shame cultures emphasize reputation, collective standing, and the maintenance of face; and fear-power cultures prioritize respect for authority and power structures (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998). Contemporary political and anthropological research nuances these distinctions, arguing that culture is comprehensive but not static (Parekh, 2006; Jenkins, 2002). Nevertheless, while assuming broad cultural paradigms is reductive, societies are understood to operate under cultural frameworks that are distinctive from one another (Demetriou, 2014).
For example, consider immigration within different cultural paradigms. Kling discusses how there are robust discussions about immigration in the United States according to the three political languages. According to the libertarian voice, immigration is tolerated because restrictive borders permit a more coercive government. The conservative, on the other hand, tends to view immigration negatively because it threatens to allow the culture and civilization of the country to fall prey to outsiders with barbarian values. And a progressive may not support immigration because immigrants will take jobs from low-skilled workers in the United States, further oppressing those who are already vulnerable (Kling, 2013, pp. 73-74). What Kling demonstrates is that in a culture like the United States, immigration can be debated across all three political languages because the issue doesn’t fundamentally threaten the core cultural value of guilt and innocence under American law.
Nevertheless, if the question of immigration were brought to South Korea, this robust conversation would all but disappear. Allowing vast numbers of immigrants to become Korean citizens would be seen as an unthinkable practice. This does not mean that there are no opportunities for immigrants to come to South Korea. But compared to the United States, South Korea does not have the kind of robust public debate around open-border policies and whether they should allow their country to become more multicultural. South Korea does maintain immigrant communities and foreign workers, yet the political discourse rarely centers on whether immigration should be expanded (Thränhardt, 1996). The difference in approaches to immigration between the United States and South Korea is striking and reveals something important about how cultural contexts shape political language expression.
The United States and South Korea, in this case of immigration, differ significantly in cultural paradigms. The United States is a culture that prioritizes legality, and South Korea is a culture that prioritizes cultural preservation. For American citizens and the American government, the predominant question is: What constitutes guilt and what constitutes innocence in American society? For an American libertarian, immigrants should be innocent of overbearing government coercion and restrictions. For an American conservative, American citizens are innocent vis-à-vis guilty immigrants who will inevitably erode the integrity of the country. For an American progressive, low-skilled workers are innocent and do not deserve to lose their jobs. In the United States, while the question of immigration exists through the three political languages (Kling, 2013), it does not challenge a deeply held value for legality.
However, South Korea is not thinking in the same terms as the United States. The issue of immigration disrupts Korean identity on a cultural level distinct from multinational country contexts (Draudt, 2016). What does immigration mean for South Korea? It could mean that the country is not strong enough to protect its borders. It could mean that its citizens are not skilled enough compared to foreigners. And perhaps even more worrying, it could mean that the country will once again be on the defensive against the barbarism of foreigners who weaken the Korean civilization. Suddenly, we see that the Korean framework speaks directly to the barbarism vs. civilization language (Kling, 2013). In the case of South Korea, the question of immigration directly challenges deeply held beliefs of cultural preservation (Draudt, 2016). Therefore, the other languages are silenced under the overpowering weight of barbarism vs. civilization.
Let us consider another issue, one that would not get airtime in the American context, but one that is hotly debated elsewhere: religious equality. In India, there is a fundamental question of whether India is a Hindu nation or whether India is a multireligious nation. This question of religious tolerance is hotly debated among all political languages in India. An Indian libertarian would say that all religious practices should be permitted without government intervention in their specific region, city, and village, as each religious group has the right to practice freely. Meanwhile, an Indian conservative would say that only one religion should dominate to protect the civilization of the state of India. In the modern context, this is most likely a Hindu nationalist who rejects the barbarism of Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs who threaten Hindu civilization (Hansen, 1999). Finally, an Indian progressive would see minority religions as historically oppressed and push for not only religious tolerance but religious equality. The traditions of all religions would be respected and given equal opportunity in business, education, and politics. In the end, religious freedom is a question that exists in all three political languages in India (Bhargava, 1998).
However, for the United States, religious protection is a deeply held right (Rogers, 2004). No matter the political language, the norm and hierarchal ranking of religious liberty supersede other moral rational dimensions. Even if an American individual were conservative and thought their religion was more civilized than another, they would still believe that even barbarian religions are protected and have a right to exist. Within the American discourse, the moral reasoning of liberty versus coercion becomes paramount. There is no situation in which Americans would allow some religious groups to be unequivocally coercively restricted based on the traditional legitimacy or power of another religion (Rogers, 2004). In the context of religious freedom, the American cultural paradigm essentially neutralizes the civilization vs. barbarism language, making it unthinkable to deny religious freedom on the basis of cultural preservation.
Let us look at one last issue: whether governments should give contracts to extraction companies on Indigenous lands, a hotly debated topic in contemporary Brazil. A Brazilian libertarian may or may not support these companies because they believe that companies should not be regulated by the government. Notably, the importance for the Brazilian libertarian is freedom against the power of the government, rather than protecting Indigenous rights. Meanwhile, a Brazilian conservative would likely support the extraction companies, considering these communities as vestiges of Brazil’s barbaric past. According to a Brazilian conservative, the government employs its powers to protect civilization, so what the government decides is the right action. A Brazilian progressive would stand against extraction companies for their destruction of Indigenous lands and the oppression of a marginalized people. To the Brazilian progressive, anyone without money and power is the oppressed, and so regardless of economic or political benefits to extraction projects, they must oppose oppression from both large companies and the government (Felipe and Costa, 2023).
Meanwhile, in the United States, Indigenous lands occupy a distinctive legal category where they are independent of federal oversight. While much can be said of the inadequacies of Indigenous land rights to truly make reparations for the American government’s devastation of Indigenous peoples, the independence of Indigenous lands is a result of the oppressor vs. the oppressed language. Indigenous peoples have been oppressed by the American government and therefore have land independent of their oppressors. Unlike debates in Brazil, the American framework does not consider the economic or developmental benefits of extraction companies to outweigh the importance of protecting the oppressed. Therefore, regardless of American political orientation, the special status of Indigenous lands prevents the federal government from giving contracts to extraction companies.
Through these three issues of immigration, religious equality, and Indigenous land rights, we can see that different cultural frameworks take on very different approaches. Within some cultural frameworks, the issue does not attack deeply rooted beliefs and so it is debated among all three political languages. However, some issues challenge the fundamental paradigms of a culture, and so all political languages are diminished to one leading language. Again, it must be stated that within a country, there can be individuals with diverse opinions, despite their cultural paradigm. Nevertheless, on a macro level, countries tend to orient themselves to a single political language that “takes over” in certain circumstances.
And so, the final question is: what is the importance of mapping cultural paradigms onto Kling’s political languages? Kling writes that “One benefit of being able to understand all three languages of politics is that it becomes easier to recognize the reasonableness of the positions held by others” (2013, p. 73). In other words, understanding the other languages helps work against narrow-minded worldviews that lead to intolerance and polarization. By being able to learn the languages of others, people can have more constructive conversations on important issues.
We argue that understanding the cultural frameworks is the next step in constructive conversations. We live in a globalized world where we are interacting with people all around the world. The decisions made in one country affect the livelihoods of residents in another country. Furthermore, immigrants, refugees, expatriates, and people of all nationalities now work and live together in proximity. If we want to understand one another, we must also understand how cultural frameworks intersect with political languages. The cultural frameworks not only help explain why different cultures debate different issues but also show that certain political languages are more dominant depending upon the cultural contextualization of the issue. Understanding both cultural frameworks and Kling’s political languages gives us a greater understanding of how people in different cultural contexts construct their world, and crucially, how to engage with them more productively. In a world of increasing cultural contact and conflict, this understanding is not merely academic; it is essential for building bridges across the seemingly unbridgeable divides that separate us.