Preamble: I was discussing the ability of a political power to affect language with a few friends (over burgers and beers, of course; because we had tired of talking about The Dark Knight, which we’d just watched). I had written a last-minute essay for an undergrad sociolinguistics course on the topic, but couldn’t recall my arguments very clearly. As such, I made a number of faulty and unconvincing arguments in an attempt to support my position that political power alone cannot abolish or enforce a language.
On coming home, I found the essay and read it over. I’ll admit, its conclusions are not earth-shattering—basically “it’s complicated”—or inarguable, but it was enough to spark and fuel some pretty interesting discussion. So, I’ve reproduced it here. If you agree or disagree, take offense or whatever, feel free to post a comment. Please keep in mind that I’m no historical linguist or essayist, the citations are patchy, I like commas, the sun was shining in my eyes, etc.
Language and thought control
In his most popular work, 1984, George Orwell introduces the language of Newspeak: “a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [the totalitarian governing power]” that will “make all other modes of thought impossible… literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”1 The language is based on English, but with significant changes, including a more regular system reliant on prefixes and affixes, an emphasis on shorter, easily pronounceable words, and a drastic reduction of vocabulary. Orwell seems to think this last feature most important in controlling speakers’ thought, “each reduction [is] a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought.” By shrinking the choice of words and simplifying their construction, Newspeak aims to shift the locus of control over language from the higher brain sectors to the larynx, away from any unorthodox or seditious thought, making them inexpressible. By 2050, Newspeak is to be the one and only spoken language in the lands ruled by Ingsoc.
Despite being a work of fiction, the threat that language can be co-opted or replaced by those in power is considered as real outside of 1984 as in. Mamet insists that “names are powerful,” that “the assignment of nicknames, the application of jargon is an understood tool for the manipulation of behaviour.”2 Noting the increase of unnatural, government-made terminology in the United States since late 2001—weapons of mass destruction: “overlong, clunky, and obviously confected”—he warns against a shift “from the conscious into the automatic,” worried of a linguistic take-over very much like the one in Orwell’s dystopic England.
Are fears of Newspeak justified?
The fear of political control through language is based on the implicit assumption that “the language spoken by the individual determines the way in which that person thinks”3, a concept known as linguistic determinism. If true, this concept, distilled from the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, would certainly be cause for alarm; Newspeak, once adopted fully, would limit thought and expression eternally.
However, linguistic determinism does not stand up to scrutiny. If thoughts were determined by language, how is it that new words come about? How could “nigger” (“nigga”) and “queer,” both potent derogative words, have changed over the past few decades into friendly terms of address or exclamations of pride? In truth, the relationship between language and thought is not unidirectional, but two-way, social reality both shaping and being shaped by its language. “Sociolinguistic conventions have a dual relation to power: on the one hand they incorporate differences of power, on the other hand they arise out of—and give rise to—particular relations of power”4.
The examples of “nigger,” “queer,” and “sexist”5, are doubly important: they are shifts in language use introduced by minorities, groups deprived of much political influence, often working against established powers. While examples such as these do not eliminate language as an influence on thought (and, indeed, many of the same social causes that gave rise to sexist aim, wrongly or rightly, to reform language and, in doing so, common conceptions of gender6), they do diminish it. Constraining language does not necessarily constrain thought, thus fears or fantasies of absolute control and stagnation of ideology by means of language alone are less likely than Mamet or Orwell propose.
Language and empire
Language alone may not determine thought, but it is a vehicle for and a body of ideology, a way of exercising power7. Those in positions of control—over nation-states, corporations, armies—as well as many of those over whom they hold sway, act accordingly: idioms are imposed, language changed through coercion, use warped on the fulcrum of political power. Phillipson quotes a Spanish report written for the Queen in 1492 that proposes the use of language as “a tool for conquest abroad,” noting that “language has always been the consort of empire, and forever shall remain its mate”8. The difficulty (likely, impossibility) of engineering thought through the manipulation of signifiers (words) may not be overcome, but spreading a whole system of signs—a language—as a means to indoctrinate or undermine another group of people has been attempted time and time again. Could Newspeak ever become the only language in a large empire? Is political power effective in enacting and maintaining a language? Just how great a factor is power in language change?
Japanese occupation
Consider Miyawaki’s study9 of the harsh Japanese colonial language policies in Taiwan, Korea, Micronesia, and occupied territories in China and in Southeast-Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. These policies were rigid and explicitly aimed at eradicating non-Japanese cultural and linguistic influences, as well as impressing Japanese values on the colonized people. In Taiwan, this began in the mid-1890’s by legally
stating that the fundamental objectives of common school education be the provision of moral education and practical skills to Taiwanese children, thereby cultivating in them attitudes of Japanese nationalism and also leading them to be well versed in ‘Kokugo’ [the national language i.e. Japanese]…
More drastic revisions such as the abolition of the native language (Chinese) teaching and the integration of the educational system and curriculum with those of homeland Japan were made in 1937 and in 1942 respectively.
The intent of such policies was stated more forcefully during the Pacific War. Japan pressed for the use of Japanese not only in schools, but at home; they hoped to “diffuse Japanese, gradually limit the use of European languages and eventually abolish them” in Southeast-Asia, “to stamp out European/American thoughts, and establish an Oriental-minded culture.” Positive assimilation, policies that were to nurture Japanese culture in the colonies, quickly became negative, punitive and brutal. Miyawaki finds that many native-born students under Japanese rule recall being publicly humiliated, sometimes beaten, for speaking any tongue other than Japanese.
Yet, for all the influence and coercion, both positive and negative, exercised by the Japanese colonizers, the proportion of Japanese speakers to non- in the former colonies today is small to none. Miyawaki notes a variety of small linguistic changes, notably borrowing, pidginization, and a bilingual minority, present to this day. These effects, however, are shallower and more localized than what one would have imagined a large, modern empire would be capable of over fifty years. Miyawaki concludes that colonial power is only one among many influences that can affect “language ecology.” Much as with language and thought, the relationship between power and language is less direct than anticipated (in Japanese policies). Although the Japanese policies did alter “the society, culture and psychology of the ruled,” they did not determine it, and did not succeed in imposing a foreign language on a conquered people over the long term.
Linguists urge readers to consider a myriad of factors and constraints that may cause language change. In their introduction to Language and Power, Kramarae, Schulz, and O’Barr present a variety of opinions on how language and power may interrelate, so many different avenues of study and interpretation that they seem to through their hands in the air, claiming that an “adequate understanding… may be several sociolinguistic years away.”10
Ancient Akkadian
Ostler gives much weight to the influences outside of direct political control in his historical analysis of language change.11 He is quick to dismantle J. R. Firth’s assertion that “world powers make world languages,” pointing out that the Germanic rulers of Europe that succeeded the Romans were only a slight influence on the Romance languages still in use to this day, and further, that the Romans themselves were incapable of imposing Latin on their subjects in the east, where Greek remained the common tongue through the hundreds of years of Roman rule. Ostler finds explanations for lasting language change reliant primarily on political power, “based on military conquest or commercial dominance,” lacking; even “total conquest, military and spiritual, is not always enough to effect a language change.”
Ostler gives the example of Akkadian, the primary language of the impressive Assyro-Babylonian empire. Akkadian was “preeminently a language of power and influence,” a literary standard, the single language of an empire lasting almost two thousand years. The influence of the empire helped spread its language, the uptake of the Akkadian in lands outside of Babylonian control carried largely by prestige (and others’ eagerness for the relatively new technology of writing), until it became a well-established lingua franca among the many people and powers of the time. Yet, the language was overwhelmed by Aramaic, a language spoken “mainly by nomads,” a community radically different from, and hostile to, the Babylonians, with “no cultural advantage… highly unlikely to set up a rival civilization.”
Stranger still, this change in language came at the zenith of the empire’s power. Having conquered much of the area after decades of successful war, a policy of separating conquered people was instated, intending to unify the populations by “cutting them off from their traditions” while acculturating them to Assyro-Babylonian culture—importantly, its language. This policy of division and assimilation eventually displaced some 4.5 million people over three centuries, an act of immense power. Unfortunately, this policy did not have the intended effect. It backfired, encouraging the spread of Aramaic and undermining Akkadian as a common language.
Since the Aramaeans were the largest group being scattered in this way, when other western Semites, such as Israelites or Phoenicians, found themselves transplanted, they could tend to find themselves speaking more and more like their new neighbours.12
Aramaic quickly became the dominant language, and remained so, during the following centuries of the empire and long after its collapse. Both Assyro-Babylonian and Japanese policies (some 2500 years apart) shared similar goals and failures despite being backed by powerful, long-established cultures and military forces. The triumph of Aramaic over Akkadian is an extreme demonstration of the weakness of political influence on language.
Determined not by power alone
The wealth and might of a political power does not determine the spread and stay of the language it speaks, and may well, as in the case of Aramaic and Akkadian, exist separately from it. Through means insidious, duplicitous, or explicit, political powers may mean to affect language and, through it, how people think. However common the belief that language molds thought, it does not appear to, certainly not the the degree feared by paranoiacs or wished for by propagandists. The influences of language on thought, of power on language, are complicated, two-way, and subject to many other forces. Political power alone cannot guarantee the abolition or spread of a language, nor can it always succeed in altering it.
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Orwell, G. (1949). “Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak.”↩
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Mamet, D. (2004). “Secret Names.” Threepenny Review (96).↩
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Osborn, R. (1999). “The Whorfian Hypothesis Today.” In M. Danesi, & D. Santeramo (Eds.), The Sign in Theory and Practice (pp. 119-133). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. (Original work published 1987) p. 119↩
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Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power (2nd ed.). Toronto: Longman. p. 1↩
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Osborn, R. p. 132↩
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Jones, J., & Peccei, J. S. (2004). “Language and politics.” In I. Singh, & J. S. Peccei (Eds.), Language, Society and Power: An introduction (2nd ed.) (pp. 35-54). New York: Routledge.↩
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Fairclough, N.↩
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Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Toronto: Oxford University Press. p. 31↩
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Miyawaki, H. (2002). “Colonial language policies and their effects.”↩
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Kramarae, C., Schulz, M., & O’Barr, W. M. (1984). Language and Power. Beverley Hills: Sage. p. 13↩
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Ostler, N. (2005). Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York: HarperCollins.↩
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Ostler, N. p. 66↩
Tags: essay, imperialism, language, linguistics, politics, sociolinguistics
As a caveat to the comparisons of Orwell’s Newspeak to the historical attempts at forcing a nation or group of people into speaking a particular language, it’s worth keeping in mind that in the historical cases you have instances of a political power attempting to completely overhaul a population’s means of communicating, while Newspeak is much more insidious because it is a transformation of the language already spoken. The historical cases also deal with conquered peoples, whereas in 1984 it seems plausible if not assumed that the ruling power is homegrown. I feel like a thorough analysis of the control of language in modern China would be much more revealing, had we reliable access to that information. Of course, as a substitute we can always look at our own country or our neighbors to the south. Political Correctness might serve as a reasonable launching point for such a comparison.
We will talk about this business of language and power in person at some point. It will be long and dreary for others involved and I’ll begin babbling about systems of signification and the African American tradition of Signifyin’ in music and the word vs the world and who knows what else and it will briefly make me feel like my degree was about something.
Good points, Chris. Tulin and Matt (the people I was discussing this with) also mentioned the change to modern Turkish as a potential counterexample.
Very interesting. In addition to considering the influence of political power on language it is interesting to think about the many other ways politics affects language. I’ve given a few different examples that you might enjoy reflecting upon in a recent post at the Trusted Translations blog.
I agree to what you were saying and enjoyed reading your essay. There are some ideas I would like to suggest that might well fit to yours.
I think I can come up with another example how political power changed language. This happened when national states were born in Europe. Before that there was nobody who would care about how people would write or speak. That means there was not really any homogeneous German language available these days, for example. People would speak their own local dialects and write the same way they speak (if they could write). This changed when more and more power went into the hands of the evolving administrations of these modern national states. the ruling elite thought it was necessary to impose some general rules about how people should write their language. This also applies for grammar since this alters from dialect to dialect. I think it is mainly due to the fact that new administration offices were communicating in written form. A unified way how to communicate, i.e. defining a homogeneous oral and written language, would be a benefit. I think this is because otherwise they would find words of colleges speaking a different dialect at least weird. If not they would just not understand and all kinds of misunderstandings would arise–deadly for an efficient administration. It was a political decision of the 19. century to impose and encourage one single homogeneous language on the country. This applies at least for France and Germany. In a way this might also serve as an example how a language is transformed that is already spoken. This is because we are looking at dialects here or at least, if you will, languages that are pretty near to each other.
There is other countries like Austria-Hungary where this was very difficult to achieve. Probably because too many languages too different from each other and spoken by too many different strong ethnic groups hating each other prevented this to happen, i.e. we are not talking about dialects here. So this might serve as counter example that political power would not be able to change language. Incidentally, here we are talking about this complete overhaul which could not succeed. The Russians tried the same thing. But we still got lots of different languages at the Caucasian Mountains and in the Baltic States. Not sure about Belarus, though.
To get to the point: What I want to say is that if you want to change language you will need a long time. And the time might be a function of the amount of difference from status quo to what is meant to be achieved. The amount of difference between the involved individuals might render the change impossible. Language changes gradually. Dialects are still around! And switching to Aramaic is something that probably took ages(?). Politics is something that works in short term. And politics can change rapidly compared to the speed language changes. (I am not so convinced that complete turn-a-rounds always succeed, though! We will see what can be changed…) So to change language you would have to leave an political agenda in place for a very long time. Therefore there is lots of occasion to change an agenda. For example something that would lead to horrors like in Orwell’s 1984. The agenda of making everyone speak German got obsolete when the Habsburg monarchy got destroyed in a war. And Russian is not really popular anymore among lots of constituents of the former Sowjetunion.
Still I think we are right if we assume politics will leave its tracks in certain terms. Thus changing tiny bits of language but not necessarily according to the wants of politicians. (Does it count as changing language if the term “weapons of mass destruction” is associated with “lie” instead of just “deadly menace”?) I think language is a construct that is too large, i.e. used and influenced by too many people, that it could be altered totally in a plot by some individuals. At least not if there is a cause that convinces the mass of people to make them change their behavior. And people are reluctant to do so because they are incredibly lazy (me included). I am not sure what this cause is. One might speculate. Maybe it is a great deal of power that makes force people change their way, maybe reason, persuasion, or necessities, or even the assumed superiority of another culture? I think there are examples for each of these in history. In the above example of national states in need of a homogeneous language for their administrations the cause might have been necessity and reason. Politics might be involved in changing language here and there and might also be interested to do this. But it needs the support of the speakers of the language to be changed and this doesn’t come for free.
I hope this pseudo-scientific wish-wash makes a little sense. I might let me be convinced from something else if not. Sorry that this got so long.
No worries, Florian. It’s interesting to think of the differences of time between politics and language: languages sometimes seem to change more slowly than do politics. Of course, as with evolution, there is evidence that change can occur both in the long and the short term. Think of popular sayings (“D’oh!”) and the shift of meaning (“gay” or “epic”), and how suddenly they’ve come and gone. Likewise, think of how political principles have lasted (democracy or the rights of man) for a long time, and are still current and relevant today.
Apples and oranges, I know.
The standardization of dialect seems a very modern thing. As you said, the ideas of nationalism and common language seem to come hand-in-hand.
I wonder whether this relates to what Chris said above about Newspeak: language opens to change as your sense of nation changes. A homegrown power comes about through a change in identity, which may come from or with a change in language. I’ve argued that the effect of politics to language may be negligible, but can politics and language be effected by some other factor (such as nationalism)? Can coincident change in both be separated from change in one caused by change in the other?
What of the Akkadians and their inability to overwhelm Aramaic? Was their failure a misunderstanding of the relationship between language and political power, or was it indicative of some failure of nationhood, of common identity? What would this mean for Canada, which is split into French and English on a national level, and whose urban centres include sizable populations of people that do not identify very strongly with Canada and that speak languages other than English and French?