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Will Shetterly's avatar

I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language. Strong Whorfianism has been discredited, and Weak Whorfianism is weaker than many think. (This doesn't necessarily mean Orwell was wrong. A friend pointed out that while the Ministry of Truth believes they can control thoughts by controlling words, that does not necessarily mean Orwell did.)

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Steve QJ's avatar

"I love Orwell, but the antagonists in 1984 overestimate the power of language"

I'm really not so sure. Having spent the past few years talking to people who are deep into this cult, I'm regularly struck by how genuinely incapable they seem of thinking clearly about issues of gender/sex.

If, in your mind, a woman is "anybody who identifies as a woman," and you're brainwashed into believing that any examination of this obvious tautology is hateful and transphobic, you're forced to shut a few doors of reasoning in your head. Otherwise the cognitive dissonance becomes unmanageable.

I think Orwell's Newspeak is so relevant here because it's not so much about the free, natural evolution of language shaping thought, it's the conscious suppression of thoughts/words/ideas deemed unacceptable.

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Peaceful Dave's avatar

Orwellian corruption of language clearly has a purpose of limiting/controlling thought. Putting the unnecessary cis or biological prefex on male & female while pretending that the trans prefex is not necessary is a purposeful attempt to limit thought. It will work if people don't refuse to participate.

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Matt's avatar

That's exactly it: conscious suppression of thoughts/words/ideas.

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Will Shetterly's avatar

Oh, I agree identitarian neoliberals are committed to the idea that words change the way we think. But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to Negro.

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Steve QJ's avatar

тАЬ But if that was true, black people would've won full equality when the polite name was changed from Colored to NegroтАЭ

Hmm, not really seeing how this follows. The various changes in the way white people refer to black people *have*, generally speaking, marked an increase in societal respect for black people.

Full equality will be reached when we all stop thinking that we *need* a term to refer to black people. тАЬPeopleтАЭ works just fine. тАЬBlackтАЭ when itтАЩs useful as a descriptor.

But thatтАЩs separate to the effectiveness of obfuscating language.

Just 10 years ago, nobody would have hesitated to define a woman as an adult human female. Today, there are a shocking number of people who sincerely canтАЩt define it in coherent terms. And this leads to all kinds of other confusion like тАЬnon binary.тАЭ

This couldnтАЩt have been achieved without a conscious effort to change the meaning of the word in peoples minds.

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Will Shetterly's avatar

I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I donтАЩt think any of them did. Laws changed, and opinions changed, and people adopted the new names, but the new names followed the social changes. If the names mattered, the NAACP shouldтАЩve changed its name a century ago.

Agreed that colloquial terms like white and black should be adjectives, but when theyтАЩre used as nouns, they should be no more meaningful than тАЬthe redheadтАЭ.

I also agree itтАЩs ridiculous that the gender crowd is trying to erase sex. Gender and sex are very different, which would be clearer if we had different pronouns for them.

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Steve QJ's avatar

тАЬ I should count up how many names have been the respectful name for black Americans, only to be discarded in the belief that the new name would change reality. I donтАЩt think any of them didтАЭ

Ah, yes I agree. I should have been clearer. I donтАЩt think the change of word created more respect, I think the thought about how to be more respectful , and the societal willingness to change the language yet again, is a sign of growing respect.

The chicken and egg were the other way around.

But again, I think the trans ideology language changes are very different to the тАЬwhat to call black peopleтАЭ language changes.

Even here, you say that gender and sex are very different. But what would you have said 10 years ago? Likely that they were synonymous. But now, to some degree, the idea that thereтАЩs such a thing as a тАЬgender identityтАЭ has crept into your mind.

IтАЩm not criticising you or anything here. I say this because I noticed the change in myself a few years ago and wondered why it was there. After all, I donтАЩt have a gender identity, nobody I knows has one, no trans person IтАЩve ever spoken to has been able to describe it beyond misogynistic stereotypes. But somehow IтАЩd accepted that there was this thing called a gender identity, that was somehow comparable to sex in its significance, just because IтАЩd heard the тАЬsex is different to genderтАЭ slogan often enough and wanted to be kind.

Not for nothing, but sex is different to gender has now been almost completely abandoned by the ideologues as they try to erase the distinction between males and females in law.

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Will Shetterly's avatar

I've been close to this nonsense for longer than you, so I have been aware of the difference between gender and sex for decades. My current best explanation is that just as race is built on a superficial understanding of ancestry, gender is built on a superficial understanding of sex. That both are social fictions can be seen in how they vary so much from time to time and society to societyтАФobviously, women's gender roles are very different now than they were a century ago in the US or than they are today in many conservative religious societies.

I wish I could just announce that I'm using sex pronouns instead of gender pronouns and ignore the whole issue, but I can't. Besides, using different gender pronouns is ancient--drag queens went by she and butch lesbians went by he long ago. I agree with you that it's very odd to try to legalize a social convention, but then, the law has always been subect to fads.

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Florence Glass's avatar

Very interesting conversational thread, thanks.

Two missing elements, by my estimation:

1. The impact of increasing cognitive load by muddying language. Thinking and speaking (or writing) are not really separate tasks. Increasing the cognitive load by introducing neologisms makes it harder to think unless one dispenses with them immediately.

2. The younger generation will inherit a muddied lexicon, thereby making clear and articulate thinking on this issue next to impossible. I've experienced this myself many times as a student--things I had already thought but hadn't been able to articulate suddenly became easy to express once my vocabulary expanded. Reducing or destroying the lexicon doesn't prevent us from having thoughts, but it does prevent them from being articulate.

In other words, the extent of the power of language *itself* isn't the main (or even most pressing) issue. It's the other elements that hitch along for the ride.

I would also differentiate between the deliberate obscurantism at play here with the euphemism escalator* (re: "colored" vs. "Negro") argument as they are fundamentally different things.

*Euphemism *treadmill* is the term, I believe. My bad--I'm up past my bedtime, ha.

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Chris Fox's avatar

Orwell never heard of Sapir-Whorf

The control is not absolute but itтАЩs real.

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Will Shetterly's avatar

The attempt to control words is real in the novel. That does not mean it will be effective. Authoritarians try to make people do all sorts of things that don't work.

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Chris Fox's avatar

I've probably read the novel over a dozen times, and the appendices alone many times more.

Some people have a mastery of language that enables them to circumvent unrepresented concepts.

Most people don't.

But authoritarianism isn't the only justification for controlling language or resisting stupid mistakes' promotion to new meanings. If I managed a group of coworkers and one of them used "reveal," "invite," "react," or "ask" as a noun, he'd discover hell, without dying first, in my office. And don't even let me get started on the singular they.

Nothing to do with authoritarianism.

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Will Shetterly's avatar

Controlling language is all about authoritarianism. English is a bastard that evolves willy-nilly. You can't stop it. You can only object to the stupider changes and hope they don't catch on. Ones that start in the working class are probably here to stay. Ones that start in the owning class--like a lot of the language of liberal identitarians--can be fought. I'm still annoyed that "impact" has become a verb, but I've accepted that that fight's lost.

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Chris Fox's avatar

Impact and target.

"Invite" is probably lost, but I will never accept any of the four I mentioned and I will shiver to death in a Maytag box under an overpass before I will use the singular "they," or let it go by unremarked.

I learned Russian when I was 13. I was a smart 8th grader and the school allowed me to take the course even though it was for 9th grade on up, because I was going out of my mind as an 8th grader. Anyway.

I drew a little table; rows, 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. Columns, singular and plural. Where is the other "you?" OK, now I know that "thou" is deprecated.

Then I heard someone say a sentence pairing "someone" and "they" and instantly I had a splitting headache. Realized everyone did this. I never used they as a singular ever again; I am 56 years older now and have never once had to come up with any awkward grammar to avoid it, in fact I can usually use fewer words.

Along came "trans" and those "nonbinary" retards and suddenly "he" and "she" have all but vanished. No, I am not giving in to that.

I am certified in ESL all the way to teaching C2 and for eight years I taught my students (Vietnam) that "they" was used incorrectly by most Americans and not to adopt it.

We do what we can.

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