Researchers at UCLA put 1.5 million English-language books into a tool that catalogs phrase usage and found that “over the last 200 years there has been an ever-increasing use of particularly acquisitive words: ‘get’, ‘unique’, ‘individual’, ‘self’, ‘choose’; while over the same period ‘give’ and ‘obliged’ decreased,” Owen Hatherley writes at The Guardian.
The pattern only changed briefly during the relatively egalitarian Western period between the 1940s and the 1970s.
“What has happened over those 200 years was the rise to dominance of capitalism, which obviously changed, and changes, our language and thinking,” Hatherley continues. The results suggest that the English language has long been in the process of becoming a class language, where words that are sympathetic with capitalist values and perspective are accepted as “standard....
As this tendency strengthens, it becomes increasingly obvious that society is not controlling its economic life, but is in part being controlled by it.”Truthdig
Capitalism Is Changing Our Language
Alexander Reed Kelly
Yes, language is a very dynamic thing and changing all the time.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Marx make a similar point with "ruling class ideas"?
ReplyDeleteMost people are unaware of the cultural and institutional role that language plays in the social construction of "reality." Language meaning is one obvious source of this, but the underlying logic is even more significant and it is generally concealed beneath the surface of language use. Ludwig Wittgenstein called it "deep grammar" but in a different sense than Chomsky used the phrase in his linguistic theory. For example, analysis of the deep grammar in LW's sense reveals how language functions normatively while appearing to be descriptive. Economics is riddled with this to the degree that some economists genuinely think that they are doing descriptive science when they are actually prescribing norms.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Marx make a similar point with "ruling class ideas"?
ReplyDeleteThis is a reason that the big donor to major institutions like top universities and politicians only fund people that can be counted on to say the "right" things. Language one of the institutions that the wealthy also work at controlling without needing to resort to overt force.
Often enough, what is assumed to be "common sense" is anything but. Language doesn't prevent us from questioning norms - lack of time or interest are major factors.
ReplyDelete