Language is important; more specifically, correctness of language is important. Purpose and meaning in one’s language is essential and, without it, what is left? Very little. After all, without meaning, language is just noise to break the silence and, if breaking the silence is what we as a collective are trying to achieve, perhaps this means we are afraid of the thoughts the silence might conjure up.
The English language has, by necessity, become a servant to a culture of superfluous noise – a modern, economically-driven culture which makes a virtue out of saying very little, if anything, and making it sound attractive, glamourous and important. One evening, perhaps even an hour, of watching MTV will fill your head with enough junk to last several lifetimes. Bright, fast, colourful, loud. Empty, soulless, meaningless, destructive.
George Orwell, as early as 1946, laid out his thoughts on how the English language was being corrupted by meaningless and low-quality expressions which served only to obscure meaning, rather than to express it. He spoke primarily about politics then: “In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.” If you had lived in Britain through the New Labour era, you would know that this ‘ideal’ had been perfected to an art-form. ‘On-message’ members of Parliament (MPs) were slaves to their pagers, telling them what to think and how to express it and anyone who dared to have an opinion outside the orthodoxy was fated to have a career on the margins, never to really be taken seriously again.
Orwell also stated that: “People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called ELIMINATION OF UNRELIABLE ELEMENTS. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” In our modern era of Rendition (kidnapping) and Enhanced Interrogation (torture) Orwell’s ideas have never been more relevant, or poignant.
The corruption of language has been extended into the commercial world also. Anyone lucky enough to have seen The Office will have witnessed David Brent trying to explain away his own laziness by using a raft of corporate terminology that does nothing to solve the problems there clearly are. However, despite being widely ridiculed, this corporate terminology continues to grow apace in the real world. It is positively encouraged in the biggest and most revered corporations at which many young people aspire to work, as well as in the public sector, where navigating safely through an interview requires fluency in a language of political-correctness that only certain people can match.
I remember one interview I had in which I was asked how I would deal with having a disabled colleague. This question struck me as odd in the first place because you would only have to ask this question to a brute who wouldn’t have been interested in applying for the job in question. Nevertheless, I answered that I treat everybody the same, with the same respect and as I would want to be treated myself. This, apparently, was the wrong answer. I should have said that I would treat the disabled colleague taking into account their particular disadvantages, as if that were not implicit in my own answer. As if respect for everyone, as well as common decency, did not entail offering to make a cup of tea for the person who was unable to reach the kettle for themselves.
It is this impenetrable nature of this kind of language that means you have to adjust your thought processes to get the approval of other people. As Orwell put it: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Mandatory adherence to a certain style of communication, then, promotes a fear of stepping outside the rules and, by extension, a general compliance among those who speak it. This is useful to organisations such as companies, political parties and the military, but it restricts the beauty of language and the duty of the individual to express their thoughts in an unfettered and honest way.
