Sticks and Stones
“Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” (George Orwell)
Today (10/14/23) I was listening to the Filipina reporter Patricia Evangelista speaking of the horrors of living in the Philippines under the autocrat Rodrigo Duterte. When asked how Duterte could have won a popular election when his fundamental platform was a promise of death and murder, she noted that he “broke the language.” He said things that politicians were not supposed to say. He used words (such as profanity) that was not the standard fare for a politician. Further, he created a narrative that people saw themselves in and took comfort in.
During previous presidential campaigns in the US, commentators have noted the ways in which Donald Trump also ruptured linguistic and rhetorical norms. For example, linguist George Lakoff wrote columns about the ways in which Trump was using language, and offered insights on how we should respond verbally. As with Duterte (who was elected in the same year as Trump), one question was how Trump could have been elected when his message was one of despair and devastation. When he called people names, and made fun of disabled people. In part, people responded to the way in which Trump broke the language. He capitalized on a deep-seated resentment of “elites” and “academics” and “insiders.” His use of language was key to that connection.
It seems to me that that use of language, of controlling the narrative via catchphrases and slogans, has been the province of the political right in the US. The right has — whether strategically or by chance — been better able to shape the political discourse by the way it has labelled things.
Take abortion as an example. The battles over terminology have been fierce. What do we call “abortion”? Is it “health care” or is it “murder”? Is the fetus an “unborn person” or is it a “fetus”? What do we call an advocate of abortion rights? An opponent of abortion access? For the most part, we seem to have settled on “choice” and “life,” respectively. Those who support an individual’s right to have an abortion are called advocates of a “right to choose.” Those who oppose an individual’s right to have an abortion are called advocates of a “right to life.” Notice that both of those terms are couched in the discourse of “rights,” a remnant of the legal history of court cases over abortion access and the foundational arguments of a liberal democracy. To be sure, the terms used have shaped how people think about and talk about the issue.
Another example is the term “politically correct.” Although the term has lost much of its currency today, it once held a very powerful position in political and public discourse in the US. Despite being a term that emerged on the left, it was quickly co-opted and deployed by the political right as a way to shape public opinion, and to avoid engaging is discussion of certain topics. Beginning in the late 1980s, the political right dismissed conversations in higher education about diversity and multiculturalism (sounds familiar, right?). At that moment in our history, we were actually engaging in conversations about race and gender and sexuality. It was at that moment when terms such as “African American” emerged and replaced older, loaded terms. That change in the language, however, was dismissed as “political correctness.”
What did that mean to call something “politically correct”? At the most basic level, it meant that the person did not agree with the change. It meant that they were in favor of maintaining the status quo. It also meant that they did not want to engage in a discussion of why African American might be better as a term than what it was replacing. How can we NOT have the conversation? How can we not look into our past? Call it PC and dismiss it out of hand. And it was effective. The use of PC shut down conversations and shut down legislation. Framing the social and political discussion as PC was a way to contain it.
Eventually, of course, PC as a political strategy lost its force. People grew tired of hearing it. People saw around its intention. And many of the changes it had hoped to stifle happened anyway. The linguistic strategy, though, did not go away. It simply morphed.
The contemporary equivalent is “woke.” It is not surprising that much of the “anti-woke” rhetoric is again aimed at education. As schools — at all levels — strive to be more inclusive, as they try to reduce the marginalization of at-risk students, they ask for linguistic changes. Changes in terms for sex. Changes in terms for gender. Changes for terms of sexuality. Changes for terms of ability. Once again, those changes are being resisted (in favor of the status quo), and once again discussion of them is being stifled. How do you stifle a public conversation about why one term might be better than another? Call it “woke.” Dismiss its legitimacy as a point of discussion. De-legitimize it as a lived reality. And that is both the aim and the function of “woke.”
The difference this time is that legislatures have begin to enact laws based on it. To be sure, a few anti-affirmative action laws came out of the anti-PC rhetoric, though not nearly as many as we are now seeing. Why so many right now? For one, the swing to the political right and toward authoritarianism is stronger this time around. The general public is more swayed by authoritarian rhetoric than it was before. For another, its the effectiveness of the term “woke.” Part of the reason that “woke” has been more effective for the right than “PC” was is because of technological changes. The internet and social media have made it more possible to share the term more quickly and more widely. It has allowed like-minded individuals (who might have been isolated in their thoughts in the 1980s) to unite.
You might recall that, right after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, a couple of books skyrocketed to the top of the Amazon sales charts. One of them was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. That spike in sales was attributable to the worry that a Trump government would restrict an individual’s access to an abortion. That worry was well-founded.
The other book was George Orwell’s 1984. In that book, an authoritarian government controls the populace, in part, via language. The government restricts what people can say. The government redefines what words mean. Well, apparently, some judges have read 1984, too.
The infamous anti-woke law passed in Florida was challenged in court. In a late-2022 ruling, the US District Judge invoked Orwell in handing down an injunction. He called the law a kind of “doublespeak” meant to infringe upon educators’ freedom of speech all in the name of “freedom.” Indeed, he went so far as to claim that the Florida law intended to create its own “Ministry of Truth,” which as you all know, was mere doublespeak for covering up the truth.
Arguments over language, over terminology are not technicalities best left to lawyers to argue over what the meaning of the word “is” is. These arguments are not esoteric debates best left to philosophy or literature professors in classrooms. No, they affect our everyday lives. They affect how we understand and think about important political decisions. We should all be more cognizant of what words are being used, by whom, and for what purpose.
So, if someone tries to shut down the word you are using, ask yourself why. What purpose does it serve to shut down this particular conversation? What purpose does it serve to not examine the meaning and intent of a word? Whose status quo does it uphold?
The answer to that just might be the key to understanding.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Queering SF: Readings, Feminist Epistemology and Feminist Science Fiction (Palgrave McMillan) and edited a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls (McFarland). His most recent book is Queering SF: Readings (Aqueduct Press).
