/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5347344]

Could newspeak actually work as a method of controlling a society, or is thought Independent of language altogether?

[Anonymous No.5347365]

>>5347344
To the second question, pretty obviously no. Just consider how effectively the political right uses accusations of "Marxism" or "communism." Or even more simply, the change from "Department of War" to "Department of Defense," almost textbook Orwellian.

To the first, uh, how total do you want the control to be? Politicized language already polices thought to some extent, and how many revolutions have you seen lately? I doubt most Americans alive today would accept a 1984-type government willingly, but things change over generations.

[Anonymous No.5347381]

>>5347344
>is thought Independent of language altogether

You can't have thought without concepts and you can't distinguish between concepts without assigning words to them.

[Anonymous No.5347405]

>>5347381
What about people who are born deaf, and blind?

Can they not think, or grasp concepts?

[Anonymous No.5347412]

>>5347381
>you can't distinguish between concepts without assigning words to them
Incorrect, obviously.

[Anonymous No.5347447]

>>5347405
They can once they learn language through touch. Helen Keller herself recounts that until she began learning touch signing she didn't understand the relationship between signs and their referents.

>>5347412
Helpful of you to name an example.

[Anonymous No.5347460]

>>5347344
You can't 'think' in gibberish. If you have a stroke, you start people Spanish. In some people. Doesn't mean that thought is independent of language. Without language, thought cannot be expressed. And without thought, language cannot be expressed

[Anonymous No.5347465]

>>5347460
*speaking not people

[Anonymous No.5347485]

>>5347460
Can someone stub their toe and yell 'Fuck!' without thinking about it? Because I would consider that an expression of language. Or did you mean something else?

[Anonymous No.5347488]

>>5347485
if you were paralyzed in the foot and were blindfolded you wouldn't have uttered a peep

[Anonymous No.5347501]

>>5347447
>Helpful of you to name an example.
Haven't you ever had something you wanted to communicate but were having difficulty putting into words? You could still have the thought even though you were unable to satisfactorily convey it in words.

Pic related. Besides the general category "green" I bet you can't name the actual shade of the color, but you can still see it and compare it to other shades you don't know the names of.

[Anonymous No.5347509]

>>5347501
there's only a certain number of words, and not necessarily a certain number of thoughts. i'm not special or anything, but i can't think of any time i wasn't at least partially able to portray thoughts with words

[Anonymous No.5347547]

>>5347509
>at least partially able
So you admit you were partially unable to portray your thoughts with words, even though you had those thoughts. Thus words weren't a prerequisite for thoughts, but the thoughts existed independently of words. Glad we cleared this up.

Not that it wasn't entirely obvious to begin with. Languages evolve in response to outside stimuli, not the other way around. You think someone invented the word for cell phone and that allowed for someone else to go out and invent one? Or when a language was in its infancy and didn't have words like patricide do you think it was impossible for a person to kill their father? Or for someone else to realize that for some reason such a murder was worse than killing a stranger? Of course their's a feedback loop, but for the most part it's concepts that predate words and not the other way around.

[Anonymous No.5347561]

>>5347547
Wow. You must be an Attorney. I was going to in fact say completely able, but you must pick out my Achille's-tendon, it must be swelling, vulnerable, and humongous. But, meh. As to the nascience of language, that's a whole 'nuther level and of course they had to work-off each step, each addition needing explanation and only then can new things be described, let-alone your straw-manning

[Anonymous No.5347568]

>>5347561
not him but tl;dr:
>i lose
BTFO

[Anonymous No.5347573]

>>5347568
yeah nah

[Anonymous No.5347591]

>>5347573
bet you'd like that molyneux (the mistress of molly) guy

[Anonymous No.5347609]

>>5347591
no way i loved black and white that man is a genius. you nailed it. lol

[Anonymous No.5347611]

>>5347561
>I was going to in fact say completely able
If you had said that I would just have assumed you were really dumb and didn't often think about things, considering that not being able to completely put something into words is something that every single person I've talked to about this has experienced.

[Anonymous No.5347614]

>>5347609
or are you talking about the Canadian guy? in either case I'll check it all out, sounds interesting

[Anonymous No.5347616]

>>5347611
then i guess i'm deformed or something

[Anonymous No.5347622]

>>5347614
i am literally santa

[Anonymous No.5347648]

>>5347501
>Haven't you ever had something you wanted to communicate but were having difficulty putting into words? You could still have the thought even though you were unable to satisfactorily convey it in words.

We could consider this a case where you are unable to articulate your thought in whatever spoken/written language you know. But the formation of that thought relies on your own mental representations and whatever system of reference the mind uses to distinguish them.

>you can still see it and compare it to other shades you don't know the names of.

Any comparisons you make will be conceptually informed: same shade, different shade, light, darker, etc. And obviously 'shade' itself is a concept.

[Anonymous No.5347663]

ITT: Plebs that don't know a lick about psychology.

The current scientific perspective is that thinking controls language, which then influences thinking. It was mighty hard to understand what concepts like "liberty" meant before a word was invented to describe it. But it wasn't an impossible thought.

Meanwhile, if you read George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language, you will understand pretty quickly that words can be used to obfuscate true meaning. Words like "genocide" can attempt to explain concepts but do not quite convey the severity of the issue. Simply that "genocide" doesn't really explain the issue makes it much easier to diminish the importance of it in some peoples' minds.

Meanwhile, African cultures that have no word for any value over two have considerable difficulty counting quantities. While we can count, "one, two, three, four..." ad infinitum, imagine how much difficulty you would have couting to fifty if your quantitative words were limited to, "one, two, many." At the same time, those same African cultures that have four common words for "yellow" can actually identify more shades of yellow than the typical Westerner.

So, yes, you can think without words. But, not really. The two are intrinsically linked. So, to answer OP's question: yes, newspeak would actually be pretty effective at limiting available thoughts, based on current scientific research.

[Anonymous No.5347669]

Alright, so let's look deep into this.

There are many ways of thinking. People can think through: words, images, scenes, etc. Words have a direct impact upon what you think because words are by definition an idea.

Let's take "selfie" for instance. It would be impossible to create this word before this action was invented, thus, words are symbols for things in real life.

If you change people's perception of a word, you can change their perception of the real life symbol.

Let's take "Make love, not war" as an illustration. Why "Make" is in the sentence? if "love" is being used as a verb, it doesn't need make. "Make" is being used because "love" is being as a synonim for "sex". So, in this sentence you have the idea that LOVE and SEX are the same.

[Anonymous No.5347670]

>>5347663
>I used meanwhile as a transition in two consecutive paragraphs
woops, lol. disregard that mistake please

[Anonymous No.5347671]

>>5347663
good post

[Anonymous No.5347890]

The closest thing we have right now to Newspeak is greentexting.

[Anonymous No.5349408]

>>5347365
Don't listen to this faggot he is right on the concept how the language is changed but it is the leftist retards who do it.

Calling a transsexual male a female is newspeak and indroctination.

By loving your nation, heritage and culture you are being called a fascist by the leftist and libtard socialist media.

Modern day politics are almost completely built upon newspeak, the left retards being the worst advocates of newspeak.

[Anonymous No.5349417]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

>tl;dr probably not, even though it may have some general influence

[Anonymous No.5349458]

>>5349408
0/10 gb2 lgbt video troleing fucbabyboi

[Anonymous No.5351232]

>>5347890
but that's memespeak

[Anonymous No.5351651]

memes are newspeak

[Anonymous No.5353049]

You don't really need newspeak, all you need to do is speak!

[Syme No.5353087]

INTRUSIVE PERUSAL