How Linguistic Manipulation Is Further Dividing Us

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I am a fan of the well-crafted phrase, “Le mot juste,” as Sideshow Bob once said. It should come as no surprise that language is important to me. Words have meaning and even when they lack a poetic turn, an agreement on what words mean is essential to communication. Change “literally” to mean the same thing as “figuratively,” as the Merriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries have done, and it becomes difficult to know what people are saying.

It, therefore, bothers me when people misuse words, manipulate language to confuse an issue, or more recently, try to change the definition of words to remake the world on their terms. While we are all guilty of lying on occasion, there are three groups that are guilty of this on a regular basis and pose a danger to, if not society, then democracy: politicians, the media, and activists.

We are all well aware of politicians’ tenuous relationship with the truth. As the old joke goes, “how do you tell if a politician is lying? His/her lips are moving.” Joking aside, political abuse of language is not restricted to lies, politicians and their staffs also regularly attempt to manipulate situations to their benefit. The most famous example may be Bill Clinton’s attempt to dodge an uncomfortable question by stating that "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.” While Clinton certainly set the bar high for political obfuscation, “spin” is regularly used to manipulate the interpretation of events in a politician’s favor, most notably in the “spin room” following debates.

As Orwell pointed out, political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". For democracy to function properly, citizens must be able to understand the facts regarding the issues and discern the intentions of those running for political office so that they can vote effectively. Normalizing lying and spin makes it difficult to do either of these much less trust the government when it tells us its actions are in our best interests. Compounding the problem is our tendency to forgive our side for its lies and spin while decrying the same behavior in our political opponents. Double standards do not make for civil political discourse but instead pit us against our fellow citizens and encourage us to vilify our neighbors for holding different political views.

As the divisive nature of politics grows and the stakes increase or at least appear to, the media has become prone to manipulating language and spinning events to convince people of the “rightness” of the side they support. It is unfortunate so many have yet to understand that the media, be it television networks, legacy newspapers, or online news providers, have largely aligned themselves with either the left or right. The media are either overtly biased and manipulating the truth, or covertly biased and choosing which stories to report and which to ignore. There was a time when the media, while largely left-leaning, were for the most part unbiased and Fox News was rightly considered to be the only biased news source. Those days are long over.

The bias of media organizations is so widespread, that several websites have sprung up to assist readers with identifying the political alignment and factuality of these organizations’ reporting including mediabiasfactcheck.com and allsides.com. Personally, I have made it a habit of googling “’news organization name’, bias” when I read a news article to help identify which way the publisher/broadcaster leans and consequently what they will omit from or highlight in a news story. While both the aforementioned sites have media bias charts, my attempts to find news organizations that report only the facts has been difficult, to say the least (Reuters and AP do a pretty good job. At one

time I would have included the BBC, but I’m losing my faith in it).

The problem with media bias is that many of us get our news from one or two sources, likely on the same side of the political spectrum. This limits our ability to get the full story. When politicians lie or omit the truth, we can count on the other side to point it out. When the press does it, we often don’t notice because we only read or watch news organizations that support our beliefs. Fox calling out MSNBC for lying, omitting facts, or other biased behavior (or vice versa) will only reach Fox (MSNBC) viewers who already don’t trust MSNBC (Fox), consequently, the lies and/or omissions go unnoticed. Not all of us have the time, inclination, or stomach to read or listen to media organizations on both sides of the political spectrum and are consequently being influenced by organizations falsely representing themselves as impartial news sources. This is not good for democracy. (for a more detailed analysis of how the media manipulate language I recommend All Sides.

I will continue this analysis of language in part II and have saved the worst group for last. Activists. If in your head you imagine me saying it as I would a curse word, you aren’t far from wrong. I have made my opinion of activists clear in the past and they are by far the worst practitioners of linguistic manipulation. Activists use language not to communicate or make their intentions clear, but to obfuscate or win people over to their cause by using “double-speak” or by framing their cause using the most sympathetic language possible. They would have us believe that they are akin to revolutionaries, intent on bringing about a better world. My definition of “revolutionary” is more in line with that of Orwell: “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”