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Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage |
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English 1102 |
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Grammatical Manipulation of the Audience
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Not only can a writer persuade though the clever turn of phrase or the well chosen word, but s/he can also use grammar itself, sentence structure, in an attempt to manipulate the way that the reader thinks about an issue. By controlling the amount and the kind of information that the reader provides through grammatical devices like passive voice, abstract words, and ambiguity, the writer can attempt to control how a reader perceives a subject under discussion.
Agent Deletion
In the English 1101 HyperTextBook, I described the writing problems associated with passive voice and nominalization. Here I would like you to review those pages and pay close attention to how the writer can hide the agent, the person responsible for the action expressed by the verb. By hiding the agent, the writer is able to protect someone, or to deceive the reader into thinking another person is responsible by hiding the real agent.
Newspeak
Poem 1
e.e. cummings
l
(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
li
ness.Whenever I read e.e. cummings, I am always struck by the playfulness of his language. One of my favorites of his poems is a small piece called "Poem 1" from 95 Poems.
Of the many 'tricks' in cummings' style, one of his favorite devices is exploring the potential for meaning when one can find words within words; for example in "Poem 1" cummings is able to find the word one in the word loneliness, a find that is at once both thematically and iconically appropriate. Whenever I see the words like assessment or patriotism or quality, I think of e.e. cummings. I think of the potential he would have enjoyed in those words.
However, that playfulness soon enough turns to worry when I think of those words in connection to the work of a very different writer — a writer whose work I admire as much for his close attention to language as for his writing style and guts — George Orwell. It was Orwell, more than any other writer, who warned us of the dangers of vague language, 'plastic' language, language that can be used to obfuscate and then to steal. In essays like "Politics and the English Language" and novels like 1984, he demonstrated the essential tie between political and linguistic power. What really worries me is the connection I see between Orwell's idea of Newspeak and the words like quality.
When people think of Orwell's invented language Newspeak, what they remember most is that the language shrinks. Big Brother is deliberately pruning the language, removing words like freedom, justice, or liberty.
Yet the worrisome connection for me is not the obvious one. Yes, words like assessment and quality are two of those vagaries that Orwell would rail against. Beyond that complaint however rests the real danger that I fear. The cleverness of Newspeak was not in the idea of 'shrinking' the English vocabulary. The cleverness of Newspeak was not in his ability to disguise elitism (expressed linguistically through Big Brother's manipulation of the language so that we could speak [and presumably think] only in ways that Big Brother wishes) in egalitarianism (expressed linguistically in the elimination of all the English vocabulary of Romance origins, preferring instead the Anglo-Saxon wordstock and compounding — the most Anglo-Saxon, most common method of word formation). The cleverness that I want to emphasize is Orwell's understanding that Big Brother needed all that and something more: the remaining vocabulary must be so abstract and so vague that real communication is always hampered, if not impossible. And that vagueness is how you can control people — control being Big Brother's main objective all along.
To illustrate the power of vague language to say something that seems meaningful but is unfortunately meaningless, I have created the Instant Educator below. Follow the directions, and the Instant Educator will produce sentences for you that sound as if a PhD wrote them in some profound treatise. The Instant Educator is based on the second, more subtle lesson in Orwell's idea of Newspeak: if we let language become overly vague, real communication will become impossible simply because we can not be certain that others share the same meaning for words that we do since all words are required to mean so many different things.
The Instant Educator
You don't need a PhD to sound like one!Directions:
- Simply place a check mark next to one selection in each column below to build automatically a "smart sounding" sentence in the text area.
"Writing was never so painless!"
– another satisfied customer
!
Tip:
Sentences generated by the Instant Educator are especially effective when used as thesis statements or as conclusions!Terms of Use:
- You are free to use the Instant Educator to produce as many "intelligent sounding" sentences as you wish. But remember to use this power only for good, never for evil.
- You may edit, copy, and paste anything from the Instant Educator into your papers, grant proposals, publications, doctoral theses, or textbooks in preparation for college students. However, if you use any work generated by the Instant Educator and receive money for that work, I claim a 10% share/royalty. Make checks payable to the "Dan Kies Retirement Fund."
- You may not use anything generated by the Instant Educator in work meant for me to read. (I read enough stuff like this in my professional journals already, thank you.)
And for those of you who feel that checking seven boxes is "just too much work to be instant," I offer you the Instant Instant Educator! Just one button does it all. Of course, you can copy and paste everything you like, but the same Terms of Use apply!
The interesting thing about both Newspeak and the Instant Educator is that they work: they seem to make sense when actually they are meaningless. Orwell knew that if language became too abstract, too vague, that it would lose its ability to convey meaning. That was the point of his essay "Politics and the English Language." The reason that both work is a consequence of the fact that we human beings are adept at making meaning from very little. That very human quality is also the weakness that Big Brother uses to control human thought.
Grammatical Ambiguity
Example of "Experiencer" Deletion to Create Grammatical Ambiguity Experiencer present It seems to me the Democrats will have a difficult time winning the White House in the next election.
Experiencer deleted It seems the Democrats will have a difficult time winning the White House in the next election.
Using it-cleft sentences, the writer can delete any mention of the "experiencer" in the sentence and thereby hide the fact that the sentence is mere opinion (the experience – and opinions – of one individual), making it sound instead as if it is a well-known fact. Consider for example the sentences in the table on the left. By using the it-cleft sentence pattern and by deleting the "experiencer," notice how the writer adds a tone of certainty to his/her statement that seems to disguise the fact that this sentence (in any form) is still an expression of the writer's opinion.
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