Also known as moral posturing, this refers to the act of expressing opinions in a deliberately conspicuous manner in order to signal to others about one’s virtues. A politician, for instance, might express disgust against an ideology just for the sake of sending across the message that he stands against regressive social ideas. He may not, however, genuinely believe or stand by the virtues that he claims to possess in public. The term, coined by British writer James Bartholomew, is now often used in a pejorative sense to attack the expression of one’s opinion merely as a token act to advertise one’s virtuousness to the world.
