Who Controls the Language?
This quote is attributed to
Joseph Stalin, Josef Goebbels and assorted other tyrants:
'He who controls the language rules the world.' Many other
such quotes reveal with remarkable candor how tyrants think,
and we ought to learn from them to avoid the horrible bloodbaths
of the past. Another quote, attributed to Hitler and others:
'If you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it.'
Or, 'One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.'
I am deeply suspicious of neologisms,
that is, newly coined words floated into the lexicon that
are often snapped up by those who want their speech to reflect
the latest trends. They tend to replace perfectly good words
that have served well for centuries. For example, have you
noticed that everything now is a 'center'? Instead of hospitals,
we have health centers. Instead of schools, we have learning
centers. Instead of chanceries, we have pastoral centers,
and one of my favorites, 'sanitary landfill and recycling
center.' I'll never forget how years ago my brother and
I were driving into one such place with a load of trash,
and upon seeing the sign, he turned to me and said, Whatever
happened to 'dump'?
Well, these seem harmless enough.
But I recall it caught my notice when a big deal was made
in my workplace during the 1980s. The personnel office was
changing its name to 'human resources.' On the surface it
might seem these unnecessary name changes were supposed
to reflect a certain 'sensitivity' in a society ever more
under orders from the invisible but ever-present sensitivity
police to always wear its 'sensitivity' on its sleeve. But
it seemed dehumanizing to me. I would much rather be considered
a person than a mere 'resource.' With the vague miasma of
euphemism in the air today, 'resources' is frequently used
when it seems impolite to say money.
Last August I was hanging out
in the gallery of the United Nations General Assembly with
my pal Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute. A young lady sitting next to him said, 'Who's
that?' indicating a Catholic cardinal down on the floor.
Austin snapped, 'That's Cardinal Arinze from Africa, he's
on the short list to be pope.' I was sitting behind them,
and they are lucky I wasn't drinking something or I would
have done a spectacular spit take drenching them both. I
shrieked, 'Oh my God! I can't believe you just said that!
That's ridiculous!'
I didn't mean Cardinal Arinze,
who would make a fine pope if God so willed, but Austin's
use of the term 'short list,' which magically appeared out
of nowhere among pundits during the election season. Austin
looked into the eyes of the young woman and said, 'I love
jargon. I love it.' I said, 'I hate it! Because it often
is employed to deceive rather than communicate clearly,
or make others feel inadequate while you're in with the
In Crowd.'
Worst of all, of course, and
most illustrative of my point are the terms 'gender' and
'choice.' Gender is an ideological term to mainstream artificial
sexual ideology into the culture. Depending on who you talk
to there are five or even seven 'genders' - and counting.
In nature there are only two
sexes. The generation that demanded their cereal be all
natural pumps large doses of artificiality into their politics
and sexuality. Sex is better than gender. The term 'choice'
attempts to apply God-given free will to a thoroughly evil
act of murder.
So one death is a tragedy.
Forty million is a statistic, or in other words, tyranny.
John Mallon is contributing
editor for Inside the Vatican magazine and a member of The
Daily Oklahoman's Opinion Board of Contributors. This article
originally appeared in The Daily Oklahoman on April 20,
2001 and is reprinted with permission. Send
an e-mail to John Mallon
