GCSE English: Thinking About the Ways in Which Language is Used
Essential principles:
People use language to convey meaning, but …they also use it to hide meanings.
This is why we use critical thinking when we consider language – so we don’t get fooled.
Who tries to fool us?
Politicians
Advertisers
Lawyers
Seducers
Liars
Con Men (and Women!)
Pretentious people (trying to show off)
Bosses (who have not dealt with issues that concern us)
Employees (who may not have done things they should have done)
… well, that’s just about everyone!
When people write things down, they can consider more carefully than when they speak the exact words they use (choices of diction), the order in which their utterances are given (which may be a matter of composition or syntax or both).
What judgments do we need to be able to make?
We need to be able, at the least, to spot these things:
• inflated language, including hyperbole;
“Never in the course of human history has so much been owed by so many to so few;” “She had millions of friends”.
• understatement;
“The Australian cricket team this winter tended to be slightly stronger than the English;” “less than honest;” “I’m not feeling too well!”
• deliberately misleading language;
“economical with the truth”
• unintentionally ambiguous language;
“I swear.”
• vagueness (deliberate or not);
“north of Watford”; “the gay community”; “all right-thinking people”; “common decency”; “football supporters”.
• careful phrasing, which means you need to know about noun, adjectival and adverbial clauses and phrases;
• humorous language, including puns,
“Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man” (Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet)
innuendo
“He’s someone who likes a drink”; “she enjoys the company of young men”
and irony
“We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow” (Pope: Essay on Criticism);
• selectivity;
“Tony Blair’s achievements include the Iraq war, some cheap holidays and the awarding of peerages to people who loaned money to New Labour.”
• bias;
“God’s own country”.
• technical language, including jargon;
“Zero-rated tariff applies to the 1st hour of direct-dialled geographic voice calls only.”
• allusive language;
“the salt of the earth” (refers to St Matthew’s gospel v. 13);
• subjective and objective description of events or definition of ideas;
“This is a really boring match”. “This policy is rubbish”. “A line is something you draw with a pencil and ruler.” AS OPPOSED TO
“This match is played in two periods of 45 minutes each (plus injury time as judged by the referee”. “This policy is an attempt to improve the lack of punctuality in Halifax High School.” “A line is a one-dimensional shape.”
• phatic language
“In times of change, you need a source you can trust to answer the questions that matter…But don’t take our word for it…”
“If you’ve got the attitude, we’ve got the colour…”
We also need to be able to differentiate between
• a poor argument (opinions without sufficient evidence, assertion without proof, dogmatic approaches, poor definitions of terms, poor logic)
• and a good argument, opinions derived from sound principles and sufficient evidence, careful definition of terms, good logic;
Does It Really Matter?
Yes, it does.
Let us look at some examples of why you need to think critically about language.
A memo from Frank Luntz advised the Republican Party in the USA about the language they used for discussing environmental policy. There was a section called ‘Winning the Global Warming Debate’.
The terminology in the upcoming environmental debate needs refinement. […] It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. […]
1. ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming’. As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale’. While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.
This is what Luntz calls ‘redefining labels’. This particular phrase had been argued over for some years at the United Nations, which, in December 1988, was talking about both ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. One year later, there was no mention of global warming.
Saudi Arabia and the US had lobbied to eliminate the phrase. Why? It is quite clear that ‘warming’ connotes fuels, specifically fossil fuels which make up the basis of the economies of Saudi Arabia and Texas. The US is the world’s biggest contributor to global warming by its burning of fossil fuels.
Jeremy Leggettt, former professor of Earth Sciences at Imperial College, London, and chief scientist of Greenpeace at this time, said, “I have never considered global warming a scary enough term…I’d have gone for global overheating, climate chaos, or maybe climate meltdown.”.
Let us look at a statement from the Metropolitan Police from the day after Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician living in London, who, on 22nd July 2005 was chased by undercover police onto the Underground and shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.
‘We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005. For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets.’
Tony Blair referred to the shooting as ‘the death that has happened’! Euphemistic, or what?
He also said, ‘I think it is important […] that we understand that had the circumstances been different and, for example, this had turned out to be a terrorist and they had failed to take that action, they would have been criticised the other way.’ How strong is that argument?
The Home Secretary called the shooting ‘an absolute tragedy for Mr de Menezes and his family’.
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone also like the word ‘tragedy’: ‘This tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility.
In August 2005, John Bolton, America’s new ambassador to the UN, redrafted the UN’s policy statement to condemn terrorism. His deletions are struck through and his insertions are in bold.
65. […] We affirm that the targeting and deliberate killing of civilians and
non-combatants by terrorists cannot be justified or legitimized by any cause or grievance, and we declare that any such action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants others, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organization to carry out or to abstain from any act cannot be justified on any grounds and constitutes an act of terrorism.
These may look like trivial changes. They are not!!
OED has for a definition of terrorism: ‘A policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of terrorizing or condition of being terrorized.’
That works for Palestinian bombs in Israeli bars, bombs in Spanish railway stations or Bali bars.
But what about the French attacks on the occupying Nazis? What about the Afghan attacks on the Russian forces in their country?
What other words can we use? Freedom fighter? Guerrillas? Extremists? Miltants? Jihadist? Liberator? Martyr?
What about the bombing of Hiroshima by US aircraft in the second world war? Was that terrorism?
Can a state’s policy be “terrorist”? Could that explain why Bolton needed his amendments?
What do you make of the phrase “The War on Terror”?
What do you make of this language, in an audiotape of May 2005, probably recorded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
“We will sacrifice all that which is dear and precious until God grants victory to his religion and elevates his word or we get killed.”
