Friday, October 13, 2006

Rise of the Blec and Just Who is Running the Farm?

I am on a journalism course at Westminster uni.

Today one of our tutors called Chris Horrie, who I have decided reminds me
of Columbo, i.e quickwitted under cover of chaos, gave a lecture.

His lectures will be available online at our coursesite and thus blec (web lecture) is created.

His lecture was on language and how to write good pieces of journalism.

Enter Orwell who wrote many key works, none more so than 1984 with its thought police,
ministry of truth etc.

Orwell came up with a theory that as thought is conveyed by language, thoughts could be controlled by "owning" the language.

I learned that there are so many examples of such language Orwell predicted all around us,
for example nuclear deterrent. The West has a nuclear deterrent, our allies have a nuclear deterrent
but our enemies have a nuclear bomb. The technology is the same, more likely the West's is more advanced, and if used the end result is the same-mass death. Yet try campaigning against a deterrent-you would be labelled a member of the loony left who would like to dance naked through Siberia inviting hardened criminals back to your house for tea and cake.

Orwell also argued in an essay on the English language that modern english was filling up with grand sounding words that mean little: indefatigable for example sounds very nice amongst politce circles but really what is wrong with tireless?

i.e He travailed indefatigablely

it actually can be phrased He worked tirelessly

Right now we all know what we are talking about.

But this got me thinking: governments are creating new word groups/forms/words themselves to try to change our thinking so for example wars are no longer wars. We have humanitarian interventions which sounds noble and enables us to believe that civilians will be protected and deaths will be minimal. This is why when civilians are killed they were not killed they become collateral damage-part of the cost of fighting a humanitarian intervention. But war by definition is not humane. We have a War on Terror. You cannot have war on a noun, else we better start nuking dictionaries. Actually some people may like that no words no thought and we can shuffle like lambs to our end.

On the other hand we have academics, businesses and countless others building up language into these huge complex mazes which when unwound like a ball of string there is nothing inside.

"Implemeting our core competencies we furnish customer centric bespoke turnkey solutions"

This may sound amazing to a potential customer, who may think gee they must know what they are doing look at those long words but does anyone know what it means?

ok if you did without cheating and looking words up congratulations; go on countdown, write a technology manual etc.

But for those that didnt get it and/or cheat

"Using our strengths we give a made for you solution that will open up chances for you"

or

"We create for you"

Anyway like Chris Horrie I have gone off what I wanted to say which is if one group are perverting language to change the way we think and another group is trying to build language that just does not mean anything to most people who the hell is running our modern day animal farm?

Does anybody actually know?

Or perhaps one Blair has simply improved on a previous Blair and decided that why bother controlling language to stop ideas, why not do away with ideas themselves. Perhaps thats why his education policy is a shambles. He likes it that way!

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    Under rigorous examination I suppose I am a considerate, intelligent, humorous type of person