The handmaid's Tale and language

[IHATEPeppaPig]

qz.com/969112/the-handmaids-tale-it-takes-only-five-years-to-go-from-the-world-today-to-a-horrifying-dystopia/

I've just read a really interesting article about stifling language and how we can 'rob a society of its identity' by limiting language. This is a way in which reinforces Gilead's regime - by robbing women of their language we reduce them to nothing. Given the current climate, a dystopia is becoming a reality? Terrifying.

Have you heard of cultural genocide? One way to destroy a population is to destroy its culture; language plays a big part in this.

I agree, that one of the most horrifying aspects of THT is that it goes from 'regular' to 'dystopia' in such a short space of time.

Gilead also disallowed women from reading. So, it is the restriction of being exposed to ideas as well.

I have been brooding over whether some founder of the Taliban/Islamic State read Atwood's book.....

It goes a long way back. Pushing Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic to the margins has only just eased off within our lifetimes. That was a Norman tactic, if I recall my history right. Modifying and controlling speech and language is an old tool, but a terrifyingly effective one.

It's the other way round, I think, TimeLady. I seem to remember an interview with Atwood where she said one of many ingredients in the Handmaid's Tale was a visit to Afghanistan and seeing women in the Burka. She's also old enough (like me) to remember women in the Middle East before the most recent resurgence of Wahabi Islamism, hair uncovered, wearing miniskirts - see for instance this picture of women in Kabul in the 1970s.

Thanks, Fermats, that makes sense.

I missed the first TV series, but have watched the second and have found it profoundly disturbing. Having seen the way that IS seemingly came out of nowhere only reinforces the plausibility of the whole thing.

Atwood famously said that there's nothing in Handmaid's that hasn't happened already.

There are some fantastic dystopian novels out there that have been describing, for years, how rapidly things change, and language modification is a big part of that. Obviously 1984 and Handmaid's are the classic examples, but I'd also recommend the Cell 7 series - we are really only a skip and a jump away from the reality TV justice system it describes.

It's definitely worth reading any memoirs you can get your hands on about Afghanistan (try My Forbidden Face), and Maoist China. The examples are there over and over again.

Thanks silentcrow
I think that some of those books would be interesting for myself and my teen.

I wrote my thesis on women's writing and language and this is spot on.

It's why the "trans women are women" nonsense is so chilling.

Words have meaning and when we warp those meanings it has real-world effects.

In Gilead this is taken to its logical conclusion and women aren't allowed to write or read - there is a scene in the book when Offred discusses the thrill of holding a pen in her hands - and shop signs are changed into "sign language" (e.g. pic of a fish instead of the word "fishmonger").

1984 is also incredibly important reading on this topic e.g. the line "Freedom is the freedom to say two and two is five."

That is literally where we are right now - we do not have the freedom to say "two plus two is five" or "someone with a penis is a man" or "people cannot change sex".

Scary fucking times.

The point, btw that Orwell, Atwood and most recently Jordan Peterson have made, is that depth and breadth of language - and being able to talk out loud or write - allows people to formulate ideas. By limiting language you are limiting people's freedom to think and by extension to act. That is why it is a trademark of authoritarian regimes.

By limiting language you are limiting people's freedom to think and by extension to act. That is why it is a trademark of authoritarian regimes.

YY

Really puts one off men as a whole doesn’t it ?

That must be why you've so enriched the thesaurus under "disagrees with me"?

1984 is also incredibly important reading on this topic e.g. the line "Freedom is the freedom to say two and two is five."

That is literally where we are right now - we do not have the freedom to say "two plus two is five".

Aren't you the ones insisting it can only ever be four, with your XXs and XYs and insistent locating of penises?

Yes I don't really understand what you mean - isn't it more that you are free to say 2 + 2 is 5, but lately you are not free to disagree with it?

If it hurts someone's feelings...

Yes obviously brain not switched on there - the quote is about "two plus two is four"

Aren't you the ones insisting it can only ever be four, with your XXs and XYs and insistent locating of penises?

That would be practically everyone in the world, so quite a lot of "ones". Women don't have penises. Woman means adult human female. Pass it on.

Confessions - that sounds like a great subject for a thesis. It's so pervasive, isn't it? One thing that jumped out at me when I started writing (in an amateur sort of way) was that there was no language for women's genitals other than the clinical, the obscene and the cutesy-individual-family-specific euphemisms for children. No equivalent of "willy" (universal child-friendly name) or "cock" (grown up slang, but not so obscene it counts as "the most offensive word in the English language".) And I bet this could be replicated over and over again - language for describing pregnancy, giving birth.

Of course, the deliberate impoverishment of language as a method to suppress dissent is a long standing tactic of totalitarians. George Steiner wrote some interesting essays on the misuse and distortion of language in the service of the Nazis in Language and Silence. And I'm sure people on here are getting fed up with me quoting Vaclav Havel's The Power of the Powerless, the passage where he discusses what the random greengrocer is really signalling when he puts the sign saying "Workers of the world, unite!" in his shop window.

ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen

The point, btw that Orwell, Atwood and most recently Jordan Peterson have made, is that depth and breadth of language - and being able to talk out loud or write - allows people to formulate ideas. By limiting language you are limiting people's freedom to think and by extension to act. That is why it is a trademark of authoritarian regimes.

Yes, well said.

From 1984:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

Some Follower of Gender the other day on Twitter made the argument that trans/gender identity ideology richened and widened the language and added terms, so it couldn't be considered newspeak as these new terms made it easier to express your feelings rather than harder

Lol Ereshkigal
They aren't enriching or widening the language, they are obliterating meaning and with it, meaningful communication. We may as well be grunting our 'feelings' at each other. Communicating through interpretive dance is more effective than 'shifting constellations'.

I absolutely agree. It takes a lot for one of their outrageous reversals to shock me but I was speechless!

I studied Linguistics and Language as part of my English degree. I have always been passionate about words, I love people who are clever with words and can play with them and make them interesting and funny.

And that I think, for me, is what is so sad about all the this not being able to use words nonsense. Beautiful female words, the word woman, just beautiful words being brutalised.

Another interesting work on the importance of language is a play by Brian Friel called Translations. If you can go see it please do. It is set around the time the English were Anglicising all the place names in Ireland, and that people lost their sense of belonging, because where they belonged no longer existed. It is a very powerful play.

I also studied Handmaids Tale, so have always been very aware of how easily Gilead can happen. And sometimes I am sad, because I can see it. Take women's words from them, don't allow them to speak, and you have Gilead. Twitter is Gilead.

Twitter is Gilead.
And Facebook.