Can language control your brain? The selective use of language and redefining of words can have a major effect on how you think? Cultic groups often change the meaning of ordinary words and limit which ones you can use.

How much did language control you? Worthiness? Exaltation? Apostasy?

https://youtu.be/7mn1TkX0kXo

"Immorality" as defined by the church was a real show-stopper.

Heh!

You're quite right, Nettled. Language does condition our thoughts. As soon as the UK started to speak of Europeans over there as "migrants", I knew that Brexit would pass. Changing from "Europeans"(who had a right to live the country, as did I, a Brit living in France) to "migrants" enabled people to hate them more easily and therefore reject them.

The Nazis did a similar thing in the concentration camps, where the deportees were termed "Stücke" - items or bits - so that the idea of exterminating them would be less shocking to the German people. And it worked.

Redefinition of words is an insidious way of influencing people, often without them even realizing. The mormon church appears to do this all the time. "Worthiness" is a particularly egregious example. As a nevermo, I have difficulty seeing what they are "worthy" of, except my disdain.

Tom in Paris



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2020 10:19AM by Soft Machine.

Hardly the subject of the thread but Brexit is far deeper than that.

True. But as Orwell explained, words reflect underlying realities and help shape future ones.

I think Tom accurately notes a significant change in British attitudes.

I'm disagreeing that the dislike of Europeans living in Britain, whether they were termed migrants or not, set the tone for Brexit. Europeans in Brussels on he other hand...

There's certainly a lot of that.

But I think the point is that when the national debate changes from discussing European residents to describing them as "migrants," something significant has occurred. It came close to signalling that the end was nigh.

Mormon use of the word "know" as in "I know with every fiber of my being that the church is true" really controls thinking.
You might believe, you might have faith but is a warm feeling really "knowing"?

I believe that language and thinking are intertwined. I'm not familiar with the exact science of it, but I know that it has been studied over many years. It does touch on the field of education as it has an impact on reading comprehension.

I first noticed it when I studied the French language in depth in my college days. There were certain words and phrases for which there were no exact translations in English. That was my first indication that language reflects culture and cultural beliefs. It reflects how people think, and they sometimes think quite differently than we might.

Missionaries who served abroad might have some additional insights.

And yes, Mormonism definitely uses language to its advantage. A word like "worthiness" implies that someone might not be worthy for reasons of the church's choosing. Even a word like "bishop" implies a level of education, training, and authority that is often notably absent in the Mormon faith.

Fascinating subject.

As words are the "bricks" of which thought is constructed it is deduced that language does influence how we think. Change the bricks and characteristics of the structure is changed, is the hypothesis.

This is the theory driving the effort to change words - change a word, eliminate a word, add a word - and social structure changes. (For better or for worse.) In my state (USA) there is a methodical editing of all statutes in progress to eliminate the word "man" or "men" where these appear.

Much of psychotherapy is trying to put into words what is being experienced, thereby obtaining greater control of circumstances. In naming there is now some control, because language lives in the cortical, thinking, rational part of the brain. Emotion is tamed and made less threatening in this manner. (Of passing interest - cuss words come from a deeper and more 'primitive' part of the brain, not the cortex)(which is perhaps why these are so bloody satisfying to voice and/or offensive)

Poets translate the indescribable into word. In this they use words in an endeavor to take us where they are, to reach a place beyond thought - which is why reading Eliot's The Wasteland produces no cognitively intact whole that may be grasped, yet something indescribable moves within.

It would like to try and does a decent job in many for whom their only reality can be described in signs and signals.

Clearly you all need to watch the movie "Arrival". It was oscar nominated.

Not the same as “The Arrival” with Charlie Sheen. Now if I could just get one of those spinning ball things into the lobby of the church office building.

Language can totally change our brain.

It has convinced millions of LDS members to become mentally ill justifying half baked "revelations" from a pedophilic opportunist.

It has convinced a once great nation to zealously strive for differences, to fight, bicker and coming soon to try to destroy each other.

Not to spoil the party, but keep in mind that language is simply a cognitive tool human beings have to facilitate communication with others, and to assist in the acquisition of knowledge and information. As such, language has become essential to human beings as they try to survive and thrive in a complex world.

The fact that language is used in nefarious ways is a trivial observation because by its very nature (as stated above) it is obviously the vehicle in which false and misleading information is perpetrated. Surprise, surprise. Language has no interest in truth and falsehood per se.

To bring the point home, no one on this Board found their way out of Mormonism without the use of language: Language was the tool that brought us in, and language was the tool that got us out. It is the same for any personal commitment or worldview, religious or otherwise.

Finally, language use is an important part of our experience. Our experiences shape who we are, which is reflected in our brains. So, the fact that language plays a role in "changing our brains," in more or less stable ways, is again a trivial observation. However, to suggest that language "controls" our brains is a gross overstatement. It is only part of our experience. Moreover, our brains are what they are because of human nature (nativism); our experiences (empiricism), and our personal choices. The first two are natural phenomena, while the later--the most important of the three in my view--is transcendent to the deterministic brain.

Language, like everything else, can be used for good or evil. Can promote accomplishment or sloth.

The trajectory of man/womankind has left us with myriad options for behavior. Instead of breaking and entering, one can now steal credit if one knows the right words, the right language.

Language is a symptom but not the illness.

There have been rare instances of children being raised without any language at all. They tell quite a story in how powerful language is in our development. The fewer tools you have the fewer skills you are able to develop?

Still, no matter how many words you know, the battle is being fought by a cerebral system that has its own language bequeathed by genes of millions of ancestors where survival often still trumps the man made concept of morality--- I would posit. Who knows for sure. I don't.

As Dr. No pointed out in another thread--the war is not between verbs and nouns, but between the cortical and the limbic. At least I really liked that theory myself. I am just glad Dr. No had the language to communicate that to me. Made me feel like my brains was controlling language for a moment at least.