The Power of Language
 

In the context of the recent shooting in Arizona, everyone has been talking about the heated rhetoric in politics. I would like to start of by saying that I don't believe this specific case was caused by the rhetoric, but rather a mental problem with the shooter. Anyways One thing I heard brought up was how Ad companies spend tons of money to study which language to use to best get people to buy their product. The logic of the point being that companies wouldn't continue doing this if it wasn't working and increasing their profit. Thus language can be assumed to affect decisions at least in this case. It is a rather large leap to assume that language can be used to get somebody to kill a person, unless that person is predisposed to kill for other reasons already. As I am interested in Anthropology and specifically Linguistics, this is something interesting to me. I believe the words we use, the way we use them, and the structure of our language are not only influenced by our culture but can turn that around and put influence on the culture.

Do you think the way we speak can affect our culture, possibly increasing violence and schisms in society?
Do you think politicians and pundits should be using heated or even violent speech against their opponents, or is this situation akin to yelling fire in a theater?
Do you think the mass public can be manipulated by the language of those who control the media, and should they be given that sort of control if so?

The role that language plays in society was quite interestingly explored in the Whorf/Sapir hypothesis back in 1939. While it has been questioned, and some would argue unjustly, on several grounds I would still argue it raises points which are of value to any discussion on the role that language plays in society. Indeed one of the useful observations being that language serves the role of the vehicle for our thoughts. In serving this role it provides us with tools for classifying, conceptualizing and interacting with the world around us. So yes, I would argue that there most certainly is a relationship between language and culture. However I do not of course propose linguistic determinism. Indeed it is a two way street between culture and language.

Even if it doesn't, you can tell 'they' believe it does, because they sure go out of their way to try and shut their opponents up.

Its very powerful very! Look at Martin Luther Kings speech. That's just english and the meaning behind each word spoken its just poetic. And other languages angry words that we don't know seem to get a point across when we know what they are saying. We can get to people on how we use our words. Freedom of speech is also freedom to be criticized.