[lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Fri Dec 8 09:21:12 PST 2006


joanna wrote:
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> One more try: Orwell's point about impoverishing language as a means
>> of social control still stands. If we wish to contain thought and
>> behavior in narrow, socially approved parameters, we should eliminate
>> all "jargon" and make language as "simple" as possible. (I can't
>> resist: the will to "simple" language is an instantiation of--the will
>> to power!)
>
>
> There is absolutely no way that you can put this together with "Politics
> and the English Language." The unforgettable passage in that essay is
> the following:

Actually, I was making an implicit reference to newspeak in 1984.

[snip]
> I am not arguing against needed complication. But I am arguing
> against the need for private languages when the common mother tongue
> will do. I am extremely suspicious of unnecessary complication and of
> private languages.
>

Here's my problem with this: we can't know if a particular specialized language is needed or not until people actually use it and we can assess the results. It is impossible to make an a priori determination "this text is unnecessarily complicated", because the text could lead to new findings, discoveries, political action, whatever that could not be predicted at the outset. Sure, some of the new texts will be useless; this is true in any area of study, not just postmod lit crit (man, I can tell some stories about discarded theories in the social sciences). However, other texts will turn out to be useful in some way, despite the fact that they are not "accessible" to the general reader.

Look at it this way: the need for diverse forms of language use in a society is analogous to the need for biological diversity in a species.

There must be mutations/genetic variations that provide the basis for species change and adaptation of the species to new environmental conditions. Example: crabs that "lost" their eyestalks in dark ocean environments because of natural selection. Yes, the early crabs without eyestalks were hideous mutations, compared to their "normal" peers, but in dark environments, lack of vision is no big deal for crabs, and it provided them with various reproductive advantages.

--What on earth does this have to do with language use? It's really the same story: to adapt to changing social conditions, we need diversity in language use--strange mutations, if you will. And even though a certain type of language use may seem counterproductive, down the line it may help us in ways that we can't yet foresee. So--I say this in all seriousness!--let a hundred flowers bloom.

Miles



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