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Aspaqlaria

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1984, NewSpeak and the Holy Language

Posted: 13 May 2009 02:25 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/G8fEr4v2Q2Q/holy-language.shtml


A long while back I wrote some thoughts on the dispute between the Ramban  
and the Rambam about what makes Hebrew the holy language, in the context of  
a general dispute over the context of qedushah. The Rambam says that  
Hebrews holiness comes from it having no native expletives, even sexual  
organs are identified by euphemisms or loan words. The Ramban, just as he  
defines and you shall be holy as going beyond the letter of the law,  
defines the sanctity of the Hebrew language in terms of its relationship to  
G-dliness  not merely that it toes the halachic line.

Along the lines of the Ramban, I want to explore the relationship between  
language and thought. Your mind is less capable of managing those ideas if  
youre thinking in a different lexicon and grammar. Knowing the assumptions  
behind the language is actually a precondition for correctly understanding  
the worldview! This is my justification for spending time looking at verb  
tenses and parts of speech in the Hebrew of the Tanakh,  or the implication  
of the hononimity of tov meaning both functionally good (it does its job  
well) and morally good (such as a good person), or the numerous times I  
start the discussion of a topic with the etymology of the root of the  
Hebrew term.

To quote 1984 (George Orwell, 1948) the storys Ingsoc (English Socialist]  
leaders invented the language of NewsSpeak for this reason:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for  
the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to  
make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when  
Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a  
heretical thoughtthat is, a thought diverging from the principles of  
Ingsoc  should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is  
dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and  
often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could  
properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the  
possibility of arriving at them by indirect method. This was done partly by  
the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of  
unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings  
whateverA person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no  
more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of politically  
equal, or that free had once meant intellectually free, than, for instance,  
a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary  
meanings attaching to queen or rook. There would be many crimes and errors  
which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were  
nameless and therefore unimaginable.

This is an informal form of a notion in linguistics called the Sapir-Worf  
Hypothesis, formulated by Edward Sapir and further developed by his  
student, Benjamin Lee Worf. Here is  Sapirs formulation (The Status of  
Linguistics as a Science, 1929):

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the  
world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the  
mercy of the particular language which has become the

medium of expression in their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine  
that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and  
that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of  
communication or reflection: The fact of the matter is that the real world  
is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the  
group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as  
representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different  
societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with  
different labels attached Even comparatively simple acts of perception are  
very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we  
might supposeWe see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do  
because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of  
interpretation.

And Worf writes in Science and Linguistics (1956 edition):

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The  
categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not  
find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary,  
the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to  
be organized by our minds  and this means largely by the linguistic systems  
in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe  
significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to  
organize it in this way  an agreement that holds throughout our speech  
community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement  
is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely  
obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization  
and classification of data which the agreement decrees.

Similarly (but lehavdil!), the language the Torah was given in and which  
was shaped by a community that followed it will make it easier to think  
along the same lines.



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