The Map is Not the Territory
But...
A friend of mine is fond of an old saying that goes "words are like fingers pointing at the moon; if you concentrate on the fingers you will never see the moon". I've always thought that there is a lot of truth in that. The map is not the territory and the territory will exist even when the map is gone. A lot of my thinking on this was formed long ago by positivist thinking. It seems that we can reduce what seem to be insolubly complex problems to a series of linguistic muddles and as such untangle them. Yes, I have argued, it does in fact depend on what your definition of the word is is. As superficially obtuse as that may seem, good old Wittgenstein would have no problem pointing out that language is the root of most philosophical "problems". I’m not kidding kids, whether or not God exists may well depend on what exactly one means by ‘god’. It may seem like I am wandering and possibly flirting with self contradiction, but stick with me because I do have something of a point here. Let me proceed by unpacking a couple of examples that may be illustrative.
Certain types of conservatives bemoan the fact that the word GAY has evolved in meaning. They claim that since the word once meant ‘happy’ it is somehow offensive that it now means ‘homosexual’. In their view this change in usage is part of some insidious plot to undermine American culture (whatever that may mean).
Recently someone I know complained at my usage of the word ‘myth’ to refer to a commonly accepted fallacy. They claimed that this was akin to calling HISTORY ‘something that is often false’. We should not allow this to happen, he claimed. *
My response to both of these has been to talk about the ways that language evolves naturally. The rules of grammar, I would insist, are descriptive, not proscriptive. The meaning of a word is created by its usage, I would continue. If when most people said the word ‘tree’ they meant "a black bird that has red wing tips and a propensity for building complex bowers as part of mating ritual" then that would be the definition of ‘tree’. When most people say "gay" they do not mean happy. Language grows and changes as part of a natural process. Languages are born, they develop, them interact with each other, sometimes they mash up and create a Creole which can become a language of its own (which will evolve and change) and that it doesn't really matter anyway because the map is not the territory.
And yet... words do matter. Linguists, advertising flacks and political strategists all understand quite well that by controlling the language you control not only the debate, but even the ideas being debated. People on both the right and the left have worked to alter the language to political ends. On the left some have (maddeningly) focused on constricting which words are used. Some feminists balk at terms like 'history' do to claimed phallocntricism. There is also, of course, the surreal change in nomenclature that has annoyed me to no end for years: the jungle morphed into the rain forest.**
Over on the right they have had a better idea. Instead of telling people which words to use, they simply redefine the terms. If you don't believe me, think what it says that people refer to Bill Clinton as a Liberal. Eugene Debs would have had quite a difficult time connecting the center right ideology of Bill Clinton with Liberalism. Conservatives brilliantly simply defined liberalism out of existence. They used the main stream media (which, despite a popular meme, is and has been totally controlled by Conservatives) to shift the political spectrum so that what was once considered the far right is now seen as the center and the left just doesn't exist anymore. There really is no place for a progressive like me on the new spectrum.
Another beautiful example can be found in patriotism. Who doesn’t want to be patriotic? For some reason, I have this strange memory of learning that a true patriot loved his country enough to question it, to fight to change it when it was wrong, and to never blindly follow. I thought the Martin Luther King was a patriot. But not today. Today the word patriotism has become synonymous with rabid nationalism. The right has done this and done it well.
If this all seems rather academic, I would suggest that what I am talking about here is largely the fight that is coming up as Barack Obama faces The American, John "American" McCain who as an American will stand for the Americans of America with his strong American patriotism. As absurd as it may seem, we are going to be forced to fight with conservatives about what your definition of American is. I expect that the claim that McCain is, in some nebulous undefined way, more viscerally American than Obama is likely the best that McCain can offer. He certainly does not want to discuss issues like the economy, health care or his and Mr. Bush’s dirty little war.
* Nevermind that a myth is, by definition, something that is always false. A myth is an instructive lie, but a lie nonetheless.
** I know, I know. Rain Forest carries less of an ugly undertone; it lacks the scary implications of the word jungle. and as such use of RF in place of J has helped in the movement to preserve the world's jungles.