Tag: language and politics

“Dog whistle”: what does it mean and why do they use it?

This is a real dog whistle. But what do people mean when they refer to speech as a "dog whistle"?

This is a real dog whistle. But what do people mean when they refer to speech as a “dog whistle”?

 

In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles, which are audible to dogs but not humans.

-Wikipedia

The dictionary site www.ludwig.guru defines by example: When political parties have policies that will appeal to racists while not being overtly racist, they are indulging in dog-whistle politics.

Racism is where you seek it

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. Self-appointed experts decide that yet another word may cause offense, and the cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. Self-appointed experts decide that yet another word or symbol – in this case, a picture – is a “trigger.” The cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

 

se•mi•ot•ics, noun, the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

Ordinarily I would not be much interested in the race for San Jose (CA) City Council.  But Chris Escher of OpportunityNow, a San Jose-based website for entrepreneurs, sent me some campaign flyers and public reactions to them and asked for my reaction

Musk affirms painful truth about President Puppet

Whose words, ideas, and, most importantly, policy decisions are we hearing when the President speaks? They almost certainly aren’t his.

 What orators lack in depth, they make up to you in length

Montesquieu, 1767

Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1735

Now that Elon Musk has dared to say what everyone, including  Dr. Jill (who really wanted to be First Lady and talks about when “we” won)  already knows…and to suggest that the President is bereft of ideas or original thought…the “empty suit” accusation now has a much louder amplifier, and I thank Elon for having the courage to utter the unutterable.  Read more at https://www.language-expert.net/now-president-zero-the-final-devolution-of-presidential-rhetoric/

The (barely-) hidden agenda of racial equity glossaries

A dictionary reports equivalencies. A "racial equity glossary" dictates them.

A dictionary reports equivalencies. A “racial equity glossary” dictates them.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

From Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” (1871)

Recently,  OpportunityNow, a San Jose-based website/resource for entrepreneurs, invited me to comment on the City of San Jose’s Racial Equity Glossary.

Here’s what I sent them:

Language control through perceived offense: how far can p.c. go?

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. Self-appointed experts decide that yet another word - in this case, a word in a different language, may cause offense, and the cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. Self-appointed experts decide that yet another word – in this case, a word in a different language! – is a “trigger.” The cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

— George Orwell

In these times of language abuse and language control – when a Supreme Court nominee cannot define “woman” (because she is so politically compromised) – I must once again note that manufactured offense knows no limits.  There is no end to it, even though it crosses the bounds of commonsense and reason.

How the virus of political correctness spreads: none dare call it “looting”

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. A self-appointed expert decides that yet another word - in this case "looting" - may cause offense, and the cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

As with any religion, the p.c. folks make it up as they go along. A self-appointed expert decides that yet another word – in this case “looting” – may cause offense, and the cancer of political correctness advances, one word at a time.

 

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

From etiquette to coercion: language police threaten harsh punishments

 

An accurate and timely message: Many of the government abuses that George Orwell so accurately described turn out to have been accurate predictions as well.

An accurate and timely message: Many of the government abuses that George Orwell so accurately described turn out to have been accurate predictions as well.

 

Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell

“The Biden Administration…”– evading responsibility through impersonal speech

"Pyramid of obedience": a better metaphor than "chain of command"

Bad decisions flow downward and outward in the organizational pyramid, spreading bad ideas through obedience and the suppression of cognitive dissonance.

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

― George Orwell

Governments and organizations of every kind evade personal responsibility by making the organization the subject of an active sentence, as if it moved of its own will.  Granted, it’s sometimes a useful shorthand: Procter and Gamble has introduced…, in which case the company as a whole pulled it off, presumably in adherence to an agreed-upon business strategy; we don’t really have to know just whose idea the product was.

“War” or “defense”? Propaganda and the value of repetition

“Defense Department” or “War Department”? Repetition breeds acceptance. But what part of America are these soldiers “defending”?

 

“The truth is what most people believe.  And they believe that which is repeated most often.”

Paul Josef Goebbels

The quote is from the man who served as Hitler’s Propaganda Minister and who (BTW, he was a linguist like me, with a doctorate in philology) would today feel quite at home in a PR or ad firm, or at the CIA or a related secret agency, or at one of the big tech companies.

Government creates a new “domestic terrorist threat.”  And where are the linguists?

Some of the many aspects of linguistics

Somewhere in this word cloud is “comment on language abuses in public discourse” and “resist political attempts at language and thought control.”
Nothing happens without language, and in the current social turmoil, one side is blatantly attempting control through language.
Linguists remain silent..

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

  • – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

“The goals migrated:” impersonal language and malicious obfuscation in political speech  

It's all too rare that political speech comes off as anything but "blah." But it pays to observe how they use impersonal expressions to avoid responsibility.
It's all too rare that political speech comes off as anything but "blah." It doesn't have to be that way.

Political speech relies on verbal manipulation, one prominent example: impersonal language that  avoids assigning (or taking) responsibility.

“Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, a retired rear admiral, recently said that during the long U.S. undertaking in Afghanistan ‘the goals did migrate over time.’  Did the goals themselves have agency – minds of their own?”

George Will

When I listen to or read the speech of the people who represent the government and the military-industrial complex, I hear impersonal language and, typically, malicious obfuscation.   By that I mean that they speak, as bureaucrats and politicians always have, in terms that, because people on the receiving end rarely subject them to critical scrutiny, are accepted at face value, though a moment’s consideration reveals how devious and deceptive they are.

Calling for an end to pronomania

A profusion of pronouns

A profusion of pronouns

 Pronomania [pro-no-MAY-nee-ah], n. an obsession with multiplying third-person personal pronouns to indicate a large number of genders, subjectively defined, resulting in the proliferation of personal pronouns, the announcement of “my” pronouns, and the user’s enhanced self-image and feeling of virtuous sensitivity to gender.

Some people think they know about pronouns.  They know nothing.  They think they can multiply English personal pronouns at will.  They announce their “own” pronouns and feel virtuous.  They don’t know that pronouns are one of a few classes of words that are so fundamental that the inventory is limited and rarely, if ever changed.

“Critical Race Theory”: A triumph of marketing and branding

It is politically incorrect to question the real meaning of "Critical Race Theory." And that's the way its proponents like ie.

It takes courage and clear thinking to question the all-pervasive indoctrination of Critical Race Theory. But what does the phrase actually mean?

As there is now an inexorable push to make Critical Race Theory a required part of America’s educational system, pushback is  required.  Kudos to Andrew Gutman,  the Brearly (NY) School father who stood up, in no uncertain terms, to the relentless indoctrination to which his kid had been subjected (for $50,000+/year).

Twice poisoned

As Candace Owens notes, CRT is a double poison, taking time from teaching academic skills and at the same time producing a generation of non-thinking, malleable sheep.

On “semantic games” and “infrastructure”

What is a language?

A language is a vast, amorphous consensus among its users as to how words are equivalent to each other and associated with our subjective and objective worlds.

 When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

There is nothing “mere” about semantics!

Latest language crime: “equity”

 

A new brick has been added to the wall of politically correct speech: "equity" -- a euphemism for more (and unending) racial and gender preferences in pursuit of an undefinable and unattainable goal.

It takes courage and clear thinking to resist the liberal preoccupation with racial/gender preference and language control.

[In George Orwell’s 1984] Syme [a Party official] encourages Winston to recognize that the ‘whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought’.   He explains that ‘in the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.’  Syme refers to the fact that individual thought, rebellious or ‘unorthodox’ thoughts will be impossible and so, too, will the true concept of individual freedom.   Each concept will be expressed in just ‘one’ word.   Any ‘subsidiary’ meanings will be rubbed out and forgotten. (55).The party controls the mind through the control of language (Newspeak), the control of history (the past) and the control of war/ enemies, [via] the process of DoubleThink.

Latest language abuse: “deprogramming Trump supporters”

Deprogramming is a brutal concept. For one side in American politics to urge it on the other is deplorable. An alternative is compromise on the part of both sides, so that Americans learn to live with each other.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

— Nietzsche

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.

— Goethe

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

— Stanislaus I of Poland

American chaos: Did Trump incite?

A demagogue in a red tie spreads his arms in a gesture of love to his followers.

 

Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.

— Aristotle, 4th c. BCE

The people are capable of good judgment when they do not listen to demagogues.

— Napoleon I (1814-5)

Demagogy enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into a principle of identity.

— Saint-Exupery, 1942

 

The current chaos begins with words, or as Proverbs 18:21 has it, “The tongue has the power of life and death.”

Code-switching and pandering – a new low

Code-switching can be used in the service of pandering, as when Presidential candidates lapse into Spanish to win favor in the cheapest manner.

 Spare me the sight / of this thankless breed, these politicians / who cringe for favors from a screaming mob / and do not care what harm they do their friends / providing they can please a crowd!

Euripides, Hecuba (c. 425 BCE)

This post introduces my Blahblahblah Award, bestowed upon the politician using the most devious and manipulative language since…well, since the previous award.  The grinding Presidential race will continue for many months, so there should be plenty of material.