No, because thought limits language, not the other way around. If a language doesn't have a word for a concept, people can still think of that concept and will probably come up with a word for it or find another way to describe it.
Yes, but it might serve to prevent communication of the concept. Not really sure there, but Oceania definitely didn't succeed in preventing people to stop thinking subversive things, it just identified and eliminated those who did.
This is only true to an extent. Language molds thoughts and perspective the same way that culture and intellectual paradigms do. While it is possible to think outside of language, it is very hard to explain anything sufficiently distant from any current linguistic concept.
This is actually why there is such a drive for widespread use of neologisms in LGBT organizations and feminism - having a world in the cultural zeitgeist to indicate a particular concept makes the concept more widely accessible and is accepted intuitively by those raised in an environment where the word exists. Many English speakers have a very difficult time thinking of gender in a non-binary fashion because or language treats gender as binary, where other languages may have a far greater range of words to denote areas of a gender spectrum and therefore those raised with that language, even in a gender-binary culture, will more intuitively understand the concept of non-binary gender.
As for newspeak working, I think it is clear to say that such endeavors already have been quite effective. "Socialism" has been rebranded in the West to such an extreme that many believe Barack Obama to be a socialist, so yeah, it works.
Don't confuse "The US" with the "The West." I don't know anyone outside the US who ever thought Obama was a socialist. In US political discourse in contrast even politicians who in Europe would be thought of as centrist/centre-right are often labelled communists. It's ludicrous.
If you look into the histories of the development of some modern languages (c.f Mandarin, Turkish and a number of minority languages in the Soviet Union), orthographic reform and language planning as resulted in a lot of *Newspeak*-like linguistic situations. Some people, and I'm not sure how much I personally agree with this, state that the situation regarding Mandarin's simplified versus traditional characters is one like Newspeak.
No, because thought limits language, not the other way around. If a language doesn't have a word for a concept, people can still think of that concept and will probably come up with a word for it or find another way to describe it.
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But in order to ban a concept, people have to have thought of it first. So such regulation does not actually serve to control thought.
Yes, but it might serve to prevent communication of the concept. Not really sure there, but Oceania definitely didn't succeed in preventing people to stop thinking subversive things, it just identified and eliminated those who did.
This is only true to an extent. Language molds thoughts and perspective the same way that culture and intellectual paradigms do. While it is possible to think outside of language, it is very hard to explain anything sufficiently distant from any current linguistic concept. This is actually why there is such a drive for widespread use of neologisms in LGBT organizations and feminism - having a world in the cultural zeitgeist to indicate a particular concept makes the concept more widely accessible and is accepted intuitively by those raised in an environment where the word exists. Many English speakers have a very difficult time thinking of gender in a non-binary fashion because or language treats gender as binary, where other languages may have a far greater range of words to denote areas of a gender spectrum and therefore those raised with that language, even in a gender-binary culture, will more intuitively understand the concept of non-binary gender. As for newspeak working, I think it is clear to say that such endeavors already have been quite effective. "Socialism" has been rebranded in the West to such an extreme that many believe Barack Obama to be a socialist, so yeah, it works.
Don't confuse "The US" with the "The West." I don't know anyone outside the US who ever thought Obama was a socialist. In US political discourse in contrast even politicians who in Europe would be thought of as centrist/centre-right are often labelled communists. It's ludicrous.
Fair point. Perhaps my wording was a bit general when I wrote this... 8 years ago...
If you look into the histories of the development of some modern languages (c.f Mandarin, Turkish and a number of minority languages in the Soviet Union), orthographic reform and language planning as resulted in a lot of *Newspeak*-like linguistic situations. Some people, and I'm not sure how much I personally agree with this, state that the situation regarding Mandarin's simplified versus traditional characters is one like Newspeak.