What tangled web we weave when our intention is to deceive?
Sir Walter Scott
The distortion of language lies at the heart of the greatest of threats to human civilisation. It now effects all aspects of the public and civic sphere, from court rooms to journalism to the expression of corporate-political elites. It is what allows atrocities to be sanctioned or airbrushed.
The distortion of language fundamentally undermines the idea of shared and purposeful communication, whether interpersonal or societal. This is what Jurgen Habermas, in a different context, referred to as Communicative Action – a term borrowed from John Austin’s idea of ideal speech language – effectively purging it of ideology and taint. Distortion undermines the use of language in terms of truth-saying or truth-telling propositions.
Theodor Adorno famously argued that after Auschwitz to write a poem was barbaric, implying that nothing could conjure up or express in human terms such atrocities. Nevertheless, various accounts by Primo Levi as a survivor in books such as If This Is A Man (1947) and The Truce (1963) did poetically express the horror and show how human resilience endured. Language survived in a humanistic age to express the terms of the horror, but we are now in a more obviously trans-humanist age, and remnants of civilisation are not as obviously influential or vocal.
The propaganda and euphemisms leading up to the Holocaust involved the use of language as a masking device to conceal different meanings and agendas.
Although I am wary of structuralism, I do believe it is often necessary to deconstruct meaning. That occurs when an expression is being used to conceal an ulterior purpose, or to make a horror more palatable. The object of euphemisms, buzz words and jargons is often to distract, deflect and misdirect.
Kenneth Branagh’s film Conspiracy (2011) effectively depicts the use by the Nazi High command at the Wannsee Conference chaired by Heydrich of the term evacuation, which of course really meant extermination.
The phrase more typical of our age since Srebrenica has been ethnic cleansing, which is an opaque word for genocide, which at least has been used expressly in response to the actions of the Israelis, but even the utilisation of the appropriate word in a world of distorted coverage invokes fake well-financed indignation.
In war or military matters historically, other euphemisms are collateral damage, friendly fire, or my favourite crew transfer question – meaning coffins for the dead bodies from the space shuttle.
Orwell
Any discussion of language in the context of war and politics leads inevitably to George Orwell.
The term Doublespeak has been culled from Orwell’s 1984 (1949), although it was not used in the text where expressions like Doublethink and Newspeak perfectly express the nature of propaganda.
In our time, political speech and writing are the defence of the indefensible… Thus, political language must consist of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…
Orwell elaborated on these themes earlier in his magisterial essay The Politics of the English Language (1946). He piquantly observed of political language that it ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ The essay chastises vagueness and prioritises clarity and simplicity over euphemisms.
Thus, when defenceless villages are destroyed it is called pacification, and the plunder of property is called rectification of frontiers. One might think of other euphemisms in use today, such as affordable housing or even debt relief.
Orwell’s essay is not confined to political language but includes all forms of distortion of language:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
Though he saw a terminal decline in the England of his time. He did suggest certain remedies well worth citing:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speechwhich you are used to seeing in print. (Examples that Orwell gave included swan song, and hotbed. Such phrases are dying metaphors which a present speaker does not understand the context of, and the original meaning rendered meaningless because those who use them did not know their original meaning. The historical interpretation of the US Constitution by such as Scalia is like this.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passivewhere you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargonword if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
And the last canonical rule:
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Linguistic Distortion
Albert Camus is the great prose master both in terms of precision and sensuality. He can be quoted endlessly, but with respect to doublespeak there is this quotation from The Plague (1949) elaborating on Animal Farm (1950):
There will come a time in human history when the man who says two plus two equals four will be sentenced to death.
The criminally underrated Ernest Hemingway wrote a little known, but invaluable text called On Writing (1984), containing his observations about his craft, which curiously mirror that of Orwell.
He advised writers to cut out the scrollwork of ornament. Stick to what is true and cut out the superfluous. Write about what you know. Like Orwell, he emphasises the active verb and the shortest word possible.
With respect to the issue of immigration the word removal is now used without elaboration or explanation, notably at the recent Tory conference. The word disposal invokes similar considerations. Again, this involves a form of distortion and side-tracking of reality.
A real problem occurs when bureaucratic language or legalese conceal infamy. People often buy into it for ease of mind, or owing to a blinkered or cognitively dissociated sense that nothing is happening – or that it suits their interests. This theme is beautifully expressed in the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest (2023).
In terms of the precise use of language to explain horror we have the Martin Niemoller parable during the rise of Nazism:
First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Contrast the clarity and sincerity of that with this from Donald Rumsfeld:
Reports that say that something has not happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we do not know we do not know.
Rumsfeld comments are wrought with care and are lying to serve a purpose or engaging in deception to so do. That is the point St. Augustine condemned in his categorisations of lying as the truly venal lie.
Other awful phrases now creeping into our world of sound bites and doublespeak include the new normal. This is effectively a plea to accept degradation and Chinese corporate capitalism, as well as to be controlled and shrivelled in an Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Compliance is another dangerous euphemism.
We have, conversely, also become obsessed with hygiene and health and are preyed on in that respect. Stay safe. Oh, and take our drugs. The slightest cold sets people off into hysteria, leading to limited physical contact and an increasingly asexuality.
This new form of social hygiene divides the world into the pure and the impure. Corporate and advertising interests are adept at this. Virtually any episode of the Madmen series set in the 1950s demonstrates that. In legal terms there is always a degree of tolerance of puff and blow to use the contract law term until the disparity between claim and exaggeration meets the reality of what is being done. Simply the best. Largest in the industry.
Advertising and politics are now so co-mingled, and have been for some time in the interests of big business, that there is now little difference between winning an election and selling tinned beans. Make the product be the change.
Sadly, such approaches have also crept into the criminal justice system. Thus we find slogans such as no excuse for abuse, while in sex abuses cases the phrase there is no smoke without fire is migrating into closing speeches.
Political correctness is the ultimate destruction of language, providing an excuse for no platforming people and undermining freedom of expression.
Simplicity has its Drawbacks
But with all respect to Orwell and Hemingway simplicity has its drawbacks. Camus was never simple.
Thus, in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange reveals a universe of gobbledygook, much in evidence in social media, reducing language to that of Alex the Droog. The compression of meaning into shorthand symbols or abbreviations is a return to the planet of the apes, creating simplistic misleading forms of communication such as the flawed Me Too movement.
In my view we should reformulate the legendary text by Flaubert, The Dictionary of Received Ideas (1911-13) and Ambrose Bierce’s The Devils Dictionary (1911), filtered through the legendary dictionary of Dr Johnson in terms of providing more amplified definitions of some of the distortions of language in our age. The expression used to be followed by the real meaning.
As in the definition of ‘Pension’ in Dr Johnsons’ dictionary:
In England it is understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Or ‘Faith’ from The Devils Dictionary:
Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Or Flaubert’s definition of sex as ‘Intimacy occurred.’
I thus suggest a new dictionary of the real meanings of the doublespeak of our time, and indeed a reversion to old patterns of behaviour. This requires us to read books leading to an enhanced form of comprehension relying on clarity and simplicity.
In this respect, self-reportage or sincerity can also be bullshit and ought to be treated with scepticism. Sincerely adopting your own euphemism can lead you to condone atrocities. It is precision and adherence to the facts that is crucial, certainly in political and civic discourse, which is not always easy.
As Samuel Beckett, the master of succinctness once put it:
Ever Tried. Ever Failed. Never Mind, Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.
Feature Image: Tamás Mészáros