/pol/ - Politically Incorrect

Here's a bit from the oera Linda book about how everyone used to have only one language and that was better

>>10292680

I did a little side research on this, first establishing the importance of language, and how the absence of a word to represent a concept may influence future thinking. Gonna CLTR+V'ing th

Language and Thought

In general, concepts come before language, with language being our ability to communicate and express that concept. However, there are things that cannot be expressed in the absence of language. Furthermore, if a language lacks the word for a particular concept, it can affect one's cognitive ability to comprehend and express it, to an extent.

A few examples

Quoting this paper on linguistic relativity, pics 1-3

http://www.casasanto.com/papers/Casasanto_Linguistic_Relativity_Routledge_2016.pdf

Regarding the difference in strength in spatial mapping, most human infants possess the ability to perform spatial mapping in different representations. As they start learning, their language determines which representation takes dominance. For instance, when describing the differences in the pitch of sounds, we use High or Low in English. In Farsi, however, they use their word for Thin to describe a High pitch, and Thick to describe a Low pitch. Where we mentally measure pitch in terms of length, Farsi measures them in volume. A difference in language expression is responsible for how people who speak these languages think differently.

A more radical example of this difference lies between English and the Pirahã language. The third image briefly goes over an experiment involving a can full of nuts being emptied out one at a time. In English, we're able to verbally express an exact amount of a large quantity. 77. 96. 1,249. In the Pirahã language, only 1 and 2 are verbally expressed as exact quantities. Anything we would measure as 3 or >3 is referred to as "Many" in their language. The experiment showed that the Pirahã were unable to mentally represent exact quantities greater than three, as in, they were unable to determine the numerical difference between having four of something or five of something. It was believed that this occurred because their langue's counting system was nonexistent past the count of three. Their lack of vocabulary to express exact number quantities is responsible for their failure to complete tasks requiring that skill, challenging the notion that the ability to do so is a universal trait among humans. (Which was explained away via cultural relativism. 'The Pirahã don't NEED an exact numerical system to function in their society' etc)

Differences in mental representation of numbers, motion, speed, shapes, and various abstract concepts, both slight and radical exist between languages that express them differently, or not at all.

It is on this basis that I will try to highlight the importance of issues regarding the manipulation of language, changing words, changing their definition, ridding a language of words, inventing new ones, and manipulating intend of language through translation

Manipulation of Language: Changing and Inventing Words and/or Definitions

I must refer to the 1984 Good and Ungood example again to illustrate the importance of the Party keeping the word good and using Ungood to replace the word Bad. It's simple.

>Word

>Discard antonym

>(Negative prefix)+Word

A very easy formula that establishes Good and all things thought of as Good as a sort of political orthodox, with everything thought of as Ungood unorthodox. It's an interesting example of how one could manipulate language to influence the range of thought, and even how people may perceive the world around them.

Let's take the word Racist. We'll even to a Goygle search of the definition to make it easy. A Racist is defined as

>(noun) "a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another."

>(adjective) "showing or feeling discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or believing that a particular race is superior to another."

With the emergence of the sociology definition of the word Racism, a new definition is festering its way to the forefront. Let's take a look at one from here.

https://archive.is/pFfdz

>Racism refers to a variety of practices, beliefs, social relations, and phenomena that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yield superiority, power, and privilege for some, and discrimination and oppression for others. Racism takes representational, ideological, discursive, interactional, institutional, structural, and systemic forms. But despite its form, at its core, racism exists when ideas and assumptions about racial categories are used to justify and reproduce a racial hierarchy and racially structured society that unjustly limits access to resources, rights, and privileges on the basis of race.

This definition, by intent, cannot exist on an interpersonal scale. It can only exist on a large scale, within a society. Also by intent, those who are seen to be on the side of the social hierarchy that possesses the most institutional power cannot experience racism, as you've heard time and time again. I compared the words Racist and Racism to express this exact detail. Certain people cannot be racist within this definition, even if their actions are what we'd explicitly call racist.

In sociology, the interpersonal expression of racial superiority or hatred is just prejudice. Whereas a Racist is commonly understood and defined by his beliefs and behavior, which we would deem as racism, Racism in sociology is a system, not a behavior or set of beliefs alone. We've already seen how this is used to justify what would otherwise be called Racism towards Whites, or even anyone seen to possess privilege. One could find this and other examples of radically shifting definitions to be similar to how the Party handled the destruction of words in 1984.

Have a list of Social Justice Terminology for reference. Some of these words I wouldn't really think are really Social Justice words, but most of them are right.

https://archive.is/0IjOm

Prefixes, suffixes, base words to attach them to, invented words like Cis to replace the other words to describe normal, everyday people. The Social Justice lexicon makes and plays by its own rules, sometimes even breaking them, while running in opposition to the beliefs and words of everyday language.

As I said before, words influence our thoughts and view of the world. In this case, I believe it's more important what concepts cannot be thought of under this lexicon rather than what is. To me, it's far more worrying that a child taught the sociology definition of Racism will grow up unable to conclude that an individual expressing racist beliefs to another cannot be a racist because of their skin color, because that person is not part of the system they were taught that racism is reliant on. I'm more worried that they cannot fathom the existence of only two genders, and see the phantoms of more everywhere.

Unlike in 1984, I think the problem here is not the erasure of 'shades of definition', of ambiguity and complexity in place of simplicity and rigid linguistic structure. The problem is the erasure of concise, exact simplicity in exchange for ambiguous, context-dependent complexity where it is and has not been traditionally needed. Judgement of interpersonal behavior turns into an analysis of society, racial demographics, and institutions. Sexual aversion to fat people becomes a phobia of those overweight.

The Social Justice lexicon created fear of the unorthodox where it does not and should not exist, all made possible by the complex manipulation of simple words.

Then I just have smaller, more general examples of languages being superseded, changed, or revived in some way.

>Commercials, though short lived, decrying the usage of "Gay" to describe things that are lame or stupid, fearing it may hurt the sensibilities of homosexuals(Establishing linguistic orthodoxy, Political Agenda)

>"Terrorists" to refer to a conglomeration of Islamic extremist organizations instead of simply calling them Islamic extremists. Obama did this every single time (Indirect Linguistic Orthodoxy, Political Agenda. Unlike 1st example, I don't recall him suggesting the term be used in place of the other, but those words were repeated by the public and media at large, thus indirectly forming a linguistic orthodoxy)

>Chinese occupation of Taiwan resulted in local Taiwanese languages effectively dying out, first replaced by Japanese, and then replaced to a more authoritarian extent by Mandarin. Most of Taiwan now speaks Mandarin, with the original local languages either dead or on the verge of dying (Superseding language, Destruction of collective Taiwanese identity and culture to be superseded by Chinese authority and language)

>Muslim conquests establish Arabic as the lingua franca of much of the Middle East, nearly destroying the Persian language in the process. Ferdowsi, a great Persian poet, wrote epics in the Persian language in the face of Arabic linguistic dominance. Hailed as the Savior of the Persian Language(Revitalization, refusal to let the traditional language and culture of Persia die, making assimilation into the Muslim world much more difficult for a time)

>Israel. After finally being able to have a country of their own, the Jews revived the Hebrew language. They know that the heart of a nation consists of a shared memory, shared ethnicity, shared land, and a shared language(Revitalization, vital to the creation and cohesion of the country)

>A recent a funny example, someone at CoxCon asked "Are traps gay", a question that has set the SJW side of the internet ablaze as they and their white knights claim that Traps are an offensive, derogatory term for trannies. Apparently, Trap is now a dirty word. (Political orthodoxy, reimagining of definition to cause outrage in the guise of protecting sensibilities, trannies are just fucking crazy I can't explain this shit)

>>10292427

This one makes me angry.

>>10292731

>A more radical example of this difference lies between English and the Pirahã language. The third image briefly goes over an experiment involving a can full of nuts being emptied out one at a time. In English, we're able to verbally express an exact amount of a large quantity. 77. 96. 1,249. In the Pirahã language, only 1 and 2 are verbally expressed as exact quantities. Anything we would measure as 3 or >3 is referred to as "Many" in their language. The experiment showed that the Pirahã were unable to mentally represent exact quantities greater than three, as in, they were unable to determine the numerical difference between having four of something or five of something. It was believed that this occurred because their langue's counting system was nonexistent past the count of three. Their lack of vocabulary to express exact number quantities is responsible for their failure to complete tasks requiring that skill, challenging the notion that the ability to do so is a universal trait among humans. (Which was explained away via cultural relativism. 'The Pirahã don't NEED an exact numerical system to function in their society' etc)

Actually, it's this example that helps illustrate my point the most. The failure of the Pirahã people in this experiment to express an exact quantity past 3 was shocking to quite a lot of people, as it was commonly thought that being able to express exact quantities of something, especially when there are so few, was an innate human ability that everyone had. I find this to be a good example of language corroding thought.

I need to look for more examples of thought first corrupting language, then the affected aspects of the language corrupting thought, as in an intentional effort to change the scope of expression and thinking through modified vocabulary

Anyway, in the meantime, have another example of linguistic toxicity being thrust upon a word that did not deserve it. Niggardly.

>Niggardly: Adjective - - not generous, stingy

>Adverb - - In a stingy way

>Synonyms: Parsimonius, cheap, tightfisted

>In the United States, there have been several controversies concerning the word "niggardly", an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", because of its phonetic similarity to the racial slur "nigger". Etymologically the two words are unrelated.

>In 1995, years before the incidents in Washington, Wilmington and Madison, The Economist magazine used the word "niggardly" in an article about the impact of computers and productivity: "During the 1980s, when service industries consumed about 85% of the $1 trillion invested in I.T. in the United States, productivity growth averaged a niggardly 0.8% a year." The Economist later pointed out with amusement that it received a letter from a reader in Boston who thought the word "niggardly" was inappropriate. "Why do we get such letters only from America?" the British magazine commented

>At some point before the Washington, D.C., incident (of early 1999), The Dallas Morning News had banned the use of the word after its use in a restaurant review had raised complaints

>In November 2011, a Broward County drug counsellor was fired and another suspended for an incident in which the word "niggardly" was used. A substance-abuse client filed a complaint saying a counsellor called him "niggardly dumb" in a June meeting with two workers at a county rehab center. In an investigative report, the county's professional standards office found the workers, who are both white, engaged in "unprofessional, unethical and discriminatory" behavior.

Fighting Words With Words: Identifying Word Manipulation

In a war of language, the common arsenal among the opposing sides are words themselves. It's exactly as I explained. Words with altered definitions, words with negative prefixes to establish the base word as an orthodox, made up words to create social pressure against verbal expressions, thought patterns, or behaviors. In this war of words, you need words to fight back. You need words that identify each phase of the attempted linguicide of your language. I can only give you a few, but I hope this helps you call out these evils as they arise, for I find this topic to be increasingly more relevant just in the past few weeks.

Terms for Restriction of Words and Speech

>Speech Code (A topic I'll get into later)

A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are common in the workplace, in universities, and in private organizations. The term may be applied to regulations that do not explicitly prohibit particular words or sentences. Speech codes are often applied for the purpose of suppressing hate speech or forms of social discourse thought to be disagreeable to the implementers.

Use of the term is in many cases valuative; those opposing a particular regulation may refer to it as a speech code, while supporters will prefer to describe it as, for example and depending on the circumstances, a harassment policy. This is particularly the case in academic contexts. The difference may be ascertained by determining if the harassment policy bans more than what is legally defined as harassment; one that does is almost certainly a speech code.

>Word Taboo

A restricted use of words induced by social constraint. This can occur very naturally and in a very top-down fashion. A natural example is the term "pass away" in English. We say someone has passed away, often to avoid directly naming the deceased and their cause of death. It's a respectful restriction of speech. In the top-down fashion, a word taboo would be the erasure of a word from the social discourse in any group or institution as part of the speech code, as well as its replacement with a more respectful term. (See how this creates a linguistic orthodox?)

>Controlled Language

Controlled languages (sometimes called controlled natural languages or CNLs) are subsets of human languages, such as English or Chinese. Controlled languages use restricted grammar rules and vocabularies (typically between 800 and 1,000 words) to reduce or eliminate ambiguity and complexity. They are often used to simplify technical communication, especially for the benefit of non-native readers. They are also used to improve machine translation of source content, which typically results in reduced translation costs.

Traditionally, controlled languages fall into two major categories, simplified controlled languages and logic-based controlled languages. CL's have genuine, practical value for people learning the language in question who can't quite understand it that well. In more authoritarian fashion, a controlled language can be engineered through speech codes and word taboos. The resulting lexical body as a whole is the controlled language. Erasing lexical ambiguity and complexity is not in itself a sort of evil, but like many things, its implementation is how we would define it as something good or bad.

>Expurgation

Expurgation doesn't exclusively deal with words, but any sort of content deemed inappropriate or offensive from an artistic work. A good modern example of this would be Nintendo removing head patting/face caressing from the American release of Fire Emblem Fates. Expurgation isn't a very new practice. It's been around for centuries. Huckleberry Finn had to replace the word nigger with other words such as slave and Upton Sinclair's Oil! had to black out several pages depicting a motel sex scene.

The work that is published following the expurgation of questionable content is what you'd call a Fig-Leaf Copy. The name was chosen because of how artists would cover the genitals of their subjects with fig leaves in the final work. The localization scene is a a festering pool of expurgationists, or just simple incompetence to bring over the same experience in a different language. When actual content is being taken out like that because it was deemed offensive, it's expurgation, which can be induced by social pressure or self-induced.

The Emergence of Speech Codes

>Speech codes—university regulations prohibiting expression that would be constitutionally protected in society at large—gained popularity with college administrators in the 1980s and 1990s. As discriminatory barriers to education declined, female and minority enrollment increased. Concerned that these changes would cause tension and that students who finally had full educational access would arrive at institutions only to be offended by other students, college administrators enacted speech codes.

>In the mid-1990s, the phenomenon of campus speech codes converged with the expansion of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funds.[8] In 1994, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—the federal agency that oversees the implementation and enforcement of Title IX—investigated Santa Rosa Junior College after two women complained about comments made about them on an online college bulletin board that included “anatomically explicit and sexually derogatory terms.”[9]

>In a letter to the college, OCR concluded that the offensive speech had created a “hostile educational environment” for the complainants and directed the college to adopt a policy banning, among other things, online speech that “has the purpose or effect of creating a hostile, intimidating or offensive educational environment.”[10] Soon thereafter, when the University of Massachusetts faced criticism over a broad new proposed harassment policy in 1995, then-chancellor David K. Scott “responded to criticism by suggesting that a code was required by Federal Department of Education regulations.”[11]

>In enacting speech codes, administrators ignored or did not fully consider the philosophical, social, and legal ramifications of placing restrictions on speech, particularly at public universities. As a result, federal courts have overturned speech codes at numerous colleges and universities over the past two decades.[12]

>Despite the overwhelming weight of legal authority against speech codes, a large number of institutions—including some of those that have been successfully sued on First Amendment grounds—still maintain unconstitutional speech codes.[13] It is with this unfortunate fact in mind that we turn to a more detailed discussion of the ways in which campus speech codes violate individual rights and what can be done to challenge them.

In the period where more women and minorities were entering college campuses, reports of harassment increased 400% between 1985 and 1990 alone. As a result, there were 75 speech codes enacted across college campuses in the US by 1990.

>>10292660

>examples

You can see it in everyday speech and conversation, especially online (all media really) since often times this the first front of the jew.

Now there are two things kikes do

1) Change the word

Changing the word allows them to in essence change the way you think of a topic. At the very least it gives them an excuse to correct you. And when they can't win on that front

2) Change the meaning

This really fucks up public discourse and the expression of ideas because you and your opponent end up talking about two different things. Therefore you can't ever come to an agreement or have a mutual stepping stone into which to come to valid conclusions.

Here are some examples of them changing the word:

>illegal aliens - undocumented migrants (as mentioned in OP)

>colored - african american - black - People of color

>gay marriage - marriage equality

>pro abortion - pro-choice

>migrants - refugees

>homosexual - gay/LGTBT

The above changes in words were born out of Politically Correct culture and allow leftists to talk about these same things without the negative connotation they socially had in the passed. This is a trick. A trick to make their shitty ideas appear less shitty

Now here are some (recent) examples of them changing definitions of words in order for those words to match their frame/ideas

>Racist = Privilege + Power

>Nazi = Anyone right of them politically

>Anti-semetic = Any criticism of the chosen

>Holocaust = When the jews supposedly got gassed in WW2 by Germany

The definition of Racism is the one word I've seen change definitions in real time. You cannot have a conversation with a leftist about racism because the two of you will literally be talking about two different things. They turned the word racism to imply an original sin all whites are born with that non-whites are immune from.

This is why it's so important to never use leftist words or rhetoric when talking to a leftist or to the public to prove a point. You can't win by affirming their definitions and cementing their worldview. You are playing by their delusional rules when you do that. It automatically gives the leftist a point to the bystander.

I'm not even going to go into the straight up made up words leftists use to seem smarter, edgier and confuse their idealogical opponents

>implicit bias

>mansplaining

>micro aggressions

https://archive.is/fFdv7

>The University of Illinois at Chicago launched a campaign suggesting words like “crazy,” “ghetto,” and “illegal alien” are not “inclusive,” according to a Monday report.

>The college’s “Words Matter!” campaign launched workshops in July to instruct university members on “the power of language,” according to The College Fix.

>“At UIC, diversity is our strength — our competitive edge,” says UIC on the page detailing the campaign. “The purpose of the campaign is not to tell people what they can or cannot say (i.e., inhibit free speech) but rather to acknowledge that on a diverse campus each and everyone one of us has a responsibility to be aware of the power of our words to promote a more welcoming and inclusive campus environment.”

>The page features a slideshow with individuals holding signs displaying terms like “crazy,” “ghetto,” and “illegal alien,” as well as expressions like “man up” and “what’s your real name?” The university also showcases terms like “undocumented” and “Black Lives Matter.”

>The two July workshops, sponsored by a handful of UIC departments such as the offices of diversity and faculty affairs, purport to “offer opportunities for UIC to engage with the concept of inclusive language and its connection to identities, inequality, and power” via readings, videos, and dialogue.

>The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the University of Illinois at Chicago, but received no comment in time for publication.

Now this is a thread I can get on board with. Here's some quotes from my favorite book about words:

>Motion seeks to transform facts into opinion, then into conviction; and anyone hewing to the facts themselves is shown, against his will. in an adverse light. This is quite possible in the faculty where after every overthrow, world history is to be rewritten for the sake of the moment.

&

>The person who teaches us how to think makes us lords over men and facts.

&

>Why do people who leave nothing unchallenged still make demands of their own? They live off the fact that gods, fathers, and poets used to exist. The essence of words has been diluted into empty titles.

&

>The lack of ideas or – put more simply – of gods causes an inexplicable moroseness, almost like a fog that the sun fails to penetrate. The world turns colorless; words lose substance, especially when they are to transcend sheer communication.

&

>Bruno brought back a mechanical pencil from the catacombs… A mere toy. It is probably meant to indicate the level of technology that has been attained there and to inspire if not fear then respect. And is 'technology' the right word? Metatechnology would, no doubt, be more fitting. It applies not to the perfecting of means, but to their sudden transformation into a different quality. When a runner reaches his top speed, running turns into flying.

&

>"The decay of language is not so much a disease as a symptom. The water of life is dwindling. Words have meaning still, but not sense. They are being replaced largely by numbers. Words are becoming incapable of producing poetry and ineffective at prayer. The crude enjoyments are supplanting the spiritual ones."

&

>In a period of decline, when it was considered glorious to have helped destroy one's own nation, the roots of language were, not surprisingly, likewise pruned, above all in Eumeswil. Loss of history and decay of language are mutual determinants; The Eumenists championed both. They felt called upon to defoliate language on the one hand and to gain prestige for sland on the other hand… the assault on evolved language and on grammar, on script and signs, is part of the simplification that has gone down in history as a cultural revolution. The first world-state cast its shadow.

-Ernst Juenger, Eumeswil 1977

Pic related

>>10340066

Webm related.

Don't get into the 'gender' word game: the only winning move is not to play.

Linguistic Priming: The Predisposition of Words Pt. 1

I hope to further explain the heart of "linguistic orthodoxy". Different words naturally carry a positive or negative implication. Say some guy is going to introduce you to someone, and before they do, they say "She's really untrustworthy." The word Untrustworthy primes your expectations of the person's ability to be trusted, regardless of how trustworthy the person actually is. Though you may not bring up what you heard when you do meet her, that word Untrustworthy will remain in the back of your head.

Words control the brain in a more subtle way than languages as a whole do. Certain words that express anger or fear of some sort initiate reactions in the amygdala. When you're being insulted, the words being directed to you cause a chain reaction in the amygdala, which interprets audio and visual cues and the appropriate response. Fight, flight, or freeze are the usual modes of response when the amygdala detects danger. Negative words can trigger this kind of reaction, and one's emotional responses ends up trumping their reasonable response. (Hence why screaming at a man will often get him to scream back at you or knock you the fuck out)

And thus we return to the diabolical nature of word structure, and how some words can be intentionally crafted to utilize this emotional response on a more subtle level. There is a reason why in 1984, there was only Good and Ungood, Good being the orthodox, and Ungood, weighted by the negative prefix "un", stood outside of that orthodox. Because the concept of what was good or what could be good was reduced to the duality of these words, a base and a negative augmentation, the good goyim living beneath the Party could not, and did not need to use logic or reason to know why Ungood was a bad thing. The word itself, existing in a duality of orthodox and unorthodox, enacted the necessary emotional responses in people to serve the Party's agenda, to maintain a their social order.

>>10343406

Linguistic Priming: The Predisposition of Words Pt. 2

The word Anti-semite operates in a similar fashion. The funny thing about Anti-semite is that it has no real antonym. There isn't really an opposite of anti-semite, but that's really how it should be. Discarding the negative prefix for a bit, the definition of Semitic is "relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family." The word Semite would refer to any person who speaks those languages, but it doesn't necessarily mean that person is an ethnic Jew, nor an ethnic Arab. Semites are classified as an ethnic, cultural, OR racial group, meaning it can one, two, or all of the three. A cultural group isn't always an ethnic group.

And yet, the label of "Anti-Semite" invokes images of a person who despises Jews, someone who's either entirely sympathetic to the Holocaust or denies it ever happened. By all logic, even with the prefix of "anti", if we merely attach the negative weight of that prefix with what it actually means to be a Semite, the resulting, logical definition would be someone who, for some reason, is opposed to the Hebrew or Arabic languages, and by extension, languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian. Though one could see the term meaning the hatred of the ethnic people who speak these languages, the word Semite refers mainly to the languages, and contains too much ambiguity to be primarily considered a direct reference to the ethnic, racial, or cultural groups, the actual people who speak these languages. Why not say someone is Anti-Arab, Anti-Jewish, or Anti-Akkadian? Why not use a word that actually and primarily refers to the actual ethnic peoples concerned.

That is how the actual nature of the word, by the logic of the definition of the base word, should be. The image of the Gingerjew Man cranking up his oven that is so often created in the minds of people who hear the word Anti-Semitic or inflict it upon someone, is a both a response and an emotional fabrication. It is a lie. It is the amygdala's response to the weight of the negative prefix attached to their own warped interpretation of the word Semitic, thanks to the word's own ambiguity between the languages it directly denotes, and the people it indirectly denotes.

Though reducing language to simple dualities can create this same effect, social and cultural attitudes can, often incorrectly, shape the ambiguity of a word to mean something that it necessarily doesn't. It creates a shadow, a misconception preyed upon by cultural attitudes around the person, as well as the person's own emotional response shaped by those attitudes.

This priming effect is the main mechanism of what I've been calling linguistic orthodoxy (please help me find a better name oh god). You must be wary of the subtle devilry of words turned against you, the power of modified and wrongfully influenced language to control you and those around you. Many people have lost their kings, their lords, their ancestral soil. But no people can survive losing their language, losing their ancestral and common understanding of words and the concepts around them, for they shape the common understanding that a people must share in order for there to be social cohesion within a nation and any group of people.

The powers that be has manipulated the perception of the essence of love, friendship, beauty and even words to work in their favor. This sort of evil is just so fundamentally corrupting that I cannot help but feel learned helplessness due to the fact that you cannot really effectively fight against it. A part of me wants to lash out, another part of me just wished to indulge in temporary pleasures like alcohol, video games and other fictional stories and tune everything out.

>>10345192

I find that harsh top-down attempts to change language don't go so well unless the party attempting the changes has totalitarian control over their subjects and the legal confines of expression. It'd be like a college campus speech code, but encompassing a larger swathe of words and terms, sometimes with no alternatives for those words and terms.

Subtle changes over a short period of time are mostly due to cultural and societal pressures . Words change according to their influenced sensibilities, and thus words die because the reason and logic that comprises their definition is lost to the crucible of emotional response. The definition and that emotion blends together to create an inaccurate, emotionally driven concept behind the word, and thus, expression and communication with those words are influenced accordingly on an ever-increasing scale.

It's everyone's fault. Few do it deliberately, but many do it passively.

>>10292427

Cool thread. https://archive.is/ByPyR

> I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.

<In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.

>They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “how can there be words you don’t know?” “But we know all the words of Kikuyu; every Kikuyu does,” they replied. I was even more surprised, but gradually it dawned on me that since their language is entirely oral, it exists only in the minds of Kikuyu speakers. Since there is a limit to what the human brain can retain, the overall size of the language remains more or less constant. A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the millions of pages of the written word, grows far beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety. But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts it contains will also be limited and hence that both language and thinking will be impoverished.

(1/?)

>>10351598

>[T]he Zulu word for promise—isithembiso—is not the correct word. When a black person “promises” he means “maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” But, I said, this makes nonsense of promising, the very purpose of which is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he may say, “I will try but I can’t promise.” He said he’d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. As a young Romanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person “promises” he means “I’ll try.”

>The failure to keep promises is therefore not a language problem. It is hard to believe that after living with whites for so long they would not learn the correct meaning, and it is too much of a coincidence that the same phenomenon is found in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, where I have also lived. It is much more likely that Africans generally lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. This would seem to indicate some difference in intellectual capacity.

<It has long seemed to me that blacks tend to lack self-awareness. If such awareness is necessary for developing abstract concepts it is not surprising that African languages have so few abstract terms. Time is another abstract concept with which Africans seem to have difficulties. The future, after all, does not exist. It will exist, but doesn’t exist now. People who have difficulty thinking of things that do not exist will ipso facto have difficulty thinking about the future. This has an obvious bearing on such sentiments as gratitude and loyalty, which I have long noticed are uncommon among Africans. We feel gratitude for things that happened in the past, but for those with little sense of the past such feelings are less likely to arise.

(2/?)

>>10351608

>“[Xhosa] is a language where polygon and plane have the same definition … where concepts like triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon are defined by only one word.” More accurately, these concepts simply do not exist in Xhosa, which, along with Zulu, is one of the two most widely spoken languages in South Africa. In America, blacks are said to have a “tendency to approximate space, numbers and time instead of aiming for complete accuracy.” Notice the identical triumvirate—space, numbers, and time. Is it just a coincidence that these three highly abstract concepts are the ones with which blacks — everywhere — seem to have such difficulties?

<White rule in South Africa ended in 1994. It was about ten years later that power outages began, which eventually reached crisis proportions. The principle reason for this is simply lack of maintenance on the generating equipment. Maintenance is future-oriented, and the Zulu entry in the dictionary for it is ondla, which means: “1. Nourish, rear; bring up; 2. Keep an eye on; watch (your crop).” In short, there is no such thing as maintenance in Zulu thought.

<The New York Times reports that New York City is considering a plan (since implemented) aimed at getting blacks to “do well on standardized tests and to show up for class,” by paying them to do these things and that could “earn [them] as much as $500 a year.” The clear implication is that blacks are not very motivated. Motivation involves thinking about the future and hence about things that do not exist. Given black deficiencies in this regard, it is not surprising that they would be lacking in motivation, and having to prod them in this way is further evidence for such a deficiency.

>Darwin Davis of the Urban League as “caution[ing] that the … money being offered [for attending class] was relatively paltry … and wondering … how many tests students would need to pass to buy the latest video game.”Instead of being shamed by the very need for such a plan, this black activist complains that the payments aren’t enough! His views may reflect a common understanding among blacks of what morality is: not something internalized but something others enforce from the outside. Whereas Western cultures internalize norms—“Don’t do that!” for a child, eventually becomes “I mustn’t do that” for an adult—African cultures do not.

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>>10351633

>Africans, I believe, may generally lack the concepts of subjunctivity and counterfactuality. Subjunctivity is conveyed in such statements as, “What would you have done if I hadn’t showed up?” This is contrary to fact because I did show up, and it is now impossible for me not to have shown up. We are asking someone to imagine what he would have done if something that didn’t happen (and now couldn’t happen) had happened. This requires self-consciousness, and I have already described blacks’ possible deficiency in this respect. It is obvious that animals, for example, cannot think counterfactually, because of their complete lack of self-awareness.

When someone I know tried to persuade his African workers to contribute to a health insurance policy, they asked “What’s it for?” “Well, if you have an accident, it would pay for the hospital.” Their response was immediate: “But boss, we didn’t have an accident!” “Yes, but what if you did?” Reply? “We didn’t have an accident!” End of story.

<To the extent people are deficient in such abstract thinking, they will be deficient in moral understanding and hence in human empathy—which is what we tend to find in Africans. If some Africans cannot clearly imagine what their own rude behavior feels like to others—in other words, if they cannot put themselves in the other person’s shoes—they will be incapable of understanding what rudeness is.

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I don't know if/where I have them saved, but I had a collection of information from (((linguists))) who claimed that all languages are equal, even patois and pidgins. Some even went so far to claim Ebonics is a legitimate dialect and we should respect that.

>>10351807

pic related

>>10351807

>>10373404

>>10293231