Carlin and Orwell
Two Georges on How Language Controls Thought
Language is interesting. Language is fascinating. Language is how we communicate with one another, a translation of feeling into word and back into feeling again.
Language is also a weapon. Language is used to control people. It’s mostly covert rather than overt, unconscious instead of intentional. There are certainly those who actively make efforts in their language to influence other people. But for the most part the control language exerts over people is an amalgamation of instinctual intent. It’s unplanned, but still reflects the pulse of society in part or as a whole.
The bodies of work of both Orwell and Carlin are focused around this, the power of language and the way it is used to control people.
Because we do think in language. And so the quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.
That excerpt comes from one of Carlin’s bits about euphemisms. He goes on to give examples of how groups want to control language because that’s how they can control thought. Orwell made the same point decades earlier in his novel 1984 and in the essay “Politics and the English Language.”
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
This comes across most apparently in the news. Read about any given story from a number of outlets and you can see how reporting on an event actively controls how you think about it. Even setting aside the liberal/conservative and libertarian/authoritarian biases that are even more easily noticed, you can see that the way people have been brought up and conditioned to use language to unconsciously propagate the priorities of society. Another Carlin quote:
Israeli murderers are called Commandos. Arab Commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called Freedom fighters.
The specific terms used to describe events are the greatest determinant in how the event is perceived and remembered. Nouns and verbs of identities and actions. An event could be described as protestors demonstrating or mobs rioting—the exact same event!—and the language will guide how the event is treated. This is well established, and yet seemingly unavoidable. Even when trying to actively control against bias in reporting, the bland, empty words used end up imparting bland, empty thoughts. Worse still, euphemistic language prevents delivery of hard truth; done so under the guise of protecting the innocent, they are stabbed doubly in the front and back because the protection is really of the ones in power against bearing responsibility. Carlin’s description of the evolution from shell shock to post traumatic stress disorder is evidence enough of that. Even in writing this piece I find myself resorting to softer language to cushion sharp jabs.
Language is used as a weapon because it is the most effective weapon and one that most people don’t even acknowledge as such. It somehow seems more civilized to do so, fighting with words rather than force. But is is really? Controlling people through force requires continual exertion and will, inevitability, fail. This point is made explicitly clear by two fictional leaders who understand power.
Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! —Albus Dumbledore
Force will, as I say, inevitability fail. But as the ages passed, those who wished to exert control learned that if they wanted to keep the people in check, they needed them to police themselves: self-censorship, self-regulation, self-control. And what better way than by using language, the very tool that exists to think, to communicate. From this Orwell’s Newspeak is born. Thousands times more insidious than pervasive surveillance, the true horror of 1984, the real weapon of control, is not through watching people all the time but by controlling their very actions by using language. Oppress people through force, they can see it and feel it. But oppress people through language, they don’t even notice most of the time. Get them early enough, train them when they’re malleable, and they won’t resist because they think they are operating under their own autonomy. They will carry it out openly and willingly.
Is it so difficult, then, to hypothesize that weaponized language might do more damage than physical destruction? Patrick Henry’s ‘Liberty or Death!’ and all that. And Dumbledore again:
your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness
When language has coded people, they use it against themselves to control themselves and to propagate continued control. It is a self-replicating function. An individual has but one life to give, but language can kill them over and over again by denying thought and action. I can’t help but wonder about which might be more or less desirable to a person: being killed or living in a world where you self regulate your thoughts and actions because of conditioning by language. There is no answer, just the preference of the individual.
Again I reiterate that most of this control is unguided and unplanned. Politics and Business and Media definitely take care in the language they use, framing the issues around the narratives they want to convey. But the majority is carried out unconsciously by the body politic. Is it a function of human society, a feature rather than a bug? Maybe. But I’d like to think that we’d be able to do better than that. If humans are supposedly more advanced than other creatures they ought to be able to actively decide not to resort to instinct.
