End Of Nuance? Are We Clipping The Wings Of Imagination Flying With Words?

Words express ideas. Restrict words, ideas wilt. In his novel 1984, George Orwell presents us with a totalitarian dystopia, Oceania, where the ruling dispensation resorts to an elaborate process of thought control to eliminate rebellious thought among people. It includes Newspeak, where English is reduced to a strictly utilitarian function devoid of nuances in expression. The truncated version of old English is aimed at curtailing a person’s ability to articulate abstract concepts such as freedom and communicate them.

The party, Ingsoc, short for English Socialism, simplifies grammar and limits vocabulary to the bare minimum by eliminating superlatives. ‘Better’ thus becomes ‘gooder’, ‘best’ becomes ‘goodest’, ‘Plus’ is prefixed to words for emphasis. ‘Pluscold’ thus stands for ‘very cold’ and ‘doublepluscold’ for ‘very very cold’. The purpose is well meditated: restrict general communication within the boundaries of the new and revised words.

Ingenious, right. Children cannot express complex ideas like liberty, individualism, rebellion and rights because the vocabulary at their command doesn’t allow it. Same with primitive societies. Intellectualism or activism gets stunted without enlightened communication. The Party in Orwell’s work also invented new words and slogans. ‘Minitrue’ meant Ministry of Truth, ‘Miniluv’ meant Ministry of Love, ‘Doublethink’ meant equal acceptance of mutually contradictory truths, ‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is Slavery and so on. The idea: Let people stay obsessed and communicate in new expressions so that the old, weightier ones turn irrelevant from underuse.

Look at the words and acronyms our social media users, particularly the younger lot, are getting comfortable with. ‘Unfriend’, ‘Unfollow’, ‘Big Yikes’ (an expression of surprise), Doxxing (publishing private information online), Gucci (for cool), ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out), ‘ROFL’ (rolling on the floor), LOL (laugh out loud), YOLO (you only live once), HB (happy birthday), FOBI (fear of being insignificant), SMH (shaking my head) and TBH (to be honest). It is likely that a generation later, the new words and expressions would drive out earlier ones from everyday conversation.

The old language is dying and an equivalent of Newspeak is taking over. Nuances and beauty associated with terms we knew earlier are getting extinct and the serviceable is in place. In fact, spoken words are losing relevance as fingers on keyboards on our devices are doing the talking. Typing ‘Ha, Ha’ surely is different from the hearty laugh with a friend. ‘Ha, Ha’ surely misses the feeling, sense of camaraderie and conviviality involved in the former. No government or party like Ingsoc is involved here. And there’s no slimy agenda being forced unto people by a powerful human source. Technology is causing it. The trend could kill imagination and creativity.

‘Brain rot’ is the Oxford University Press’s Word of the Year for 2024. It refers to the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state from overconsumption of low quality online content. It appears, from the evolving vocabulary, we have walked into brain rot. Language would henceforth be strictly utilitarian. It would fail to communicate intricate thoughts and ideas. Clever ruling dispensations like that of Oceania would find malicious use of it as a tool of control.

It helps the powers-that-be if people stay close to the primitive level in communication. ‘Proles’ in Orwell’s 1984 are the working class population occupying the lowest rung in Oceania’s society. They are distracted by entertainment, ignorant of politics and have little understanding of their own exploitation. They are the happiest people in a totalitarian arrangement. The ‘Party’ sought to spread Newspeak among them to confine them to where they were.

Will brain rot turn us into proles? Will words with meanings die? Get ready for a world barren of ideas.

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)