Over at Patriactonary, Will S did a
post about bullying. One of the points that he makes is that the
term bullying is getting the rape treatment, which is to say that
much like the word rape, it's being used to cover a broader and
broader range of activities.
One of the interesting things about
language is how one language is compared to another in worth. When I
was in Greece, one of the natives told me that the Greek language has
gone through several recorded fazes. Early on there was Homeric
Greek, the language used in the Iliad and the Odyssey; then you had
Koine Greek, the language the New Testament was written in; Medieval
Greek; and lastly Modern Greek, which is what is spoken today. The
interesting thing about the Greek language through history is that
instead of advancing, the language has devolved, and is today more
primitive than it was in the time of Homer. When I asked how one
measured whether a language was superior or inferior, he said, among
other things, that in Homeric Greek one could communicate a thought
more precisely with fewer words.
The reason Will S's article made me
reflect on this is that those who push for various PC causes, such as
stopping bullying, are always trying to bring more and more things
under their favorite buzz word categories. “You might not think
it, but that's racism/bullying/sexism/harassment/etc. to.” The end result is to take away from the precision of the conversation,
which then takes away from the precision of thought.
The desired end effect is to cut off
people's ability to think about these issues, and instead have them
simply react.
Your final point about thinking versus reacting is a very good insight.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of woman I knew i school who had a laptop with two stickers: one was a feminist sticker, the other one read: "The most dangerous people are those who think for themselves."
As expected, she was a typical garden-variety feminist. She very much felt she was thinking for herself, but she was just reacting as she had been taught.
Your point about the Greek language is also interesting. No wonder people misunderstand each other so much- our vocabularies are more limited and the words we know mean less. It's sad, but not unexpected.
The creation of new terms like 'date rape', or the muddying the definitions of words, redefining them so that, for example, yelling at one's spouse constitutes 'abuse' or 'violence', is very much in line with Orwell's conception of 'Newspeak', creating a new vocabulary so as to render older ways of thinking literally unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteRight, but I think that there is even more going on with newspeak. I believe that is more about removing the negative connotations that come with certain words in an attempt to prevent people from learning from history. So for example the change from liberal to progressive does not actually change the political philosophy being described, but instead tries to remove the political philosophy from the negative experiential knowledge that people have of it.
DeleteAhh, you are right. After giving myself a refresher, it is very much both.
DeleteYes; Orwell was frighteningly prescient; here we are...
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