💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › peter-gelderloos-elitist-language.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:16:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Elitist Language
Author: Peter Gelderloos
Date: 2003?
Language: en
Topics: language, anti-oppression, class, education, elitism
Source: SOA Watch. Retrieved 5 April, 2013 from http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=913
Notes: This article was written in the context of a debate about supposedly elitist language, in the Anti-Oppression Working Group of SOA Watch.

Peter Gelderloos

Elitist Language

The problem of elitist language often comes up when people from a

middle-class, university-educated background attempt to communicate with

‘the general public.’ If those attempting the communication are engaged

in a commercial venture, they can simply dumb their language down to the

common denominator shared by the median target audience, perhaps

appropriate some of that audience’s slang and cultural symbols, and they

are assured of a good sell.

However, if the motive is more altruistic, for instance that of

middle-class activists attempting to communicate with activists from

other backgrounds, or to share information, resources, and opinions with

some General Public, the problem becomes more complicated. For good

reason and with plenty of history, the language of academia, with which

many middle-class activists are comfortable, can alienate or confound

people who did not receive an advanced university education. Yet the

problems of our world from patriarchy to imperialism are systemic

pathologies that demand serious effort and attention to comprehend. And

directly opposed to our comprehension of these problems is an

unprecedentedly powerful cultural apparatus that manipulates our values,

our ideology, our history, even our language in order to protect the

status quo. How can we explain complex, obscure ideas in a simple

language — which is already heavily controlled by the culture industry —

conveyed in brief and easily digestible segments sensitive to The

General Public’s decreasing attention spans?

I think the obvious answer is that we can’t. We need to recognize that

language in our society is used as a tool of control, and the trend

towards smaller vocabularies, simpler syntax, and shorter attention

spans is one of the most effective forms of disempowerment ever devised.

Resisting the dumbing down of language and developing our ability to

think critically is as important a long term goal as winning community

autonomy and economic self-sufficiency. Language needs to be a locus for

revolution; it is a necessary weapon for all social struggles. Our duty

as middle-class activists is to use our education to make complex

language accessible, rather than passing off everything not immediately

accessed with ease by the majority as inherently inaccessible.

But to return from the consideration of the theoretical long haul and

face the present context, there is substantial validity to the

criticisms about inaccessible language. These have all been stated

elsewhere, and they generally involve recognizing that thorough

education is a privilege retained by few (predominantly the white middle

class), and that by speaking in the sophisticated language that

accompanies our education we inhibit the comprehension and sympathy of

those without that education, and intentionally or unintentionally

preserve influence within radical organizations and movements in the

hands of the educated elite. Turned into doctrine, this criticism is

usually (mis)understood at the basic level that long words and complex

sentences are indicative of privilege, and privilege is bad. Lacking

from the popularized version of this criticism is the understanding that

while the existence of privilege is wrong, there is a good kind of

privilege: one that should be enjoyed by everyone. Education is one of

these.

If the underlying goal of these criticisms were to challenge elitism in

language, then we’d see a conscious combination of language of greater

and lesser sophistication in radical literature, so every literate

person would have material both within and beyond their level of

comfortable apprehension, to welcome them and challenge them. We would

see privileged activists consciously using their language in a way that

invites understanding. In reality, we either see educated radicals

ignore the problem and ignore less educated segments of their potential

audience, or attempting to avoid the problem through a knee-jerk

avoidance of polysyllabic vocabulary, complex analysis, and thorough

(read: lengthy) discourse. Education is anathematized as bourgeois, or

in more current parlance, “exclusive”, and instead of solving the

problem, activists join sides with Fox News, USA Today, and public

schooling, to contribute to the intellectual massacre of people they are

supposed to be empowering.

To inform a tactical consideration of elitist language, we should

consider some of the assumptions inhering in the criticism against such

language. One of the most fundamental is the myth of the General Public.

It goes like this: the General Public are uneducated, and using big

words alienates them. But where exactly do we draw the line between what

is elitist and what is not? Do “most people” use the word elitist? Oh

gosh: is the word elitist itself elitist? What about writing? Granted,

most people in the U.S. are literate, but many are not, through no fault

of their own. Is writing things down elitist? Should activists not make

up pamphlets and fliers any more? It certainly excludes people who can’t

read. In a very condescending way, educated activists are setting a

level of acceptable stupidity; even as they reject academic language,

they uphold the elitist morality by retaining a hierarchy of

intelligence, and they will only go so far down the ladder in order to

cater to the less educated. Anyone who is still excluded is simply left

out of their conceptualization of “normal people.”

The effect of the General Public myth is that when we leave our bubbles,

most activists talk down to people they assume don’t have a university

education, and in practice the easiest cue is if the audience is poor,

or not white. I think many activists aren’t even aware of how

condescending they usually are, and how obvious it is when they attempt

to speak a language that clearly isn’t their own. Then they turn around

and talk about elitism?

A prohibition on what is understood as elitist language also assumes

that people from poorer backgrounds with fewer opportunities for quality

education either cannot or do not want to learn. In reality, attaining a

good education is seen as a form of empowerment in many poorer

communities, yet few activists attempt to diffuse that education when

communicating with less privileged people. By avoiding academic language

and analysis outside of their own circles, privileged activists maintain

a relationship of dependency, in which they act as gatekeepers to

knowledge, forever necessary to translate law, scientific studies,

political analysis, et cetera, into “plain language.”

The other assumption inherent in the criticism is the idea that certain

types of language are inherently elitist. Larger vocabularies and more

complex syntax are in fact very helpful tools, though people require

more education to be able to use them. It is not the language, but this

country’s capitalist, racist education system that is elitist. The job

of educated activists is to make that education accessible, and hand

that language over as a popular tool. We don’t want made-for-the-masses

Orwellian newspeak, we want languages that are liberated and

demystified.

Unfortunately, educated activists continue to romanticize “plain

language”, and they also continue to complain when The Masses are fooled

yet again into support for the latest war or draconian policy shift by

the most transparent, even clichéd tautology and sophistry communicated

by politicians and relayed by the media. Removing the many forms of

language from the current hierarchy of privilege, and placing them in

the appropriate landscape of diverse and equal cultures is a crucial act

(one that first requires allowing the different cultures in our society

to enjoy equality). But recognizing the validity of non-academic

languages, the language of east coast urban blacks or Appalachian

whites, does not mean putting them in a museum. Revolutionary

empowerment will cause these languages to change, to develop much of the

complexity heretofore monopolized by white academia, because that

complexity itself is empowerment. Skeptical? Just compare the lyrics of

Puffy to those of Mr. Lif. Compare the Indian Chief of white supremacist

cinema, who only said “How?”, to American Indian Movement activist and

professor Ward Churchill, who talks about pathological pseudopraxis [1].

While other communities exist in economic subservience, while other

cultures lack autonomy, while other forms of language lack an

unshackled, empowered complexity, revolutionaries from those communities

will appropriate what tools they need to build language that is a

stepping stone to an autonomous culture.

In effect, many existing criticisms against elitist language are

themselves elitist, because they serve to preserve the monopoly on

analytical discourse in the hands of the institutionally educated (who

are themselves generally institutionalized, rather than radical, hence

not on our side). Educated radicals disavowal of language that smacks of

sophistication serves to dumb down radicals themselves. Uneducated

radicals are not more proletarian, or more inclusive. They are simply

more ineffective [2].

Wouldn’t it be more effective to subvert education, and educate

subversion? To expose and overcome the patriarchal norm that makes an

intellectual crime of asking: “What does that mean?” We should use the

forms of language we’re comfortable with, academic or otherwise, as long

as we do it lucidly, in a way that invites learning and sharing of that

knowledge. Those around us would be better off for it. Similarly, we can

benefit from learning the different types of language that other people

use. Recognize the variety of languages, but upset the economic, racial,

and gendered hierarchy in which these languages have been placed.

Footnotes

[1] In each example, the first element represents an essentialized form

of an oppressed group’s language, either marketed or created by white

supremacist cultural institutions, Hollywood or the major record labels.

The second element of each example does not necessarily represent the

language of an oppressed group, but is meant to demonstrate a trend of

revolutionaries from oppressed communities adopting “educated” language,

either as a whole or incorporated into their own language.

[2] No, this is not to say that radicals from poorer backgrounds are

less effective than privileged radicals. On the contrary, note that

lower-class radicals typically educate themselves, and are more

intelligent for it. E.g. George Jackson was in prison when middle-class

activists are usually in college, but still a major part of Jackson’s

intellectual stature came from reading Marx, Malcolm X, Fanon?