From Isis to Aum Shinrikyo, the way language works can distort reality. We must be vigilant in reading between the lines
David Shariatmadari
The Guardian, Wednesday 1 October 2014
"The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods,” says the main character in Iris Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net.
His view is that the words we use trap us into seeing the world in a
certain way. Orwell believed the same: if there’s no name for it, you
can’t really think about it. Conversely, a name can be created for
something that doesn’t really exist.
Linguists have argued for decades about the strength of this effect:
the consensus is that language guides, rather than determines, thought.
It can set up habits, no more. But habits can be tenacious.
Politicians have long known this. Advertisers know it. And so do
terrorists. And with the evolution of Islamic State (Isis) we have a
neat case study in the power of proper nouns. This faction of Sunni
fighters first called itself Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, clearly a name for local consumption. It means The Group for Monotheism (tawhid) and Struggle (the literal meaning of jihad,
a word as multivalent in English as it is in Arabic). There haven’t
been polytheistic religions in the region for centuries, but in
Muhammad’s time Arabs worshipped many gods. So what’s being brought to
mind are Islam’s earliest years – a time of pure faith when the effort
to displace paganism was at its height.
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