There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language
— George Orwell —
When one surveys our contemporary culture, it is difficult not to conclude that language is being depreciated and eviscerated.
We humans can communicate through many means, such as touch, expressions, and giving – and even our mere presence in situations where we would be more comfortable elsewhere, such as when sharing grief or loss with another. But our primary means of communication is language.
Genesis speaks of the Tower of Babel, where the confusion of tongues disrupted man’s incredible hubris. Anyone who has traveled to another country and culture has experienced the discomfort of being in a strange environment without the comfort of clear communication. Yet far more insidious is the dissolution of the power of words within a culture with a nominally common tongue.
The Overloading of Adjectives
One element of this depreciation is the overloading of adjectives. In object-oriented software development, there is the capability to overload a software object’s functionality, i.e., giving a derivative object more capabilities than the parent while using the same name and core functions. In language, the effect is the opposite: words are stripped of their original meaning, lessened by hyperbolic use. Consider the contemporary use of the word “awesome.” Derived from the Greek achos, meaning pain, it confers an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder inspired by authority, the sacred, or the sublime. It implies the experience of being in the presence of someone or something far greater than oneself. It has become an adjective for virtually anything mildly pleasing in modern culture. Almost anything can be “awesome”: clothes, parties, cars, pleasant situations. But if everything is awesome, then nothing is awesome. The language has been robbed of the ability to describe those things that genuinely inspire awe and remind us that there are things far greater than ourselves. If we can no longer speak of awe, we forget there are things that inspire and deserve our awe.
Term-Swapping
Another example is the term swap, which is common in politically correct speech. My office nurse recently attended a conference on sexual dysfunction and counseling taught by a specialist from San Francisco. He stated that in his clinic, you no longer ask if people are married but whether they are “partnered.” You no longer inquire whether people are having sex but ask whether they are “body-fluid bonded.” This is an attempt to influence thought by transforming speech. “Married” carries the connotation — derived from centuries of everyday use and consensus of meaning — of two people, man and woman, committed to one another in a contractual relationship, ideally for life, for better or worse. “Partnered” means any two people sharing a roof, here today and gone tomorrow, with commitment optional and conditional at best. Whatever your opinion on gay marriage, indeed, these two situations have different personal implications for those involved and unequal impact on society as a whole. But “partnered” is a great leveler, making the lesser equal to the more significant. And “body-fluid bonded”? Not only is term-swapping an attempt to remove the influence of higher principles on behavior, but it is invariably cumbersome, lacking in rhythm and impact, and downright ugly. Language, like music, has a rhythm and power of its own. Politically correct term swapping, however, is the electronic organ of speech — playing all the right notes but abrasive and irritating to the ear. Even course street slang is preferable: “Are you two f***ing?”, while vulgar, is a slap in the face, while “Are you fluid-bonded?” is akin to lukewarm decaffeinated coffee.
Redefinition
Redefinition is another land mine in the language field, especially problematic in discussions of religion, race, and belief systems. Societies and cultures, over time, reach mutually agreeable definitions, especially in socially significant topics and situations. The term “racism,” for example, has always referred to hatred of another person or class of people based solely on their skin color, tribal affiliation, behavioral patterns, or speech that suggests such an affiliation. In modern progressivism, racism is now used to pigeonhole and reject those whose political or philosophical orientation differs or disagrees with yours. Hence, the progressive African-American or liberal white views non-progressive whites — or all whites — as racist, but they themselves are never racist. Similarly, all Christians are “fundamentalists,” “intolerant,” “superstitious,” and other disparaging designations — often labeled so by those most intolerant and misinformed about the nature, convictions, and practices of believers.
This destruction of the consensus of meaning in language is becoming increasingly widespread, invoked by media and politics, and extensively promulgated in our educational system and workplaces. It functions as a universal weapon of control in totalitarian societies. We must resist this trend and encourage restoring integrity and honesty in language to avoid the repressive cultural outcomes that will otherwise invariably result.
Similarly, we can no longer talk about gender — previously referring only to male and female sexes, XX and XY — but now must understand it as any sexual identification, as in transgenderism: you are a female if you “identify” as one, even if your DNA is XY. The implications of this exchange are legion and perilous, as seen in women’s sports, prisons and other situations in which this delusional fantasy places women at substantial risk.
Doublespeak
Doublespeak is the bastard child of redefinition: creating a phrase or idiom to blunt the impact of an uncomfortable truth. Hence, abortion becomes “reproductive choice” or “women’s health”; illegal aliens become “undocumented migrants”; the mutilation of children morphs into “gender-affirming care” – and so on. The doublespeak jargon is cumbersome, graceless, and often deliberately obscure and hides the ugly reality beneath its deathly vestments.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
— George Orwell —
The depreciation and corruption of language signal a culture increasingly out of touch with consensus in communication and the substitution of fantasy and emotionalism for a world based on reality and truth. It points to a growing authoritarianism as we are coerced into using such language at the risk of criticism, ostracization, and even persecution if we fail to succumb to its intimidation.
We should not go lightly into that linguistic darkness, for therein lie demons. Resistance will take courage, but failure will reap a dark harvest that we will deeply lament for a long, long time.
