Why is it that people often find others’ views so incomprehensible? Why do other people often seem to have everything back to front? Why do some people express views that seem to be self-contradictory? Why do people on the far Left/Right/etc. seem to be speaking another language?

Our answer is that they are. When two people have a fundamental political disagreement, part of the reason is that they are not speaking exactly the same language.

Linguists divide speech into languages in much the same way that botanists and zoologists divide life into species. The criterion for species is that members must be able to mate and produce fertile offspring. The criterion for languages is that sub-varieties must be mutually comprehensible. These criteria allow a lot of variety. A person speaking English can meet another person speaking English, and yet they may be speaking dialects which are somewhat different in grammar and vocabulary, as well as dramatically different in pronunciation. Varieties spoken by different social groups are sociolects. Varieties spoken from different households are ecolects. Varieties spoken by different individuals are idiolects. These are all Greek terms.

We suggest that the vocabulary used in political discourse depends on a certain special sociolect that in turn depends on education and belief. This is independent of the dialect and sociolect used by the individual in other interactions. Due to its specialised nature, we might term it jargon. At the risk of making a clumsy coinage, we term this a ‘politicolect’.

Consider the following quotation: ‘Leninism has nothing to do with the values of the left — in fact, it’s radically opposed to them’ (Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, 1998)

The right-wing extremist David Horowitz said of this quotation: ‘You have to pinch yourself when reading sentences like that’, which is a typical example of rightist confusion at similar comments by Chomsky. Something is not right here. The sentence seems obvious to Chomsky, and yet to Horowitz it is as nonsensical as Prof. Chomsky’s famous ‘Colo[u]rless green ideas sleep furiously’ (deliberately constructed to show that a meaningless sentence can be grammatically correct).

What is happening here? The two men are not speaking the same language — or rather, they are speaking two different politicolects of English.

Chomsky uttered his statement in his own politicolect, in which it is a cogent statement. Horowitz then made the mistake of interpreting it as a statement in his own politicolect, in which it is a nonsensical statement. It is very much as though Chomsky had asked for a bag of chips to eat in England. On receiving the chips, he might well exclaim that he had not been given what he ordered. The reason being, of course, that ‘chips’ in his dialect means ‘crisps’, but to the other person it means ‘fries’. Did he get what he ordered then? One could argue yes or no.

Returning to our real-life example, to access Chomsky’s understanding of his own sentence, we need to access his politicolect. In this speech variety, the ‘left’ refers to those who advocate social progress, democracy and equality in opposition to capitalism and traditional authority. Anyone who adheres to these ideas is a leftist; anyone who does not, is not. Since Chomsky judges Leninism to go against principles of democracy and equality, he states that Leninism has nothing to do with the values of the left.

In Horowitz’s sociolect, the ‘left’ refers to a shadow cast upon society by backward, anti-American thinking, directed at realising an ‘impossible dream’. Anyone who declares that they follow a leader or an ideology with roots in leftist thought is a leftist; Anyone who does not, is not (unless they are a crypto-leftist). Since Horowitz judges Leninism to be based upon Marxism, and Marxism to be backward thinking directed at realising an impossible dream, he considers Leninism is be the very embodiment of leftism. Chomsky’s statement that Leninism has nothing to do with leftism is therefore nonsensical in this politicolect.

So, how can we decide who is right? Is that even a helpful question? Would it achieve anything to decide who was right about the chips issue? We contend that standardisation of language is a positive thing. Without wanting to oppress people or deny them the right to speak in their own dialect, we assert that aptitude in the standard form of a language is desirable in that it avoids confusion. This article could be written in the local dialects of its authors, and made more expressive via use of slang and profanity, but we chose to use as pure a variety of standard, formal English as we can manage. We recommend the same with regards to politicolect. What consequences does this have? It means frequent recourse to such guides as dictionaries. It means careful regard for the audience, who may have a limited command of your politicolect. It means the use of terms that best encapsulate the objective reality out there in the world, with as little overlap or equivocation as possible.

Let us look at equivocation. Here is a classic example of it:

  • ‘A feather is light.
  • What is light cannot be dark.
  • So, a feather cannot be dark.’

Here is another:

  • ‘If evidence found at the scene of a crime turns out to be a plant,
    then it is inadmissible in court.
  • The accused was running a cannabis factory.
  • Cannabis is a plant.
  • The evidence is therefore a plant.
  • So, the evidence is inadmissible.’

Without even any confusion due to dialect, sociolect, etc., these examples manage to exploit the ambiguity in the words ‘light’ and ‘plant’ to arrive at an incorrect conclusion. If political terms refer to more than one thing, this overlap can lead to incorrect conclusions. Consider the following exchange (adapted from a real conversation):

A) The ideal society, whether attainable or not, is communism. Everything should be shared with the poor.

B) Yes, that sounds great, but they tried communism in Russia and it didn’t work. It was a corrupt, oppressive system.

In A’s politicolect, ‘communism’ has only the original meaning of the term: the sharing of all resources. By definition, if the masses do not have control of the means of production and therefore there is still a boss class that can starve or command them, then there is no communism.

In B’s politicolect, ‘communism’ has two meanings. B shares enough of A’s understanding of the term for B to comprehend that A is talking about sharing. A’s statement is not incomprehensible to B. However, B’s politicolect also assigns another meaning to ‘communism’: ‘the harsh régimes based on Marxist doctrine that appeared in Russia, China and elsewhere during the 20th century’.

Despite the fact that B’s two understandings are not only dissimilar but even mutually exclusive, he does not carefully distinguish between them. This allows him to listen to A speaking of communism (equality and sharing), then agree that communism (equality and sharing) sounds ideal, but then proceed to counter that by asserting that communism (Bolshevik tyranny) failed to be ideal. All without batting an eyelid.

At this point, A may feel frustrated, because she has essentially been told in all seriousness that a feather cannot be dark.

Let us look at another example. In A’s politicolect, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ refers to a subset of racism. That is to say, someone who is a racist against Jewish people is an anti-Semite. Someone who is not racist against Jewish people is not an anti-Semite. In A’s politicolect, the term ‘racist’ is also strictly defined. If one believes in the equality of all races, one is not a racist. If one believes in the superiority or inferiority of a race, and therefore wishes to segregate, discriminate or over-generalise, one is racist.

In B’s politicolect, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ refers to all threats to what B perceives as the interests of the Jewish people. Since the ultimate expression of Jewish interests is the State of Israel, the clearest way of expressing anti-Semitism is to harshly criticise this State. Since anti-Semites know they are evil, they rarely admit to their anti-Semitism directly by advocating any discrimination against Jewish people, but one can detect their evil by noticing them repeating things said by other anti-Semites or generally doing anything that goes against the interests of Jews or Israel .

The reader will notice that these two individuals’ understanding of the same term is extremely different. Let us try to enter into the mentalities of the two. Fully accept their worldview and use of language. Now imagine that person C made the following statements. In each case, would A and B see evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’?

1) ‘According to statistics, Jewish people are among the most privileged ethnic groups’

2) ‘I’m not a Jew.’

3) ‘Samir al-Hams’s unarmed, 13-year-old daughter, Iman, was shot 17 times in the head and body by an unrepentant Israeli soldier. He now unfortunately hates Jews. This is but one example of Israeli actions causing anti-Semitism.’ *1

4) ‘The occupation régime must cease’ *2

5) ‘There was no Holocaust.’

The answer is that in each case, A would conclude ‘no’ and B would conclude ‘yes’. In the first example, an important taboo is violated: to speak of Jewish people being in any way in a position of wealth or power is to sound like an ‘anti-Semite’. To A, the fact that the assertion is simply a factual statement and not a generalisation means that it contains no racism of any type. To B, the breaking of the taboo is enough to conclude that C is an anti-Semite; this in turn may be taken as evidence that the statement is untrue by definition.

In the second example, A would again see nothing but an expression of fact. B might see evidence of anti-Semitism in the choice of language: respectful gentiles say ‘Jewish people’; anti-Semites say ‘Jews’. The search engine Google even went so far as to set up a special page explaining that the use of the noun tends to be ‘anti-Semitic’ unlike the use of the adjective. A BBC survey reveals that 49% of the British public count ‘Jew’ as a swearword. *3

In the third example, A would see nothing but tragic facts. B would see an example of the anti-Semitic notion that ‘Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism’.

In the fourth example, A would see an opinion with no connection to racism. B would see an attack on Israel, and therefore anti-Semitism.

In the fifth example, A would see tragic ignorance, and wonder what politics were lurking behind the incorrect statement, without jumping to conclusions. B would not wonder: he would see clear proof of anti-Semitism. He would no doubt support countries like Canada and Switzerland , where to make such statements is actually illegal.

You have probably guessed that we view A’s politicolect to be a more standard and logical use of language. B’s use is far too broad, and is diverges greatly from any definition one might find in any dictionary. It also leads him to scary, right-wing conclusions about the world. It is interesting that virtually nobody would admit to using B’s definition of anti-Semitism. B himself would claim to be using the dictionary definition, but then inexplicably revert to his own politicolect in practice.

Lest you think that B is just some imaginary fool, it is helpful to consider some real cases. In another post, I deal with an official government survey ostensibly intended to measure anti-Semitism that actually based its questions on ‘Israel and the Holocaust [plus] anti-Semitic beliefs such as ideas of Jewish power, and the idea that anti-Semitism is the fault of the Jews themselves.’ There were only a couple of questions relating to ‘anti-Semitism’ as A would understand the term.

In yet another post, I note that the Mayor of London is being denounced as anti-Semitic for various comments about a couple of people working for him. Even though none of the comments even indirectly concerned Israel, Jewish people, the Holocaust or anything similar, the comments are considered to be anti-Semitic because the two guys they are directed at have turned out, after the fact, to be Jewish!

So, thus far we have dealt with different meanings of the terms ‘communism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’. Now let us look at ‘democracy’. In A’s politicolect, ‘democracy’ means the rule of the people. In B’s politicolect, ‘democracy’ refers to parliamentary systems with elections, etc. that control the political sphere, with the economic sphere controlled by capitalists.

Imagine that A and B look at two régimes: Venezuela and the United States of America. A will see that Hugo Chávez has considerable popular (and therefore democratic) support, more than George Bush, who had to gain his first election through electoral fraud. B will see the United States as the perfect example of democracy, whilst Venezuela ’s elections are marred by the stain of ‘communism’.

Let us look at another term: ‘terrorism’. A might accept the Chambers Dictionary definition, which is as good as any: ‘the systematic and organized use of violence and intimidation to force a government or community, etc to act in a certain way or accept certain demands.’ This obviously includes invading or threatening to invade countries in order to effect régime change (e.g. the U.S. in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq…). Note that nothing in the definition says that your actions don’t count as terrorism if you are noble, just, free, acting altruistically, etc.

In B’s politicolect, ‘terrorism’ refers only to what other people do. By definition, any use of violence and intimidation carried out by ‘our’ side is not terrorism. B’s politicolect has other terms for that, such as ‘shock and awe’, ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘collateral damage’.

On this site, all articles are written in our own politicolect, which is the same as A’s for the four terms we have defined. We generally stick to definitions very close to what you might find in the Oxford English Dictionary or other reference works of repute. Just as we might need to insert a French term into an English sentence (e.g. a coup d’état), we may need to insert a term from another politicolect into our speech. If this is a direct quotation, we shall of course use speech marks. In other cases, we shall resort to an innovative device:

Marketers take ordinary English words, give them a special, non-dictionary meaning and then mark this fact with the symbol ‘™’. For example, ‘virgin’ is a dictionary word, whilst ‘Virgin™’ has a special meaning decided by marketers. In the same way, we shall use dictionary words like ‘terrorism’ without marking them, but write ‘Terrorism™’ when a special, non-standard meaning is intended. By rigorously distinguishing between such homonyms, we hope to eliminate equivocation from discourse.

Stay tuned for articles making this distinction.

Footnotes*1 — The story of Iman’s murder is a true one. See the following articles: Palestine Info, The Guardian, If Americans Knew, Wikipedia. Her father is presumably angry with Israel. The idea of him now hating Jews is just a hypothesis made by us in a rhetorical argument. We intend no insult to the al-Hams family.

*2 — This is a reference to a speech made by President Ahmadinejad of Iran who quoted Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that ‘the occupation régime must vanish’, i.e. Israel should give back various territories it has stolen. This was translated in the Western press as ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’, i.e. Israel’s civilians ought to be engulfed in a Holocaust. There was a media onslaught of accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’, along with talk of pre-emptively invading Iran to stop it using WMDs on Israel (déjà vu?). See ‘Fishing for a Pretext to Squeeze Iran’ by Juan Cole.

*3 — Furthermore, 46% say that ‘Jew’ should never be broadcast, and 20% consider it ‘very severe’ amongst swearwords. The BBC report is available as a PDF download. There is discussion of it on the Badscience blog. We have also extracted three graphs from the report for easy perusal: Swearwords by broadcast time, Swearwords by severity, Swearwords ranked by severity.