(For those that haven’t read the classic Nineteen-eighty-four book by Eric Arthur Blair (pen name: George Orwell) one of the core themes of the story is how the ruling party controlled language, calling it “newspeak”, in order to remove the ability to express certain thoughts or opinions, most notably those that could be used to incite revolution or allow you to express discontent.)
But we also have this thing called Science. Where a firsthand encounter with nonlinguistic reality is considered key. And Science has proven its power over and over.
And you'd think that would impress people. Even if you lay the forms and products of our modern scientific culture aside. Just that philosophy. The supremacy of observation. You'd think it would lead to a momentary pause in the babble.
I don't think that what you're saying and what I'm saying are mutually exclusive at all. Science is how we tease out truths about reality. Language is about how we communicate and is closely linked with cognition.
I didn't mean to suggest that they are mutually exclusive. Just that this sphere of language definitely has a limit. (Which leads to various important stuff)
I find that conservatives most often quote "Nineteen-eighty-four" as a comment on "politically correct" language. But when asked about "family values", "obamacare", "right to work" and other conservative double-speak, they often don't feel like those apply.
My point is not that conservatives use more double-speak/newspeak then progressives, rather my point is that this is used and applied across the political spectrum, and even in the military ("enhanced interrogation", "collateral damage") and corporations ("restructuring", "cost engineering").
I think the more heinous "conservative" (as you put it) changes are related to physical conditions and the euphemism treadmill.
George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I think making a term so long that it becomes an acronym is definitely part of this.
The most up-to-the-minute example I can think of is "CSAM" which removes all pain of the victims. For those not in the know "kiddie porn" as it was once known was rebranded to "child rape images", then "child abuse images" now finally "child sexual abuse images" which is now so long that it is oft abbreviated CSAM.
You are right though, there's a lot of newspeak, my (least) favourite example is "pro-life" which is a glorious bit of double-think.
> George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I’ve always thought that this was a bad example of the euphemism treadmill, because each step is clearly an attempt to be more general than the last. The name makes it clear that this isn’t just a disorder you’ll find in soldiers at constant fear of being shelled at any moment (shell shock); nor even of soldiers who’ve seen the horrors of battle generally (battle fatigue); but rather that anyone who has been through any kind of chronic, fearful stress under the constant expectation that some traumatizing event might happen at any moment, is liable to end up experiencing these symptoms.
Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with “shell shock.” But “PTSD” — not just as a symptom profile, but also as a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social connotations around that name — clearly fits.
> CSAM
This is actually an example of a completely different effect: it’s a cultural shibboleth. Police want to use automatic word filters to discover and surface conversations between pedophiles, while not triggering those filters with their own conversations about the pedophiles’ activities. So they have invented a word that is equivalent to the generic term in meaning, but part of “policing language.” (And, as a special trick, it’s a term with no potential for a treadmill effect, as pedophiles would be loath to use a term that frames them as perpetrators of abuse.)
> Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with “shell shock.” But “PTSD” — not just as a symptom profile, but also as a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social connotations around that name — clearly fits.
In some ways it's a natural consequence of broadening the scope of something. Is the loss of impact because of the language, or because it now applies to a lot more situations which we imagine is expressed in different ways (whether that's largely true or not)?
Shell shock likely didn't conjure the idea of a person going through a harrowing experience as much as a soldier going through constant shelling for weeks. The first encompasses the other, but the second one is much more explicit and conjures specific thoughts that we can latch on to when we try to imagine the experience.
Battle fatigue also paints a somewhat specific picture, even if more broad than shell shock. We can imagine what types of things caused this, even if our imagination probably only covered a subset of the actual causes. Those things it does conjure are bad though, so the idea is very impactful.
PTSD, which more accurately encompasses a lot more situations, not all of them (or maybe even the majority of them) related to war, also leaves us without as much information to use to form an emotional response to as we imagine what it was they went through. Was it the horrors of war? Was it assault by a stranger as a civilian? Was it physical abuse by someone you know? Was it long term mental abuse? We know it was bad, to affect the sufferer, but it's harder to form a real emotional response, I think, when the cause is ambiguous.
So, is the problem the language, or is the language just a side-effect of the increased scope of the term, and the problem is actually the increased scope?
> The most up-to-the-minute example I can think of is "CSAM" which removes all pain of the victims. For those not in the know "kiddie porn" as it was once known was rebranded to "child rape images", then "child abuse images" now finally "child sexual abuse images" which is now so long that it is oft abbreviated CSAM.
There are several good reasons for this, one of which is that poorly-thought-out child pornography laws have beem used to charge and convict children for taking photos of their own bodies. Explicitly defining the prohibited material as "child sexual abuse images" puts a stop to that when it's obvious that no abuse or exploitation occurred.
And of course we use PTSD instead of "battle fatigue" because it affects many millions of people who have never been near a battle.
CSAM I'd put in a different category - just based on the flow of the conversation I'd guess some people have deep seated emotions that trigger when children get hurt. There is a reason that authoritarians use children for cover when pushing their agenda - the topic hinders people's ability to argue rationally and engage the part of their brain that that can spot obviously bad ideas (war is similar - having an enemy seems to do similar things).
"CSAM" is useful because it is so drained of any colour. It makes it much less likely that emotions get triggered because it gets discussed as an abstract thing instead of something related to children.
> George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Except that his account is ahistorical ... and the term post-traumatic stress disorder actually captures what the issue is. Neither shell-shock nor battle fatigue are good descriptors.
How is 'collateral damage' newspeak? It's a useful concept even if you want to avoid it at all costs, but beyond that euphemisms have existed forever and are not the same as newspeak (which wanted to make something literally unthinkable, not merely euphemistic).
Does the father whose daughter didn’t come home from school care if the “civilian casualty” was deliberate or accidental?
“Stop killing kids” sounds much more impactful than “establish rules of engagement to minimize collateral damage”. Language matters.
Similarly: Does the worker without a job care whether they were fired, laid off, or affected by a reduction in force? Probably not. But “affected by a reduction in force” sure makes it easier for leadership to press the button.
The difference between deliberate and accidental civilian casualties is not clear cut. For instance, what do you call it when you intend to attack the enemies soldiers with a bunch of bombs but you know a certain percentage will fall on civilians and you accept that inevitability and proceed anyway? Is that deliberate? Not quite, because it wasn't your intention. Was it an accident? Not really, because you knew it was going to happen and did it anyway.
Or what do you call it when you are deliberately targeting some civilians (factory workers perhaps) but you know they share their homes with children? Do all of the civilians killed count as deliberate, or only some portion of them?
Also, how do you determine intent? Suppose the official paperwork says "we're going to target this residential neighborhood because they have military-relevant cottage industry blended in with the population", but the men actually carrying out these orders are saying and thinking "burn them all, this is payback." Do you go by the intents stated on official records, or do the intents and feelings not committed to official records change the matter? It's the kind of thing that ends up getting debated by historians for decades.
You're right, incidental and primary are better words to use than accidental and deliberate. But every term has grey areas, and people trying to spin truth to make themselves look good. That doesn't make the term meaningless or "soft".
> It's not deliberate, which is the question that matters.
I don't agree that deliberate or not deliberate is all that matters or the end of the discussion. In criminal law if you do something that could reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or murder or at least manslaughter. For instance if you drive your motorcycle at 200 MPH and crash into a family killing them, the fact that you lacked a specific desire to kill those people counts for something but it's not the end of the discussion.
> "[targeting the civilian workforce] isn't a thing."
You've obviously read my comment as commentary on the Israel/Palestine situation. Actually the incident I had in mind when I was writing that comment was the firebombing of Tokyo. If you go through official US documents about that, you'll find the justification that Tokyo had extensive cottage/light industry mixed in with their residential neighborhoods. Destroying that industry and workforce was in fact one of the official intents for firebombing Tokyo. However many of the bomber crews (who were all men, but I'm generally not one for gender-inclusive terminology anyway so you're not catching me in some hypocrisy here, lmao) were likely motivated by revenge for Pearl Harbor / etc and celebrated the civilian death toll. Not all of them I'm sure, but certainly some of them.
Anyway, I'm not here to pass judgement on whether the firebombing of Tokyo was or wasn't a war-crime, or whether or not the US was deliberately trying to kill Japanese kids. It has been debated for decades and that's precisely my point. It's not cut and dry, it's a matter that looks differently to different people who are looking back at it from different perspectives. It defies neat objective categorization, which is why counting 'civilian casualties' in one big lump, not differentiating by intent, is a useful thing to do.
> In criminal law if you do something that could reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or murder or at least manslaughter.
I think criminally negligent manslaughter would be analogous to collateral victims in war, and murder would be the intended victims. As your analogy correctly implies, neither option absolves the perpetrator of responsibility, which is what I think motivates many of the objections to 'collateral damage' in this thread - an erroneous belief that the term implies no guilt.
Again, euphemisms have always and will always exist, they are not the same as newspeak which again had the goal of making certain concepts literally unthinkable. Also you're missing an important part of 'collateral' which is that the deaths were unintentional (whether or not someone cares is another matter - but by definition it means the collateral damage was not the goal).
(For those that haven’t read the classic Nineteen-eighty-four book by Eric Arthur Blair (pen name: George Orwell) one of the core themes of the story is how the ruling party controlled language, calling it “newspeak”, in order to remove the ability to express certain thoughts or opinions, most notably those that could be used to incite revolution or allow you to express discontent.)