Language, Politics, Power
I love linguistics. One characteristic of language that we discuss before all else is that it is productive. This means that with a finite set of rules there are an infinite number of sentences that can be generated. It goes without saying that there are an infinite number of ways to express the same sentiment. We may change the way we speak to appear smart, or to sound poetic, or to make sure a child understands the sentiment.
For example, in the poem God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins could have said “Sunrise comes!” or “The sun jumps over the eastward horizon!” but instead, he said: “Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs...” Those sentences fundamentally mean the same thing, but language’s productivity affords us as many different ways to say it. Every sentence that we use is just one of an infinite number of ways to express the same sentiment. And because everything humans do is influenced by one bias or another, the things we choose to say and the way in which we choose to say them are rarely neutral. They tell not only the way that we think, but also, sometimes, the way we want others to think.
The case I am going to make in this reflection is that it is important that we are cognizant of this all the time. I opened this piece by saying “I love linguistics” and then explaining productivity as a feature of human language. It could be said that I am framing myself as an authority on linguistics, and in so doing, inviting you to believe whatever it is I have to say in an essay titled “On Language…”. Perhaps you didn’t even think twice about this, and believed what I was saying up until this point. But that’s the thing: whether I’m an authority on linguistics doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. That’s a harmless agenda to push. I think it is a lot more serious when it comes to political commentators and the news.
Before I discuss that, I’ll focus on something I read this morning at work, which said something along the lines of: “The Cayman Islands were settled by the British in the 1500s, and made a colony in 1670.” This made me raise an eyebrow, because this sentence is constructed in such a way the blow of “colonialism” is softened. Furthermore, the use of the passive voice (“X was made a colony” vs “Y colonized X”) conveniently removes the United Kingdom, the colonizer, from the equation. It tells me that the writer is aware of the slavery and other horrors that occurred under UK colonialism and is trying to present the UK in as positive a light as possible.
A more damning example: read a headline from the BBC that I read today: “Israel's strike on bustling Gaza cafe killed a Hamas operative - but dozens more people were killed.” This headline acknowledges Israel as aggressor only when a Hamas operative (which relates to Omar Suleiman’s Erasing Palestine thinkpiece, which I drew on for an earlier piece about Palestine). But the headline it leads with this so it can then justify Israel’s murder of civilians. The headline says: “Israel killed a Hamas operative! Oh, and some other people had to die, too.” It frames it as a necessary evil (which we know is false because of Israel’s precision strikes on Iranian figures, but that’s for another essay).
The thing that stands out to me is that ultimately, the BBC is a media house of repute. People don’t feel the need to challenge a headline from the BBC. But it is important to ask yourself — even when it’s something you agree with from someone you agree with — for whom or for what is this person saying these things? Who has the power over the things this person says? Which company owns this media house, and what do they believe? For example, Cayman Compass just got purchased by Dart — what does that mean about the articles I see going forward? Many of the United States’ political figures are given hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — what does this mean for the things they say? Many Caymanian politicians have conservative views — what does this mean for the quips they make at non-political events? This person is advising me on how I should live my life — from where and in what field did this person get their degree? This person is advising me on religion — which religion or sect do you subscribe to?
This person is telling me to be critical of the things I read — what does he know?
