John Leo and the deep dark secret of language (or) “Code words”

Posted on March 17, 2010 by admin

There has been some hullabaloo of late over Glenn Beck urging Christians to leave churches (read congregations) that preach social justice. Did Jesus not preach social justice? Is Glenn Beck against Jesus?

Please understand I am not a fan or critic of Glenn Beck. Do not watch his show although have seen parts of it a few times. Would say I have a mixed opinion of him. Did watch his entire presentation at Conservative Political Action Committee. Parts of it were very well done. Parts of it were hunh?

But this is not about Glenn Beck. This is about language. Readers of this website know I have a strong interest in languages and how people use words. I have begun to share (when preaching or teaching) a “deep dark secret” of language.

Words do not have meanings. They have uses.

(Not completely sure where I picked that up. Think it was when attending a pastor’s conference in Kerala in India. The Indian pastors got into a friendly argument over English translations of the Bible and concern over translations that change(?) what the Bible teaches. During which Dr Kunjumun Chacko asserted “words do not have meanings they have uses”. He was defending dynamic rather than literal translation.)

John Leo has a piece at National Review Online about how Glenn Beck was “tripped up” by the rhetoric of the social-political-cultural left.

In plain English, “social justice” is a goal of all churches and refers to helping the poor and seeking equality. As a code word, it refers to a controversial package of goals including political redistribution of wealth, gay marriage, and a campaign against “institutional racism,” “classism,” “ableism,” and “heterosexism.” Beck was wildly off base linking “social justice” (of either form) to Communism and Nazism, but he was correct to note that the term is often used as a code.

Leo goes on to discuss further the use of code words on American university campuses such as secure livelihoods and strong economies and especially sustainability.

Now to be fair conservatives and those on the right sometimes do the same thing. Although I confess do not have many specific examples. Family values comes to mind.

Strangely appropriate in light of the new Tim Burton movie “Alice in Wonderland”.

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  • Jonathan

    I’ve often referred to your use of the phrase “Words do not have meanings. They have uses.” (For the record, you were the first person that I ever hear/read to use it…not being a fan of dynamic equivalency, I’ll just continue to credit you with it. :) ).

    On of my first trips to the Far East, I heard a phrase translated “Words are weapons” that I think came from one of Mao’s speeches or letters (I don’t think that there was a Chinese equivalent of our “sticks and stones….”). When I read Leo’s discussion of Beck, the Nazi imagery took me back to the first time that I read Corrie Ten Boom’s classic “The Hiding Place”. In the chapter “The Raid”, there was a heated discussion over about the words “fear” and “honor” where the issue was the comparative authority of God and the government. The government official was arguing from the position that since he represented the government, that his authority should trump everything. In essence, he began with a presumption (agenda) and was willing to say whatever would get the Boom family to agree to his authority.

    Beck is a lot like the family dog who wags his tail so hard that he often knocks over the lamp in the family room. He doesn’t proclaim himself to be a towering intellect…and this is a good thing. But being a broadcaster, he knows the power of words and the danger when they are used as weapons.

    I’m currently re-reading a book by P.J. O’Rourke about Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and O’Rouke makes the point that, in Smith’s day, people wrote the way they spoke: in a fairly long, exhaustive (in the complete, not tired sense of the word) style. They did so, according to my favorite conservative wit, because there was no 24/7 news cycle, tv/radio news (no tv, no radio), no text messages, no blogs, no twittering. In essence, when they had something to say, they felt no constraint to make an argument and fully support it…without regard to time or space (kind of like this reply). Brevity was not, in Smith’s time, the soul of anything. And, of course, Smith lived in a culture where words had meanings and the only time that meanings wavered was if a specific context dictated (and context could only take one so far in changing the flavor of a any word).

    Today, we think ourselves to be so enlightened and so intelligent that we no longer fear the misuse of language. The language doesn’t teach us, rather, language is merely a vehicle that is what we say it is when we say it is. So rather than spending the time to describe what we mean by “social justice”, “healthcare reform”, “family values”, or “constitutional”, we just toss those words out there and demand that all conform to our usage with the threat that if they don’t, they’ll just be accused of being against the concept itself.

    This is lazy, distasteful, anti-intellectual, and very, very dangerous.

    As usual, good topic Rick.

  • Rick

    Wow. Bro – your comments are often better than the posts to which you are responding. This would make an outstanding post in its own right.

    1) “Words don’t have meanings they have uses”

    I think we both know that this might not be strictly 100% correct. Perhaps better “words don’t have meanings so much as they have uses”. But then that raises the question of what *is* the “meaning” if not (hypothesizing here) the original dominant *use* of said word.

    A great example might be how the apostle Paul uses the Greek term sarx which “means” flesh. But there is almost no way Paul is saying that the body is evil. The body is indeed an instrument of the spiritual life. And God will resurrect our bodies. So physicality itself is not the problem. What Paul means(?!?) by sarx is more than indeed not “matter is evil”.

    (Excuse me while I put the pasta on.

    Okay back.)

    2) P J O’Rourke

    Excellent point. When I read how common(?) people wrote during the 1800′s I am astounded at what passes for good style today. Simple letters to the editor (in this case of The Revolutionary which was a suffragist newspaper out of upstate New York in the 1860′s) exhibit breathtaking sophistication. People knew how to write. Most of what people write and say today is a kind of verbal flatulence.

    All the media O’Rourke mentions are turning us into illiterate morons. That includes me. I have my favorite shows too.

    3) Dynamic equivalence

    Yeah I am not a big fan either. For me it is personal bias. I want to know what is going on in the original text. Sometimes a literal translation helps the reader notice patterns and word plays and alternative meanings(?). I respect Eugene Peterson deeply as a pastor-scholar. But his The Message transphrasing makes me want to scream.

  • Jonathan

    One of the books that most influenced the last two decades of my life is The Machine That Changed the World [Ed - made blue clickie, use html rather than bbcode] which is a very well written, short history of the impact of the automobile (and the West’s post WWII love affair with it) on how pretty much everything is manufactured. As an aside, folks interested in the current Toyotal kerfuffle would find some outstanding context to understand how folks are “using” words today.

    In thinking about the topic of this blog post (btw, what is the correct nomenclature for blogs? Am I responding to a blog post, a blog entry…is the totality of what you write here a “blog”…yes, I’m a luddite who working in high tech engineering) the car keeps coming to mind. So much of our lives in the modern era revolves around the car. When we think of sleazy sales tactics, what is among the first products that come to mind?

    Sleazy sales tactics pretty much have a theme, “what can I do for you right now to get you to drive off the lot in this fine used car….today?” In essence, what is being communicated is “run, don’t walk”, “don’t think, just act”, “what do I have to say to get you to part with your money so that I can get this heap of explosive materials off my lot?” Studies have shown that the most successful salespeople are the ones who can get to a firm “yes” the quickest. If the customer asks too many question, and takes too much time, the law of averages will end up costing the salesperson commission money. These folks have to sell while daylight burns and potential customer traffic is like hotel rooms: it is not a durable good….it expires. You don’t sell it, you lose it.

    So perhaps the change in our ability (or willingness) to write/communicate has been influenced by economics? Given how modern economics was introduced to the world, that’s irony.