In the recent film Arrival, the linguistic complexities of first contact with an alien species, and humanity disagreeing over what it all means, forms the basis for the story’s conflict. A key concept at the heart of the movie is something called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues one’s perception of reality is tied to the language in which we comprehend it. The idea has been controversial since it was put forward, and depending on whether one advances either the “weak” or “strong” versions of it there’s varying levels of support for aspects of it among linguists.
What is language? To grossly oversimplify something a lot of people with Ph.D’s have probably written volumes explaining, at its most rudimentary a language is a collection of sounds and/or symbols meant to categorize the reality in which we live in order to communicate information. Proponents of universal grammar believe this is a function of biology, and the development of human communication is an outgrowth of evolution with fundamental similarities in all languages. However, Sapir-Whorf posits a language is shaped by the culture and environment its users live in, whether expansive or limiting, and that in turn can influence or even determine the way people perceive such things as time, snow or the foundations of truth.
In his 1946 essay about Politics and the English language, George Orwell put forward a similar notion, in that thought can corrupt language and each regurgitation of language corrupts thought. This is why certain euphemisms embed themselves in a culture, like dead civilians becoming “collateral damage” and people forced to work in sweatshops or carry an assault rifle in a child army are “exploited persons” instead of slaves. It’s a way of rationalizing the horrific, thereby making it something we can accept as normal. And, according to the man who coined the term newspeak, it “anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.”
In modern politics, the very nature of trying to debate objective reality has become a multiple-choice game between differing ideologies, wherein facts are suspect and the patently absurd is given equal-time. Rationalizing deceit has given way to prettier terms like “spin.” In the middle of it all is a news media too afraid to call a lie a lie, and puppets every word spoken without analysis or commentary in a bold headline.
And that seems to be important, since our soon-to-be new president is a proven liar.
