The Paradox of language

What is language? To me language is any form of transmitting information. Veral words are the prototype when you think of language, but there is also a host of non-verbal language that broadcasts so much to others consciously and unconsciously.  You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Why does this matter- Body language can affect our relationships with others, our social biology has evolved a few ways to distinguish others as good, bad, right, or wrong. Someone who chuckles at an inside joke can be seen as someone within our group. Intense eye contact can show attraction or aggression. 

While it is verbal, the tone and inflection of our voices have great power too. It can be an indicator of our tensions when giving a message, it’s even used to “hack” our attention on social media platforms. There's what people are calling the “youtuber” or “Tik Tok” accent, and there are even different dialects. From shouting excitedly to speaking fast, adding emphasis on words, to ending your sentence with an upwards inflection to leave suspension; we can see how language is being used intentionally and unintentionally in our daily lives. 

(See video for better understanding )

How we frame our message also impacts how it is received. An example I remember from the book moral politics goes something along the lines of:

When Washington DC went over their spending budget, a rightwing news article framed it as a well meaning mother who wants to buy things for her kid but doesn’t have the money for it. They were trying to tie the metaphor to government spending as a nice way of saying they’re frivolous.

The author pointed out that it could just as easily be framed as a deadbeat father who doesn’t want to cough up the money to take care of their kids. 

When you start to look closely at what people say, you can start to see their underlying moral values. Typical rightwinders tend to hold the belief that less government spending is a good thing, and therefore tailor their messaging to fit that narrative. Everyone does this and it’s not always intentional. Your world view is something that you just see as natural. 

Another way framing can affect people is the often seen marketing gimmick of 33% more or more free, as opposed to 33% off. The shopper feels like they’re getting more! It just sounds better, but why? More is always better. Unless we look at shrinkflation and the shrinking size of packaged goods. The ever-shrinking Cadbury egg, Gatorade going from 32 oz. to 28, all while the prices stay the same. Some will market the change as “a brand-new sleek bottle design” hiding the shrink, some will add cute names for the size like “fun sized” (what’s fun about getting less??). 

Theres fun ways to reframe your message. Back-handed compliments point this out. “Wow, your really good at drawing… for a girl”, “I don’t care what others say about you, you’re alright”, or “I love how you’ll just wear anything.”. This is a form of double-speak, or rephrasing what you really think in a more palatable or tactful way, even if the intention is meant to be good. 

Let's talk about where language fails-

Spoken language takes our thoughts, feels, emotions, concepts, etc into the established language. For my nerds out there, its like a packet of data that needs to be compiled into a transmittable format, then also needs to be decoded by the receiver operating on a different model. A lot is getting lost in translation. 

We also tend to rely on metaphors to try and describe our feelings. I can say that my hands are freezing as I’m writing this, and you can guess what it feels like compared to a time your hands were freezing, but we can’t be certain it’s the same feeling. Look at more obscure feelings and things get harder- love. I’ve loved so many people and every love, to me, evokes a different feeling. You can rely on clichés to show you’re “head over-heels” for someone, but all that does is tell them you have intense feelings, not the actual feeling, your feeling, ya’ feel?

What happens when Metaphors harden into dogma? 

Insecure men often cling to the ideas and metaphors of what a man is. Being insecure, they tend to cling to the idea of having power (at least the ones that we notice, they could also turn shy) but with what seems like the rise of the “Alpha-male” we see that the idea, first related to the false finding that wolf packs have an “Alpha” as a strong, tough leader that needs to fight for their position, and once they have it should have ultimate authority over others. This finding about alpha wolves was proven false by the same researcher who thought they discovered it. Turns out wolf packs are more similar to families with the leaders being the parents, so self proclaimed alpha males should be nurturing and raising those they see as lesser, yet we don’t. What does this say about metaphors that shape our world view? Is it the metaphor we are so often told that shapes our beliefs or is it our beliefs that hold on to convenient metaphors to justify our actions. My lame hypothesis is that it’s both. 

Repeated exposure to a lie over and over again can make someone believe it. It’s called the illusory of truth effect. Repeated statements make a claim familiar and easier to latch onto. Look, our brains are lazy or as the eggheads say “efficient” there’s so much stuff that goes on that our brain is trying to find shortcuts to save energy. It’s easier to not challenge your worldview, right now we are living in a time where the government is blatantly lying over and over again. It’s tiring to parse through the truth with every single statement. If you’re already inclined to support this party in power, it’s easier to just accept it. Once you do that, and the same lie is repeated over and over again, to your own mind it becomes true. So when you feel bad about yourself and want more power, it’s easy to accept that us, just like natures coolest bad -ass the wolf have a power dynamic involving an “alpha male” and if you act like one you deserve to have that power, it’s easy to accept it, and again a lot of this is done behind the scenes in your head.