Language as a regulator of the social

The influence of words on how we shape the reality around us is crucial.

As Nietzsche said: "There is nothing less innocent than words.There is nothing less innocent than words, the most deadly weapons that can exist".”. 

The philosopher was not trying to make us imagine a scene in which the use of certain linguistic signs purely and simply triggers drama (for that we already have numerous soap operas as an example). Rather, he was referring in more generic terms to the global repercussions that a certain use of language can have, beyond the pure transmission of information between coldly analytical and perfectly coordinated minds. If we add to this pre-scientific intuition certain conclusions that we have been able to extract from psycholinguisticsWe obtain a principle for our social relations: a linguistic sign is not a packet of information, ready to be coldly analyzed, that someone sends us... but a perceptual unit that produces in us schemes of action, reasoning or language, whether we want it or not.

Hence, language may seem to have pretensions of neutrality as a comprehensible and assimilated code. as a code that is comprehensible and assimilable by all, the meaning of all the signs of which it is composed is subject to an continuous consensus. Consensus which, like any form of negotiation between agents, is completely shaped by the subjectivity, experience and expectations of each of them. Neutrality is conspicuous by its absence.

Words enable the emergence of culturally agreed concepts, and from these meanings are derived, in relation to the context, values that are ultimately those that accompany our behaviors, both individually and collectively. By way of example, I will rescue some personal experiences.

Liberal language in the United Kingdom

During one of my stays in LondonI could notice how the use of language there (and I am not referring to the language, but to the way of agreeing on meanings by forming typical expressions) is full of connotations linked to liberal thought. This ideology is characterized by the importance of the individual as opposed to the limits imposed by the social fabric. It is necessary to remember that Margaret Thatcher asserted on multiple occasions that society does not exist, that only the individual exists separately. These are symptoms, then, of the private character of life in general.The individual, the consumer, the business world and its unilaterally pursued profits, and so on.

As regards the fact of emphasizing the individual over the social -or even maintaining that society does not exist, as Thatcher said- it can be seen that, in the United Kingdom, when the causes or the explanation of some event are asked, the question that opens the curtain of the debate is always: "Does it depend on the individual or is it a question of luck? it depends on the individual or is it a question of luck? (depends on the individual or is it a question of luck), ignoring that the origin may be due to something of a structural nature that transcends the individual (remember, society does not exist there).

Another example where we can observe how liberal ideology is strongly rooted in English society is with the typical expression is none of your businesswhich is used to express "it's none of your business", but which literally translated means "it's none of your business". This expression suggests an explicit parallelism between the business world -or the world of economic activity by extension- and the thread that gives coherence to one's own life. But what is more, the fact of emphasizing that business is one's own, points to an undervaluation of the idea that what is not one's own, a concept of little interest from a point of view in which society as such does not exist, but only individuals with their own interests and without common interests that vertebrate them beyond the collective protection of property. In this sense, it is comical, for example, how the verb "to share", which could indicate "to share something because there is something in common", is share, which is the shares of a company. In other words, even the action of sharing loses here a social connotation and is once again framed within the sphere of business and economic profitability.

As far as consumption is concerned, I found particularly curious the phrase "out of date", which means "out of date" but also "out of fashion". Every consumerist society is interested in promoting the world of fashion because it is a transcendental tool to be able to produce and generate large profits by constantly renewing items and creating the need for permanent consumption. That is why it is important to say that something is fashionable as something intrinsically positive. When a shirt bought in 2011 is no longer valid for the fashion world, it means that it is out of date and therefore has to be renewed, that is, a great variety of products has to be constantly consumed under an imperative that practically refers to the field of health. This idea, of course, brings huge profits to big business.

The right wing is right; the left wing sinister

Finally, I would like to cite a very obvious example, but perhaps the most clarifying, and possibly the one that best summarizes the central idea of this article. The word right. On the one hand it means "right", and on the other hand "right". The truth is that when we use this word in politics, we refer to the (neo)liberal or Thatcherite political or ideological position, the worldview that praises the excellences of the free market in economic matters and conservatism in social matters, indicating it as the natural path given to man for his own progress.

However, before thinking that this polysemy may have something to do with a certain legitimization of privatizations and adjustments understood in this case as the right path, it should not be forgotten that this link between "right" and "correct" is only in form: the same word, but perhaps not the same meaning. It should not be forgotten either that historically certain political positions have been called "right-wing" as a result of a very specific historical reality (the disposition of the conservative deputies in the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution).

However, the meaning of words, when negotiated, is not fixed. Precisely because of this, paradoxically! this continuous negotiation of meanings can make possible a dynamic of meaning maintenance despite changing circumstances. despite changing circumstances. This polysemic relationship between the two "rights" may be reinforced by a long tradition of associating positive properties to the concept of right, common to many cultures and, to a certain extent, all-terrain. Think, for example, of the idea of being right-handed in something, or of the expression "getting up with the left foot". Both seem to refer to the better disposition to do things with the right side of the body that most people have. Similarly, in Arab culture the left hand is considered impure. All this is part of a dimension that, despite taking shape in language, transcends language itself and affects us subconsciously.

Of course, nothing less innocent than the words.