A few days ago in Tucson, Arizona, a young man named Jared Lee Loughner shot and killed six people and wounded 19 others, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who seems to have been his principal target. Since the shooting, much of the media coverage has focused on the possible influence of “hate speech,” which demonizes those who have certain opinions or otherwise belong to identifiable groups.
The event and the media coverage of it reminded me of three of the books that have influenced my own thinking about language and its relationship to thought and action: Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933), by Alfred Korzybski; Language in Thought and Action (5th ed. 1991), by S. I. Hayakawa; and Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk (1976), by Neil Postman. You can tell by the titles that these books all address the way language influences the relationship between thoughts and behavior. Even if Loughner was not responding directly to specific hate speech, words matter because they influence patterns of thinking and—eventually—behavior.
One of the stories often told about Korzybski comes from his days as a university lecturer. One day he interrupted his lecture to state that he was hungry and needed something to eat. He opened his briefcase, brought out a package of cookies, and while eating one, asked the students if anyone wanted to have a cookie with him. Several accepted the offer. When everyone was munching away, he revealed the original packaging. The “cookies” were actually dog biscuits. The students were horrified, and two of them had to run from the lecture hall to vomit. Korzybski then said, “People don’t just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter.” Cookies make for good eating. Dog biscuits not so much….
Korzybski had wide-ranging influence on our understanding of how language works and influenced most of the “big names” in linguistics, psychology, and philosophy since. Richard Bandler and John Grinder used Korzybski’s ideas for their first model of language patterns (called the “Metamodel”). Hayakawa and Postman were also among those influenced. Hayakawa’s first book, Language in Action (1941), was primarily a response to Hitler’s propaganda and success in persuading millions to share his views and act on them. One of his main points, in both the original and the follow-up, Language in Thought and Action, is that judgments stop thought. This is one of the principal problems with using labels (“tax-and-spend democrats,” “failed stimulus package,” “job-killing Obamacare,” etc.): it is a form of demonization. Although it hasn’t always been the case (if you’re old enough, you may recall some of the “left-wing” terminology from the 1960s), in recent years conservatives in the States have been doing more of this than liberals.
Postman defines stupid talk as ineffective language that “does not and cannot achieve its purposes.” Crazy talk, on the other hand, “may be entirely effective but which has unreasonable or evil or, sometimes, overwhelmingly trivial purposes. It is talk that creates an irrational context for itself….” This, in part, results from the inherent metaphorical nature of language. In his discussion of the metaphorical nature of language, Postman echos George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By):
All language is metaphorical, and often in the subtlest ways. In the simplest sentence, sometimes in the simplest word, we do more than merely express ourselves. We construct reality along certain lines. We make the world according to our own imagery. Consider for example, a straightforward question, such as, “Do you see the point I am trying to make?” Why see the point? And why a point? Is an idea something you can see? (p. 124)
The principal problem is, I think, that too many people have a limited understanding of how language actually works, so that speech designed to trigger a fear response is unexamined and goes in as a hypnotic command. If someone, some group (doctors who perform abortions, members of a race or ethnic group), or an institution (labor unions, the government or some aspect of government) is demonized with regularity, those most prone to fear will increasingly feel the need to protect themselves. If you think the government is coming to take your children or your guns away (as Glenn Beck seems to), it’s natural and logical to stock up on guns to protect yourself from “the government.”
One of the things about fear is that it tends to override reason. Those who are phobic of elevators, for example, probably know that elevators are used safely by thousands of people every day, but that doesn’t prevent them from being too afraid to get on one. The other thing about fear is its influence on mirror neurons (see my previous blog entry, “Intuition: Not Just for Women,” 20 November 2010). If you have two people, one who is afraid of elevators and one who is afraid of dogs, and the one with the dog phobia is triggered by the sight of a dog, the one with the phobia of elevators will share the fear response, perhaps envisioning an imminent attack by an elevator.
So … what happens when those who are afraid of the government and feel the need to stock up on guns make their ideas known to those who are afraid of guns and have memorized the numbers of people killed by them since JFK was assassinated? Yes … the mirror neurons work overtime to see which group can be the most fearful the fastest. It is not the best recipe for creating a peaceful, productive democracy, is it….
This is the real hazard of hate speech. It preys on fear, and only those who understand that can avoid the amygdala-driven fear response. Probably the most important way to develop that understanding is to begin asking who gains what if you are afraid. In other words, follow the money. Political commentators get paid based on audience, and the best way to gain audience is to get people excited—and fear works well for this—about what they are saying. People tune in for essentially the same reason they ride roller coasters: they get an adrenaline rush based on an amygdala response.
It may be time to pull the plug on political commentators and spend more time riding roller coasters. Or it may be time to learn more about language and linguistics and begin asking the Metamodel questions of NLP to connect the fear-based mental maps being presented with evidence from the territory.
