Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ut-sally.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!kpno!ut-sally!riddle
From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Removing concepts from a language
Message-ID: <240@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Sep-83 14:11:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.240
Posted: Sun Sep 11 14:11:53 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Sep-83 19:58:35 EDT
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 49

Laura Creighton (utzoo!utcsstat!laura) recently made some interesting comments
in net.ai which I think bear further discussion in net.nlang.  To wit:

   Sorry, but the 1984 analogy does not quite wash. there you got rid
   of whole words and phrases wholesale and did not replace them with
   anything.  Thus is is a little difficult to talk about "freedom"
   when there is no word for freedom. This does not mean that 'freedom'
   as a concept ceased to exist -- note how the main characters in 1984
   still valued freedom, even though they could not talk well about it.
   
   I think that the "thought-police" (was that the phrase used? It
   has been a long time since i read 1984) and their brainwashing
   techniques should not be discounted.  I believe that even more than the 
   Ministry of Truth, they contributed to the eradication of certain traits
   from society.
   
   While the book 1984, and its image of "The Ministry of Truth" is a
   classic in distopias, I do not think that it presents an enforceable
   view of society. I cannot invision any brainwashing/diciplining
   facility that could get me and all my friends from discussing
   'freedom', even if we were forced to call it 'drano pipe declogger'.
   
   The last time I was in Cuba, where one learns to watch the words that
   you speak, it was still possible to go to the beach with friends and discuss
   freedom, and possible ways to overthrow Castro.

Good point, but there is unfortunately a better way to get rid of a concept
than to throw the word associated with it out of the language: namely to
overburden the word with other, unrelated, concepts.  Thus 'freedom' can
cease to mean 'freedom from oppression' and start meaning 'freedom to
oppress':  freedom to institute school prayers, freedom to maintain de facto
segregation, freedom to ban abortion, freedom to create ecological disaster,
and even freedom to fight imperialistic wars.

Maybe I am overstretching my point by trying to tie it to political specifics
(after all, I did choose to bring this up in net.nlang and not net.politics),
but let me restate it a bit more mildly:  the words associated with many of
our most cherished concepts -- 'freedom', 'democracy', etc. -- have become
highly charged buzzwords which often refer either to nothing at all or to
concepts rather far removed from their origins.  I don't pretend that this
was the work of any "Ministry of Truth", but I suspect that good propagan-
dists could make very effective use of similar linguistic processes.

Any comment?

                                    -- Prentiss Riddle
                                       {ihnp4,ut-ngp}!ut-sally!riddle
                                       riddle@ut-sally.{UUCP,ARPA}