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Language and its use in the exploitation of power

How is this done exactly?

Why would language be an avenue for power?


You must understand that language is the means (the medium/channel) by which knowledge can be attained and understood.


Knowledge is power


If knowledge is power, then this entails that the medium of knowledge, meaning its acquisition entails the same case as knowledge itself, and thereby implicitly part of the acquirement of power or the lack thereof.


From this we get the world of manipulation through euphemism


This is expressed as Orwellian double speak


We are in an age in which the media and the elite and the managerial class have an entirely different dictionary for how they use various terms. When they use terms, they have entirely different meanings than what the public have perceptions of those same words


Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

  • George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946


Andrew Gavin Marshal explains the topic very succinctly, possibly better worded than any human could have structured.

   

    Political language functions through euphemism, by employing soft-sounding or simply meaningless words to describe otherwise monstrous and vicious policies and objectives. In the European debt crisis, political language employed by politicians, economists, technocrats and bankers is designed to make policies which create poverty and exploitation appear to be logical and reasonable. The language employed includes the words and phrases: fiscal austerity/consolidation, structural adjustment/reform, labour flexibility, competitiveness, and growth. 


To understand political language, one must translate it. This is a four step process: first, you look at the rhetoric itself as inherently meaningless; second, you examine the policies that are taken; third, you look at the effects of such policies. Finally, if the effects do not match the rhetoric, yet the same policies are pursued time and time again, one must translate the effects as the true meaning of the rhetoric. Thus, the rhetoric has meaning, but not at face value.



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