Language plays a key role in enabling humans to exercise power over other humans, especially when that power is not physical. Whenever we use language, we essentially encode reality, or a slice of it and pass it onto others. The specific ways in which we do this encoding reflects our value systems and wishes, our positionality. This in turn presents a perspective on reality to whomever we communicate with, whether we intend it to or not, possibly influencing their perception and altering their behavior to align with our perspective — we convince, persuade, align, and argue even if we are not actively aware that we are doing so. Traditional rhetoricians noted that we can influence others by appealing to logos – logical reasoning, pathos – emotional response, and ethos – trust building, but in practice the exercise of power through language is quite complex.

Individuals and groups of people, often through means of governmental, industrial, and media organizations, may exercise power to control others through the use of language. Commercial businesses and corporations, for example, may try to influence consumers to purchase or subscribe to their products and services by means of advertising, much of which uses language. While these agents develop promotional messages using techniques that may appeal to logic, emotion, or trust, they may also use more sophisticated language power techniques akin to propaganda– information that deliberately promotes a particular perspective, regardless of its veracity. Historically, propaganda has been used by governments to promote particular behaviors and align individual to group or official perspectives, for example, during wartime to rally a populace around a cause and support a collective war effort. It may be distributed through physical media like posters, signs, mailings, and flyers; electronic media like emails, texts, social media memes and posts, podcasts, and websites; and traditional media like newspapers, television news, commercials, public service announcements, infotainment, or radio/talk programs. It may be obvious or it may be hidden behind more benign-appearing messaging.

Many have argued that with the advent of the Internet and social media, misinformation – false information that is unintentionally spread  – is more easily spread than ever, thanks to the phenomenon of virality and because much of the Internet is not fact-checked or edited like most printed materials are. Sometimes that information is intentionally false, which makes it disinformation, a.k.a. ‘fake news’. Vulnerable individuals may believe this disinformation because it uses propaganda and language power techniques and spread it further. Without necessarily realizing it, they adopt the worldviews and ideologies of the original authors and promoters — political, cultural, and corporate forces who may not have their best intentions in mind.

The Techniques

There are countless ways that power is expressed through language use. To narrow down the possibilities, the project is focusing on specific techniques we call language power techniques – ways that language power is expressed or exercised in speech or writing, whether intentionally or not. Being aware of these techniques will not only make you better aware of propaganda and disinformation, it will make you a more responsible and effective communicator, consumer, and citizen.

Metaphor

Metaphor is a technique that involves equating a new idea with an idea that the audience (readers or listeners) already understand, so that they can conceptualize the new idea. While metaphors can be used intentionally, they also already underlie much of our thought processes and are deeply tied to culture. For example, the metaphor of ‘anger = heat’ underlies language like ‘he blew up’, while ‘busy place = zoo’ allows others to understand statements like ‘the party became a zoo’ when not referring to an actual zoo. They can be used in cognitive framing, a technique that allows an idea or ideology to be more easily understood. Grammatically, metaphor may make use of basic sentence structures like subject complements, as well as a variety of other features.

more about Metaphor here – a video, what to know, online booklet, and additional resources

Doublespeak

Inspired by the writings of George Orwell, William Lutz coined the term “doublespeak” to refer to a kind of language that seeks to “mislead, distort, deceive, inflate, circumvent, obfuscate” (Lutz 2016: 24). It is created using several linguistic techniques like euphemism, dysphemism, jargon and bureaucratese. For example, corporate officials might use a term like “involuntary conversion” as doublespeak to refer to theft or destruction of property when it is in their interest not to upset listeners about that destruction, or the CIA might refer to torture of political prisoners as “enhanced interrogation”. Grammatically, doublespeak may make use of nouns and the phenomenon of synonymy.

more about Doublespeak here – a video, what to know, online booklet, and additional resources

Pronoun Choice & Address Forms

Pronouns are fundamental grammatical devices that help us reduce the number of times we need to repeat nouns (e.g: replacing ‘boy’ with ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’, or a ‘queer person’ with ‘they’, ‘them’, their’), and address forms are another basic linguistic device we use to address different people around us (e.g. sir, man, dude, bro etc.). They are simple only on the surface, because their usage shapes complex social relationships by including, excluding, respecting, and disrespecting the people they refer to. For example, we can use the inclusive we to refer to ourselves and the audience, or we can use it exclusively to refer to ourselves but not the audience. We can use ‘you’ to refer to ‘anyone’ generically or to the person we are addressing, sometimes including others if plural. We can also use ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘they’, and while a person who may not identify with the male-female gender binary may wish to be referred to with the singular they or another 3rd person pronoun, seeking to carve out a space within language use that has historically been denied to them, purposefully not using such pronouns to refer to them then becomes an act of disrespect. By understanding the power of pronouns and address forms, we can better understand how the words we choose shape social relationships and contribute to social realities.

more about Pronoun choice & Address Forms here – a video, what to know, online booklet, and additional resources

Name-calling & Epithets

Grammatically making use of nouns and adjectives, name-calling involves the pejorative use of a linguistic or literary device called an epithet – a commonly-used descriptive name for someone or something that is additional to their actual name. Epithets allow the listener or reader to take a cognitive shortcut and see one trait or quality as the primary defining quality of the person. When an epithet is positive, its use can serve to show solidarity or respect, but when it is pejorative its use can result in exclusion and cause the listener or reader to close their mind to other characteristics the person has. Since criticality takes effort, it’s easier for the listener to fixate on a single ‘definitive’ negative trait. For example, name-calling became associated strongly with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign when he started using pejorative names like “low-energy Jebb” and “Crooked Hillary” to “Sleepy Joe” for his political opponents which influenced the American population to fixate on negative portrayals of these politicians instead of fairly judging them based on their past policy records.

more about Name-calling and epithets here – a video, what to know, online booklet, and additional resources