MISUSES OF LANGUAGE IN INTERPERSOANL AND MASS COMMUNICATION

Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken and signed forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language (cf. innate language). Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of symbols, which dynamically reference concepts and assemble according to structured patterns, in order to form expressions and communicate meaning. The scientific study of language is called linguistics. General semantics deals with the relationship between language and reality, and with the ways in which language influences our thinking.

A language is a system of signs (symbols, indices, icons) for encoding and decoding information. Since language and languages became an object of study by ancient grammarians, the term has had many different definitions. The English word derives from Latin lingua, "language, tongue." "Tongue," as a physical organ of speech, is also used in English and other languages apart from Latin as a metaphor. 

The general semanticists were first led by Alfred Korzybski, a Polish count who emigrated to the United States. His seminal work, Science and Sanity, was popularized by Wendell Johnson. These scholars have been concerned with language and how it relates to our success in everyday living and our mental health. They argue that we run into many of our problems because we misuse language. They say we would misuse language less if we used it more the way scientists use it—so that it constantly refers to the realities it represents.

MISUSES OF LANGUAGE:

Because of the static, limited, and abstract nature of language, certain misuses of language are likely to occur. One of the great contributions of the general semanticists has been to identify some of these for us. Four common misuses are dead-level abstracting, undue identification, two-valued evaluation, and unconscious projection.

DEAD-LEVEL ABSTRACTING:

This concept, described by Wendell Johnson  (1946, p. 270), refers to getting stuck at one level of abstraction. The level could be high or low.

High-level abstractions are words like justice, democracy, freedom, mankind, Communism, peace with honor, and law and order. When words like these are used in a message that does not also contain words at lower levels of abstraction, it is difficult to know what the message is saying. Words at a high level of abstraction that are not accompanied by more concrete words have been referred to as "words cut loose from their moorings" (Hayakawa, 1964, p. 189). They are not anchored to lower levels of abstraction.

Much political rhetoric gets stuck at a high level of abstraction. When the expression law and order was used in a presidential campaign, what it referred to at a less abstract level was not clear. Did it mean that a police officer would be assigned to every street corner? Did it mean that a 6 P.M. curfew would be enforced in major cities? Did it mean that demonstrators in the streets would be arrested and placed in jail without being charged (as actually happened in Washington, D.C., in May 1971)? It was hard to know, because we were given the high-level abstraction but no translation at a concrete level. High-level abstractions can be baffling.

Language can also get stuck at a low level of abstraction in one message, and this is another type of dead-level abstracting. An example of this might be someone recounting every detail of his or her day. A message that stays at a low level of abstraction usually does not come to a general conclusion, and it is often difficult to see the point of what is being said. Receiving a message stuck at a low level of abstraction can be something like reading a mail-order catalog.

The general semanticists say that the most effective communication ranges up and down the ladder of abstraction. An effective message contains generalizations at a high level of abstraction, but there are also specific details at a low level of abstraction. One effective technique for doing this that many skilled teachers use is to give lots of examples.

UNDUE IDENTIFICATION:

This is the failure to see distinctions between members of a category or class. The term points out that they are seen as identical, or identified. Another term for this is categorical thinking. In everyday discourse, it is sometimes referred to as overgeneralization. One common kind of undue identification is stereotyping.

The following statements all show a failure to see distinctions between members of a class:

"If you've seen one tree, you've seen them all." 

"I'll never trust another woman." 

"You can't believe a thing you read in the newspapers." 

"Statistics don't prove anything."

The stereotyping of mothers-in-law as interfering and critical or of Italians as great lovers are other examples of undue identification.

Feminist writer Germain Greer once said on the William Buckley program "Firing Line" that "advertising is universally depraving." Buckley asked her about a message telling people to get a hest X ray, pointing out that her statement was probably an over-generalization.

Often such categorization with language and failure to recognize differences between individuals leads to stereotyping, which makes some subgroup out to be greedy, stupid, lazy, cowardly, or the like. Sometimes this is reflected in cultural jokes

The French film Classified People illustrates an effect of classification because of South African apartheid. The children of a mixed marriage are" unable to live with their black father after their white mother dies.

A person who goes around saying "I can't spell" is showing a similar kind of over-generalization (Stoen, 1976, p. 324). Indeed, the person can spell some words but not others; the remark is an overstatement. It may be a remark with important consequences, too, if it makes people think they are worse spellers than they are and leads to a defeatist attitude.

General semanticists sometimes recommend the use of index numbers to prevent undue identification. If we were to attach an index number to a word like student each time we use it, we might be less likely to think of all students as alike. This would remind us that student, is not student2, or to take another example, that Arab1 is not Arab2. Of course, the important thing is not so much actually to use index numbers in our writing and talking but to think them—to be aware that members of a class share some characteristics but are different in terms of many others. Each classification tells us something about the way an object is considered similar to other objects, but it also tells us about the way it is considered different from certain other objects. No two things are identical.

TWO-VALUED EVALUATION:

This misuse is also known as either-or thinking or thinking with the excluded middle. It involves thinking that there are only two possibilities when there are actually a range of possibilities. Language contributes to this tendency because often only two words that are opposites are available to describe a situation. Familiar examples are words like night and day, black and white, right and wrong. Night and day are two words that do not begin to reflect the many different states that occur during the cycle of the day. Many people would say that the same is true of the other pairs of opposites. This is reflected in the commonplace statement when referring to moral questions' "It's not a matter of black and white; there are shades of gray."

Some examples of two-valued evaluation can be found in the rhetoric of student demonstrators and their critics during the late 1960s. The demonstrators who were critical of society sometimes said, "You're either part of the problem or part of the solution." The statement leaves no room for a middle ground. But there must have been some people— children, perhaps, or people in iron lungs in hospitals—who even the protesters would say were neither part of the problem nor part of the solution.

Critics of the demonstrators would sometimes reply with two-valued evaluation of their own. Consider the bumper sticker reading "America—Love it or leave it." This excludes the existence of other possibilities, such as "staying and changing it." In times of confrontation it is also common to hear people speaking of "them" and "us," another example of either-or thinking.

Wendell Johnson (1946, pp. 9-10) points out that applying two-valued evaluation to ourselves can lead to mental health problems. If a person begins to think "I am either a failure or a success" and takes the statement too seriously, some major problems can develop. The next line of thinking is liable to be, "Boy, I sure don't feel like a success, so I must be a failure!" This kind of thinking could in some cases lead to suicide, even though it is to a large extent a delusion of language. Treffert (1976) told of a 15-year-old girl who had received straight A's who hanged herself when she got her first B. She wrote in her suicide note, "If I fail in what I do, I fail in what I am."

In reality, most of us have some small successes and some small failures every day. Summing it all up with a general conclusion about whether one is a success or a failure is not necessary and can never reflect reality accurately.

The cure the general semanticists suggest for two-valued evaluation is multi valued evaluation, thinking in terms of a range of possibilities instead of two.

UNCONSCIOUS PROJECTION:

Unconscious projection is a lack of awareness that one's statements are to a degree statements about oneself. Wendell Johnson (1972, p. 304) went so far as to claim that "basically we always talk about ourselves." An example is the statement "The room is hot." It is a statement about the room, but it is also a statement about the condition of the nervous system of the person making the statement. The same is true of the statement "The orange is sweet." It might be sweet to one person but sour to another. Many people might be aware of their own projection when they say something is "hot" or "sweet." But people seem less aware that their statement is about themselves when they say something like "The art exhibit is ugly." That sounds like a factual statement about the art exhibit, when actually it is a statement that involves a great deal of personal reaction. It is not difficult to see how unconscious projection can lead to problems when we recall that people sometimes get into fights over whether or not an art exhibit is ugly.

The statement "Who cares?" is usually high in projection; it implies that nobody cares but really translates as "I don't care."

Unconscious projection can become dangerous when it occurs in government leaders or other persons with great responsibility. President Nixon once complained during a televised news conference that television coverage of his administration was "outrageous," "vicious," and "distorted." When the National News Council asked the White House to supply the specific details that supported the charge, they were never provided. President Nixon was apparently not aware that his statement was to a large degree an expression of his own personal reaction. When such statements became the basis of official and unofficial actions—and there is evidence that the Nixon administration was taking steps against the television networks (Whiteside, 1975)—we begin to see the seriousness of the consequences of unconscious projection by government leaders.

Psychologist Earl C. Kelley (1947) has said, "When we take in our surroundings, we select from them, not at random, but in accordance with our past experience and our purposes" (p. 48). William Shakespeare said, "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (as cited by Brown, 1988, p. 16). A contemporary writer, H. Jackson Brown, Jr., in a compilation (4 Father's Book of Wisdom, writes, "We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are" (p. 106). It is the I behind the eye that does the seeing. Seeing goes on inside of our heads and inside of our nervous systems. What we see is our response to what we look at.

The general semanticists suggest that a cure for unconscious projection is to add "to me" at the end of any statement you make. Again, it might not be necessary to write or say the words but it would help at least to think them.