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.

阴谋论是强有力的叙述，可以决定性地影响人们对世界的理解。尽管有长期的学术兴趣，但是，尚未从元语用学的角度对其进行分析。元实用主义的方法将“阴谋论”的概念视为标签，理解为是指某种类型的话语，而理论本身则通过将标签纳入其理论而潜在地展示了元实用意识的具体表现。

为了证明这种方法的实用性，本文研究了一种阴谋论，根据该阴谋论，“阴谋论”的概念本身受政府战略的支配。该分析着重于元语言和元交流的显着发生，揭示了认识论论点和概念，例如“阴谋论”和“证据”，将根据想象中的定型人物进行解释和判断。然后，某些论据可能被元交流地否定：不是基于命题内容而是基于所谓的代表“主流”的论据而被拒绝。文章认为，“阴谋论”这个标签可能会阻碍而不是解决分歧，因为它本身将与“可疑”人物联系在一起。