The pincers of thought create the famine of language, but the famine of language also exacerbates the poverty of thought.

Jazlyn 2022-09-14 03:37:31

What a dangerous thing the sea is. It is blue, vast, and unfathomable, evoking children's longing, like the apple in front of Adam and Eve. And how safe and comfortable the sofa is, only a groggy butt sits on it. So the sea is defined as a leather sofa. When all the unfathomable are defined as safe and comfortable, the magical is defined as bland, and the speeding is defined as dull, the world in the eyes of children becomes a "desensitized" world. The son heard a new word "ghost" from a prostitute, he asked "what is a ghost", and the mother said blankly that a ghost is a small yellow flower.
All dictators try to control people's thoughts, but the police cannot enter people's brains, so they can only control the expression of thoughts. Language must therefore be sterilized, domesticated. Some words are demonized, others are bowed, some are infused with sulphuric acid, others are sprayed with perfume. After years of education, when I mention the "peasant uprising", I think of "sounds and tears", when I talk about "landlords", I think of "exploitation", when I talk about "Kuomintang", I think of "Three Great Mountains"... …as an adult I know that history is not so black and white, but the emotional reflections of these “processed” words in the depths of my consciousness don’t last forever. Replacing thinking with conditioned reflexes, so that each word emits a certain "smell" before it unfolds its content, is what makes this type of education successful.
Redefining words is only one way of neutering language, another way is to simply eliminate the existence of certain words. In "1984", Oceania invented a new language called "Newspeak". Saimei is Oceania's dictionary editor, and he excitedly tells Winston, the protagonist, that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary is shrinking year by year. "Don't you see that the whole purpose of Newspeak is to narrow the scope of thought? In the end we want to make it practically impossible for people to commit any thought crime, because there can be no language to express these thoughts in the future."
Making it impossible for reactionary thoughts to find words to express is really a trick to control thoughts. It is almost equivalent to wanting to eat coconut but not finding a machete, and wanting to boil water but not finding a container. You want to say "the only thing the proletariat has lost is the chain"? Sorry, there is no such thing as "chains". "Only the shackles are lost"? Sorry, the word "shackles" doesn't exist in the world either. shackles? Find no such word. rope? Find no such word. Hoop spell? What is this? ... well, let you make a revolution, all the proletariat has to lose is bread.

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Extended Reading

Dogtooth quotes

  • [first lines]

    Mother: The new words of the day are: "Sea", "Highway", "Road trip" and "Shotgun".

  • [subtitled version]

    [last lines]

    Father: If you don't drink your orange juice while it's fresh, it's no use.