Postmodernism in Language

Among the many ills for which postmodernism is responsible, be it as an ideological cause or a post-hoc justification, one stands out: the stigmatization of the communicative role of language and its economics and the popularization of political correctness, with its euphemisms, semantic obsurantism and confusions of stereotypes.

In academia, the classic conception of language is not alone anymore: instead of admiring its role in communicating, analyzing and clarifying, language started to be judged because of its ability to determine and inhibit thought. The movements to transform language originate in that idea: these may be well-meaning, such as the inclusion of the female sex in language, or assuredly sinister, such as the euphemisms used by politicans and the military that Orwell took to its most creepy extreme in 1984's fictional Newspeak. These attempts are based on obsolete theories according to which the relationship between ideas and language is inverted or, in the words of J. Hillis Miller, "language is not an instrument or tool in man's hands [...]. Language rather thinks man and his ‘world'... if he will allow it to do so."

Like all postmodernist theories, this notion inverts the cause-effect logic to create an impregnable -and therefore, apparently intelligent- idea. Actually, language allows us to communicate thoughts but it is neither the stuff of thought nor the cause of knowledge. And that is why The Big Brother's social engineering must fail: doing away with the word "freedom" would not do away with the visceral human yearning for freedom.

"Like all conspiracy theories, the idea that language is a prisonhouse denigrates its subject by overestimating its power." -Steven Pinker

This does not mean language is just a lot of labels that cannot affect thought itself: it is the main means by which culture is transmitted and it is true that it can be a manipulation tool. However, it is not as powerful as we wish and fear, be it to wipe out racism and sexism or to mitigate inconvenient truths by using a semantically hollow language. And that is why we perfectly know what "collateral damage" means and why African Americans that use the word "nigger" to refer to other African Americans are never accused of being racist. All in all, politically correct and euphemistic language belittles our ability to perceive context and subtext.

An example of the uselessness of political correctness is that, even if racism, sexism and homophobia are no longer acceptable stances in most of Western societies, those who take them have found a loophole through linguistic obcurantism and euphemisms such as "men's rights" which suggest that it is all about defense instead of offense. Even though everyone knows the subtext, abandoning all debasing terminology covers their backs according to the same PC rules created to fight them. The real problem -their ideas- can only be condemned if the focus becomes once again the context and subtext instead of the language used.

This mix-up of priorities also carries direct consequences. A great example is the censorship in the media out of fear of offending anyone: censors look for specific words with no regard to context -no matter if it is a humorous satire or even a rethorical device of exaggeration. Comedians Ricky Gervais and George Carlin, who have often faced this braindead form of censorship because of their shocking content, explain the problem beautifully:

"There's nothing you shouldn't joke about [...] When we tell a sick joke it's with the express understanding that neither party is really like that. I wouldn't tell a sick joke to a known pedophile." -Ricky Gervais

"Lots of groups in this country want to tell you how to talk, tell you what you can't talk about. Well, sometimes they'll say you can talk about something but you can't joke about it because 'it's not funny'. Comedians run into that shit all the time [...]. I believe you can joke about anything. It all depends on how you construct the joke, what the exaggeration is. Because every joke needs one exaggeration, one thing to be way out of proportion [...]. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ['inappropiate'] words in and of themselves. They're only words. It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral, the words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about 'bad words' and 'bad language.' Bullshit! It's the context that makes them good or bad." -George Carlin

Another casuality to postmodernism in language is the idea of stereotypes, the sets of adjectives used to pigeonhole varied groups in simplistic definitions. Unfortunately, the mistake is made of confusing prejudice with judgement -the "Don't you label me!» plaint is legitimate when the individual is being unjustly typecasted without any previous knowledge, but it is not appropiate when the "label" is the statistical definition of a group of which the individual is part. Essentially, it is the difference between saying "men are stronger than women" and "all men are stronger than women." The former is a statistical fact and the latter is an unjust generalization but, due to the PC overprotection against stereotypes, very few notice the distinction.

Actually, in academia many researchers have suffered all kinds of abuse because their purely statistical studies were misinterpreted to contain moral prejudice: in 1991 psychologists Stanley Coren and Diane Halpern faced death threats and a ban in a scholarly journal because their statistical conclusions showed that left-handed people tend to have more complications in life and die younger than right-handed people. More generally, every time a gene for violence, homosexuality or any other hot topic is discovered, no one seems to understand they are not claiming that those with the gene will absolutely have the condition or behavior or that these will not showcase absent the gene -the figure of speech "a gene for..." makes reference to nothing more or less than the increased probability of a behaviour appearing.

The stance against racism, homophobia and every other concern showcased here is legitimate, but in practice the defense has been taken to ridiculous extremes of language manipulation and misinterpretation that overestimate its power and underestimate our intelligence.

(Leer la versión original: El posmodernismo en la lengua)