II. Introduction to Language Power Techniques

II.1 Introduction

What makes us human? What differentiates us from animals? Anthropologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists have contemplated this question for centuries. There are many competing theories, but two of the most compelling ones are language and social structure. Humans are characteristically different from animals because of the complexity of language they have developed in order to communicate. Unlike animal communication systems, human language has particular qualities like displacement (we can talk about times and places not present), arbitrariness (most words are not iconic, e.g. the relationship of the sound of a word is normally only arbitrarily related to what it means), and productivity (we can invent new words and say things that have never been said before). These qualities have played key roles in helping us communicate and coordinate with one another, leading over time to highly complex social structures and nothing less than culture itself.

II.2 Language, Society, & Power

Power is a key ingredient to the glue that binds human societies, although its uneven application or unbalanced use can also contribute to them breaking. In very simple terms, power is simply the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to act as they wish, and exercising power involves acting influencing others in a manner in accordance with those wishes – doing what you want and making others do so too. Exercising power may as simple as a parent making their child go to bed or as complex as an authoritarian government censoring the Internet and restricting its citizens from accessing outside information, as in contemporary China, Russia, or Iran. Some argue that in many modern capitalist societies like the USA, factors like race, gender, and the economic class into which an individual is born have a great impact on how much and what kind of power is ascribed to them, even greater than their personal choices and achievements. What do you think?

All human societies are held together by varying levels of power dynamics, but in democratic and egalitarian societies, a single group of people does not have absolute power over another group of people – in theory anyway. Rather, what exists is a highly complex web of negotiated power relations, where in some moments individuals and groups exert various sorts of power over others while in other moments, they have power exerted over them. Because of differing value structures, the exercise of power isn’t always either 100% good or bad; greed and desire for dominance may motivate some to wield power, but power as a means to enable peace and enact justice may motivate others. Sometimes, however, the results of the exercise of power are difficult to predict, and some may be unintended. Power is volatile, to say the least.

II.3 Power ↔ Language

How is power exercised? 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.

II.4 The Techniques

There are countless ways that power is expressed through language use. To narrow down the possibilities, this book focuses on eight specific techniques we call language power techniques – ways that 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.

A. 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.

B. 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.

C. 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.

D. 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.

E. Storytelling & Censorship

Storytelling is how humans share ideas, humor, beliefs, and histories and relate to one another. Storytelling is also how they deceive and fool one another, by telling lies or false narratives. Stories are told through narratives, which in English use various combination of verb tense and aspect – for example, past tense and progressive aspect are both used in “We were heading to the park when we saw a shooting star”. Since shared history and understanding happens through storytelling, some try to “control the narrative” about events as they are shared through media by presenting their version as the sole truth, even though there are always multiple perspectives on it. Others, like leaders of governmental, religious, and educational institutions, may try to control histories through censorship particular perspectives and narratives.

F. Weasel Language

Weasel language refers to language that allows the speaker or writer to be vague, to generalize, and to hide or mask authority on purpose – for example, when a reporter uses passive voice even when they know the agent, as in ‘Rioters were apprehended’, instead of ‘Police beat protestors’. Weasel language is ideal for propaganda and disinformation because it is sneaky and easy to miss; for example, a news report might say ‘A crowd of people demanded’ instead of ‘A crowd of thousands of people demanded’ in order to downplay the size of the crowd, or someone might say ‘It is said that..’ or ‘They say that…’ in passing without allowing for the reply ‘wait, who is ‘they’?’ Technically, they’re not lying, but are they being entirely honest?

G. Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a rhetorical technique or figure of speech that exaggerates the facts of an event, idea, or person to an unrealistic degree such that it massively increases their intensity and evokes a strong emotional response in the audience (usually of shock, fear, or surprise, etc.). For example, instead of saying “It was an excellent concert”, one might use hyperbole and say “it was the most excellent concert in the history of this planet!”. Grammatically making use of adjectives in their various forms, hyperbole is used frequently in literature and pop culture. However, its use is especially powerful when it’s used in advertising and political rhetoric to influence people to behave or act in particular ways without their awareness. For example, beauty and health products might use hyperbole to tell its potential customers that they may be the most beautiful, the strongest, or the most desirable person in their circles if they use their product; a beer company might imply that the most interesting people in the world drink their beer, even though there’s no way they could determine who those people actually are.

H. Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies are false arguments that can be proven wrong through logic; they often involve weasel language and other deceptive techniques, for example omitting information, repeating it, or exaggerating it (i.e. using hyperbole). Propaganda techniques that often involve logical fallacies include slippery slope arguments, causal fallacies, circular arguments, hasty generalizations, red herrings, and bandwagon appeals. Grammatically, logical fallacies often make use of negation and conjunctions, e.g. ‘so’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, and ‘however’,  that connect two clauses and imply logical relationships between their assertions.

Module authors: Anuj Gupta & Jonathon Reinhardt

Last updated: 8 November 2023

This module is part of Modern English Grammar and the Power of Language, a open educational resource offered by the Clarify Initiative customized for English 406, a course at the University of Arizona. The Clarify Initiative is a privately funded project with the goal of raising critical language awareness and media literacy among students of language and throughout society.