IT DOESN’T HAVE TO MEAN THAT

It’s been announced in the UK that the powers that be are making moves to deal with what is described as ‘extremism’. Sounds pretty good really, doesn’t it? No-one wants extremism bleeding through the country because it means that there’s real risk to the whole of society. Extremism is where all kinds of troubles come from. But how do you define extremism? The easiest image we could have will tend to be on the far ends of any continuum but the depth of understanding which can make the water muddy sits easier in the centre. What’s been called out as a problem in this particular instance is that the definition being made for extremism is so broad that it can cover almost anything. So words matter but their meanings are vital. We need to understand and share that knowledge with others to create value in those words. Cool is low temperature but is also a way to describe someone who’s interesting and well liked, or at the forefront of popularity. We’ve all used cool in the slang way and we all understand how it can be deployed, but if we had no knowledge of that slang, we’d be left scratching our heads why someone is cold as a being a good thing. Now words and their meanings change over time as they all get used and amended and that’s how evolution of language happens. The problems come from when changes of words usage and meanings are changed by force, which is at the core of what’s happened in this case. When changes happen through time, everyone has the chance to take on the incremental differences, but a leap is something which is pushed onto people and any amendments in meanings which came along with the natural method, the steps where people tried out the usages of different possibilities until the most popular stuck, meaning we’re using words without foundations. Forced usage of language as a means of control is very clear in 1984 as Newspeak is grown. The Party releases amendments to words and their meanings to control what and how the population think. In the book, there is also a method employed to make said changes appear retroactive. The old meaning was never in existence, the new meaning has always been there and if you think it hasn’t then you’re trying to subvert society and should be dealt with. And there is the horror of those forced changes to meanings and definitions. If a word can become something else outside of the usual methods of usage, how can we be sure of what we’re saying as being correct? And if the definitions are made too wide, then everything could fall under it’s use so it has no utility at all. Is it a hat or a helmet? Or a Cap? Or a Hood? A headdress? Doesn’t matter. All of those shall now be called a hat because they all do basically the same thing so we only need the one word. Why waste time and effort on anything else? Words are a central pillar in how we communicate so having nuanced understanding of how they’re used is crucial to our collective societal health. If we try to force changes or manipulate how and when our linguistic powers are deployed, we open doors to so much more than confusion. I for one don’t fancy ending up in the Ministry of Love. Stay safe all.