“It’s not that deep” - The Modern Death of Language

In my American Literature Class, we often read about our country’s historical figures and the impact of their rhetoric in reshaping fundamental paradigms of thought: Martin Luther King Jr. and his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Henry David Thoreau and his transcendentalist papers. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essays about the fallacy of the “American Dream."  The power of words was repeatedly emphasised. However, I couldn’t help but observe the ironic dichotomy between these eloquent writers and the level of expression that students were capable of.

Social media has developed a system of short-term dopamine gratification where people have access to a mountainous amount of entertainment. If a content creator wants engagement, they must prioritise simplicity and haste for people to process it in the two to three seconds of attention they give. The range of vocabulary naturally had to be reduced, and slang became a way to shorten information into one ubiquitous and vague umbrella. Didn’t study for a test? “Cooked”. Got cheated on? “Cooked”. Sick with a terminal illness? “Cooked”. Complex experiences and nuanced emotions all melted under one nihilistic, despondent, and hopeless word: "cooked.” People have always preferred convenience, even at the sacrifice of intricacy and consciousness. Saying that you are “cooked” is a lot easier than explaining that you feel dehumanised and degraded of inherent worth by the school system. “That’s so real” is so much simpler than assuring someone that their opinions are valid and that you appreciate them for trusting you enough to be vulnerable. However, any individual reading through these comparisons would feel more mollified by the latter remarks than the former. The latter provides an individually tailored response instead of a generalised one. It implies that I understand you as a unique entity. A puzzle like no other that wants to be solved and deserves to be solved. To neglect and deny that entirely with a simple “That’s so real” is nothing short of dehumanising.

But besides the destruction of interpersonal understanding, a greater threat lies at hand: the reduction of our lexicon has severe ramifications on critical thought. I recently read 1984 by George Orwell for a summer assignment. As much as it made me grateful for the democracies we live in, I couldn’t help but note that our modern world contained gestative forms of what Orwell warned us about. 1984 is a dystopian novel about totalitarianism, where “The Party"—the government of Oceania—has oppressed its people into blissful unawareness and unquestioned loyalty. The methods they use to constantly espionage and enforce their control are not only haunting because of their animalistic and ingenious nature but also because of how relatable they are. Oceania has its own language, "Newspeak," which the Party wants to replace traditional English with. The purpose of Newspeak is not to nuance and increase vocabulary, but rather to decrease it. Here is a passage I took from 1984 entailing the logic of Newspeak. I wanted Orwell’s incisive writing style to speak for itself.

“Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s the exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. But in the final version of Newspeak, there’ll be nothing else. In the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word. [...] Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. [...] How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness” (Orwell 68-69).

Thought affects language, but language defines the extent of thought. How can we advocate for “democracy” when we don’t know what “rights” mean? How can we protest against dictatorships around the world when we don’t know what “freedom” means? Advocacy, discussion, resistance, and ultimately, revolutionary progress become stifled when no one has the lexicon to argue for what they believe in or contradict others on their logical flaws. Humanity becomes stagnant.

As time-consuming and frustrating it is to do, we must start communicating with subtlety and sophistication. We must learn to have genuine responses to genuine problems instead of taping a universal slang for convenience. We must continue the linguistic legacy left by our predecessors, for that is how we carry the human heritage of enlightenment, consciousness, and rebellion.

Article Written By: MJ C.