Category: Language

At the Moment, Can We Talk?, Language

You’re Being Manipulated – By Language

Karen

I’m a language nerd.

Some would call me a Grammar Nazi – I can certainly be a “Karen” about language, at times.

My co-workers even gave me a t-shirt that read, “I am silently judging your grammar.”

And I do – I ABSOLUTELY judge a person by the way they talk and CERTAINLY by the way they write. And before you puff in self-righteous condemnation, so do a lot of people, whether they’re aware of it or not. Especially employers. Does having a proper grasp of language make you smarter?

Yes, actually, I believe it does, to an extent.

I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s of Science, (they don’t call it BS for nothing) with a major in Technical Writing and a minor in Creative Writing. It was really fun to work for but I haven’t really done anything with it.

But isn’t that normally the case with a college degree?

I mean, it’s Technical Writing – even writing it puts me to sleep. (And for those that don’t know what Technical Writing is – why would you? In a nutshell, it’s reading technical manuals, instructions, reports and regurgitating it into bite-sized, relatable language that a “normal” person – i.e. – not the overly-clever professional person who wrote it – can digest and understand. Basically – simplistic word vomit).

But language … is becoming a lost art. Young people today take language for granted – they twist it into a pretzel and use slang instead of “proper” language. They don’t bother to enunciate let alone know how to pronounce words correctly. They have no idea what the difference is between their, there and they’re, or God forbid, use lose correctly, (most people spell it loose).

And don’t even get me STARTED on comprehension – news flash – there isn’t any.

To a language nerd? These missteps, this Laissez-faire attitude, makes my eyes, ears and brain bleed.

We all make grammar mistakes – I’m certainly no exception. But there is a difference between not knowing and not caring – most people don’t care to know.

And spelling? Forget-about-it, (insert Godfather voice). Why bother with correct spelling? We have spell check – the lazy man’s tool to actually using one’s head.

So, not only do I care about language, but I’m showcasing that most people DON’T care and don’t see, or bother to understand, the importance of language.

You know the saying, “Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me?” Yeah – I call bullshit. Words, language, most CERTAINLY can hurt us – it can even stoke emotional embers to life and provoke irrational behavior and uncharacteristic acts of violence.

As evidenced by the most recent assassination attempt on President Trump. Language most certainly affects us all, whether we want to admit it or not.

The problem is, a lot of people choose to pooh-pooh this fact away. Or, they don’t want to take the time to really SEE, let alone UNDERSTAND the importance of language. And mean-spirited people with evil intentions know this and use this to mold people into their foot soldiers or gullible puppets. If people don’t understand 1. how powerful language really is and 2. turn off their emotions and activate their critical thinking skills, (if such a thing exists – but that’s a topic for another post), then they will be, and currently ARE, being manipulated. And I don’t know about you folks, but NO ONE controls me, my mind or my actions.

NO. ONE.

And if you feel the same, then I would encourage you to take language more seriously, to understand how language is used to manipulate people and then to activate your mental shield and guard against sneaky persuasion tactics spewed as Gospel truth by “influencers.”

Case in point: The rhetoric of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Two people whom I used to really enjoy listening to but who have now morphed into these unrecognizable people who spout nonsense, contradict themselves and who are hell bent on making a sect of people into walking demons. I have no idea what happened, I just know SOMETHING happened to change their tune.

Stop. I know what you’re thinking and OF COURSE they have the right to ask questions, to spark conversation, debate, but the WAY they do it is what I would like to call attention to. And once you realize what they’re doing, can recognize the sneaky little tactics they take in order to worm their message into your mind maze, then you are better equipped to discern what is actually truth and what is false with a little truth sprinkled on top.

This is Jeremy Boreing. He used to be the CEO of the Daily Wire but he left, not sure why, and has started his own channel. I used to watch him, Ben Shapio, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavin and yes, Candace Owens, when she was part of the group, debate/talk about political issues. I learned a lot by listening to them and it was interesting to see them disagree and DEBATE the issue, not storm off in a huff and plan their murder.

What a novel concept, I know.

Did I 100% agree with everything they said? Of course not, I’m not in a cult, I do have a brain that I take out and dust off from time-to-time, but they brought up interesting points that tickled my cerebral cortex and I enjoyed the brain exercise.

Those hamster wheels in my brain do get rusty at times.

I know this video is on the long side, no one has an attention span for long-form content anymore, but it’s worth a listen. You likely won’t understand some of it, I certainly didn’t and still don’t, but it’s worth watching simply to introduce you to the fact that people, not just Candace and Tucker, but a lot of outspoken, smart(ish), people use these sorts of tactics to manipulate others into agreeing with them, to giving them money or to promote dark and dangerous thoughts, but if people are aware this type of language manipulation is happening, then I’m hopeful people will pause, put up a stop sign and THINK about what is really being said, or, not said.

Here’s a timeline of the video if you want to skip around:

00:47 Loose Change, 9/11, and the Illusion of Insight
03:06 Pre-suasion: Telling You What You See
04:42 Tucker Carlson on Pearl Harbor
09:30 “Obviously,” “Clearly,” “Of Course”
13:08 The First Deception in the Garden
14:43 Candace Owens: “We Don’t Know Know, But We Know”
18:41 Eugenics, Overpopulation, Climate Panic
22:29 The Contagions of the 2020s
23:40 The Current Anti-Israel / Antisemitism Wave
29:05 Authority Transfer and the Moon Landing
32:33 Healthy Skepticism vs. Reflexive Cynicism

Thanks for reading.

Language

Fun Facts About Language #2

Karen

In case you didn’t know, I love language. So bare with me as we (I) explore the meaning behind words and phrases …

I’m so glad you asked. Read on …

Ax to grind – The creation of this phrase is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who used it in an article entitled “Too Much for Your Whistle.” It means a private or selfish motive behind a request or action – something which is not obvious at first glance. The story is that of a man who had an ax which needed to be sharpened. He pretended to young Franklin that he didn’t know how a grindstone worked and asked Franklin to show him. Many turns of the handle later Franklin was weary, the ax was beautifully sharp and the man, having gained his objective, only jeered at Franklin for having been hoodwinked.

As the crow flies – means the shortest distance between two points. The crow flies straight to its destination.

All Greek to me – goes back to Shakespeare. The line was first spoken by Casca, one of the conspirators against Caesar in the first act of Julius Caesar. He was speaking of the comments made by Cicero after Caesar three times refused the crown of emperor. Cicero actually did speak Greek, using that language as a device to make sure that casual passers-by did not understand his remarks. Today the expression, “It’s all Greek to me” simply means that what has been said is beyond the speaker’s understanding.

Language

Fun Facts About Language #1

Karen

In case you didn’t know, I love language. I studied language in college and I suffered through an Aristotle class on the origins of language.

It was a painful class, but I learned a lot about language and the art of communication in that class.

So when Kevin brought home the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, I was pretty excited.

Have you ever wondered where a word or phrase came from? No? Just me? Well …

I’m going to share some of the ones I found interesting with you because, well, I like you … (can you imagine how I would treat you if I didn’t like you! You’re welcome).

I’m so glad you asked. Read on …

American English – Why was English chosen as our language after we broke from England? Why wasn’t it Indian or something else? At first glance these look like frivolous questions, but it may surprise you to know that at the time of the founding of this nation many of its leaders debated very seriously whether or not English should be carried forward as the official language of the United States, as it had been of the colonies. Never was there any serious consideration of an American Indian language as a substitute for English. For one thing, the various Indian dialects were spoken tongues. Not until Sequoyah, in the early nineteenth century, devised an alphabet for the Cherokee language, did an Indian tongue become a written language.

But the bitterness of the colonists against the British was strong enough for many to feel that they should rid themselves of the British tongue, as well as of “the tyrant’s rule.” So some members of the Continental Congress solemnly proposed that English be banished and Hebrew substituted. The fact that few colonists could read or speak Hebrew and that it had not been a living language for centuries sufficed to kill that suggestion. Another proposal was that Greek be adopted as our official language. That idea lasted only long enough for one patriot to remark that “it would be more convenient for us to keep the language as it is and make the English speak Greek.”

What finally happened, of course, was that we continued to speak our own brand of English, which, after a century or so, became known as “American English,” or “The American Language.” The differences between our version and that spoken in the British Isles are great. Even the influences of movies, magazines and television have not removed many of the inconsistencies between the two versions of the language. In the end Britain and American find themselves, in George Bernard Shaw’s paradoxical phrase, “one people divided by a common language.”

A-O.K. was invented by a NASA public relations officer, Colonel “Shorty” Powers. The occasion was our first suborbital flight in May 1961 and the astronaut involved was Alan Shepard. But Powers, relaying to newsmen and the radio audience what he heard from Shepard, mistook a simple, “O.K.” for A-O.K. He fancied the sound of the term so much that he repeated it several times and it caught on with newspaper headline writers, if not with the astronauts themselves. According to our best information, no astronaut ever used the term and it was been notably absent from radio and TV reports of subsequent space flights.

Apple of One’s Eye – The first apple of the eye was the pupil, which in ancient days was thought to be a round object similar to the apple. As recently as Anglo-Saxon times, the same word, aeppel, meant both “eye” and “apple.” It goes without saying that the pupil of one’s eye is very previous indeed – and that’s how the expression the apple of one’s eye came to mean something greatly treasured.