When language is a camouflage
SHE was a victim of domestic dispute.” Or “She was brutally beaten by her husband.” Which statement more accurately describes what happened to a woman who is brought to the emergency room with severe bruising and a bone fracture with obvious signs of a beating? I believe most of us would agree that the second sentence is a more truthful description of events; it’s also more likely to evoke a response of outrage and maybe punishment for the beater and protection for the beaten. Does that make the first statement an outright lie? Not exactly, and this is where the trick lies. It is partly and obscurely true, vague, and mild i.e. it gives us a nebulous idea of what happened but simultaneously conceals the complete truth and softens the reality and gravity of it. Therefore, this “nicer” statement probably will not evoke the same response as the other since it sounds like two family members fought and no one is really blameworthy.
This is the black magic of words. When language ceases to serve as a tool of communication and clarification and a carrier of real meanings, it becomes a vehicle of manipulations and clever games intended to obscure, mislead and distort truths. The result is a falsified perception of the world that is divorced from any real observation or understanding of things as they really are. Now why is this significant? Simple answer: because our perception of anything defines our response or non-response to it, and taken to its ultimate this could be the difference between life and death. If you perceive a poisonous snake as a friendly creature, you probably won’t live long enough to express these warmhearted feelings.
This is all too relevant in our world. A brief exposure to any news program or political speech floods our minds with instances of “doublespeak.” This is a term that finds its origins in the work of George Orwell in “1984” and has been extensively discussed by many linguists, philosophers, and intellectuals around the world. Basically doublespeak, in the words of William Lutz (an American linguist) is: “Language which pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. It is language that makes the bad seem good; something negative appear positive; something unpleasant to appear attractive, or at least tolerable. It is language that avoids or shifts responsibility. “Sound familiar? I am certain it does, but let’s look more into it.
In a world that speaks this underhanded language, and may I say fluently, a person who engages in sodomy for example (yes that is what it used to be called) is “gay,” a word that associates happiness with this act or choice. Innocents being carpet bombed and killed become “collateral damage,” something that is accidental and inevitable with no implication of a perpetrator. Of course, it’s more “creative” than that and even good things can be painted in a dark light if it furthers certain agendas.
Thus in such a world, legitimate resistance to occupation, mass killings, and vicious racism can be labeled “terrorism.” We only need to go a couple of years back when Nelson Mandela was still on the US terrorism watch list to understand this. Even the term “market”, as James Petras in “The politics of language and the language of political regression” puts it, is a deceptive term that endows the market with human characteristics and powers. When we hear that the market demands wage cuts, for instance, we might imagine the market as a giant issuing decrees and demands on humanity, while the reality is markets don’t exist independent of social relations, power relations, and class issues. Petras writes: “Today’s market reality is defined by giant multinational multinational banks and corporations dominate the labor and commodity markets...
“Fundamental to any understanding, but left out of contemporary discussion, is the unchallenged power of the capitalist owners of the means of production distribution, advertising, the capitalist bankers who provide or deny credit and the capitalist-appointed state officials who ‘regulate’ or deregulate exchange relations.”
So in fact, the virtuous image of the market masks private capital’s predatory behavior as it chases greater profits. If this reality is not properly understood, how can there be any real resistance and dismantling of it?
It is indeed a sad state of affairs to reduce words to blindfolds and shackles that imprison the mind rather than expand and enlighten it. In such a world of doublespeak, the most free act is to dissect this language, expose it, reject it, and seek truths.
It’s as if the powerful are asking us Groucho Marx’s banks the question: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” I would rather stick with my “lying” eyes, how about you?
