Just Language

Neil uses the term Lacanthropy to describe “The transformation, under the influence of the full moon, of a dubious psychological theory into a dubious social theory via a dubious linguistic theory.”

Which is a fair assessment of the bad opinion most well-read people hold of the works of psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan. Lacan had some bold, un-tested theories of the mind, after all. But what he, and the other mid-century French existentialists, was really obsessed with was “semiotics” which was sort of like linguistics but was more about “how symbols worked.”

Language was a system of symbols that worked, whether you understood what the word meant correctly, or believed in it or not. It was separated from your mind and intent, and yet, words certainly have a life of their own that is coherent and sensical. They fit into a broader system, one which the speaker may be utterly unaware of.

And since we don’t have access to each other’s inner minds, all of society can best be understood as the emergent effects from this substrate of language.

In modern parlance, we would talk about how memes can spread across twitter, independent of whether you are RTing them ironically or seriously or double-reverse-ironically, the meme doesn’t care it just spreads under a logic of its own. Then CNN reports on the meme and how many times it’s been RT’d or mutated and asks “what does it all mean?” Words are just more fundamental memes that way.

This means we are not interested in what the word means, what a dictionary says about a word or what we think when we say it, but about how it functions. What does the word do.

***

When I was young my father advised me to avoid the word “just” when talking about myself. Look at these two sentences:

• I was trying to help.
• I was just trying to help.

They mean pretty much the same thing. But the function of the second sentence serves to limit the conversation to my intent, delineating it as the only relevant thing. (Common parlance would be that it’s “defensive language”.)

The literal meaning of the word “just” does not capture what is going on here. But neither does appealing to the intent of the speaker, accusing them of some cowardice or malice based on how they used the word. They probably meant it innocently, or just do not consciously parse every single word for how it will come off.

What matters is what the word has done to the conversation, attempting to limit its scope, and positioning any resistance to limitation as a conflict now. That was the function of the word.

I did not take the simple advice and never use the word just from then on, but rather whenever I am about to say “just” I think for a second. Do I really mean that? What is the difference in effect between the first sentence and the second sentence, and which do I prefer?

This is what it means to study how a word functions, independent of the intent of the speaker. Or as the anti-crit crowd says “Death of the Author”. The broader system of how all these words (and symbols and memes) function is semiotics.

People from all over the political spectrum continue to use the term “SJW” despite it’s extremely insulting origins (and vague boundaries) because, well, it delineates a group that’s useful to delineate, and the usefulness of the word is more important to the semiotic system than the purity of its definition.

Or you might have heard the quip about ideological debate: arguments are like soldiers - you don’t stab them in the back. This acknowledges that it doesn’t really matter whether an argument is true or ethical, just whether it is serving the function, of helping attack the other side.

***

Let’s look at insults for a minute.

Most of you read the twitter post and tumblr commentary when some transactivist threatened Caitlyn Jenner that if she continued to support Donald Trump, activists would go back to calling her “Bruce.”

It was mean. And also a little boggling. Doesn’t the activist, as part of social justice doctrine absolutely believe that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman? Isn’t that the exact belief system they are fighting for? Unless you have some really weird epistemology where anyone who votes for Trump is definitionally male, the insult seems only to invoke “if you do not support the cause, we will not support your gender identity.”

As a factual belief, it is a complete hash. But as a threat, it’s pretty clear. And certainly as something that hurts Caitlyn, it’s utterly plausible “Your self-respect as a woman is always conditional on our political support for you. You’re not independently and authentically a woman.”

This is all extremely effective even if it’s completely non-credible that the speaker believe it. Even when the listener considers it factually untrue with zero doubt. What matters is “what the insult is doing.” There are fears we have, and the insult is touching on them to create pain and panic.

More prosaically, anyone reading this should not believe that being overweight is an accurate measurement of their moral character, worth as a human being, or virtues in any other field. We all just know this, and don’t think someone is bad because they are fat.

And yet, if you have a friend who is overweight (or just not the magazine cover image of thin), even a friend who knows everyone in their social group doesn’t judge based on weight… holy shit is insulting them over their weight devastating. Maybe you would do it ironically, or maybe you’re really drunk, maybe they misheard a word you said (you meant phat!), who fucking knows. It doesn’t really matter what you meant by it, or what you really believe… you have channeled the threat of the Big Other judging them into this insult.

This is true for most offensive insults: racial stereotypes, accusations of being a sexist, your lack of intelligence, your pretentiousness, a slur about your sexual orientation. We get upset at them from the enemy, we get upset at them from a stranger, we get upset at them from a friend for whom we have overwhelming evidence that they do not believe this.

(And even if they do believe this, why is the insult so bad? It’s much better to get the toxic belief out in the open and deal with it, than to let it lurk. And why would a second insult be bad after that, once we know they disdain us? Instead we strongly want them to keep insults to zero or a minimum. Because the function of the insult, ie a social attack from the Other, has not changed.)

And it’s important to note that even if in individual conversations an insult’s power may be limited and dismissed as not particularly upsetting, on the internet people like clicking on the posts about witty insults or passionate denunciations of them. So the insults get shared. And once they are leaping across the reblogs and hate-shares then they have an independent, one-dimensional life of their own.

(Mein Gott, am I tired of well-intentioned critics like Freddie deBoer agonizing over how every liberal only makes simplistic or navel-gazing arguments. No, people make all sorts of arguments, including thoughtful ones, or factually-rigorous ones, or just compassionate ones. What gets shared are the simplistic in-jokes and denunciations. The problem is not the people, it’s the system their words are evolving in. If there were not capitalistic pressure for outrage and glib quips, then @theunitofcaring would be most popular blogger on the planet after all.)

***

So for instance, the eternal debate about whether some liberal is “racist towards white people.” The denotation of racism is pretty clear about this (and it’s weird of a movement that insists it is fighting privilege and classism, to so often fall back on “well you should know this is what academics mean by that word.”)

(Or if we are coming from the other direction, liberals who say you are racist for discussing whether it’s okay to wear certain costumes on Halloween, or because you’re a low level admin for a company that has an all white boardroom, or because you made an awkward television ad.)

And yet, if we are talking about the word racism does, it’s function is to refer to a system whereby the powerful simplifies and denigrates the minority. “Racist” is usefully pointing to someone who defends this system.

Our attitude towards “a black person who says all white people dance funny” or “that bro with dreadlocks” is simply not the same as it is towards Jeff Sessions or Jefferson Davis. The word racist best functions as a rallying cry against gross defenders of the racial hegemony.

When you see these words as more building blocks in the system of language (and less, reflections on what the speakers internally mean) then it’s easy to see how they form a web that has certain patterns and rules.

Exiling someone with the argument “We don’t support racists” is of course non-sensical as a factual statement based on any thoughtful definition of the words involved. You could attack that argument from a dozen angles after all -- but it’s a very effective meme at silencing debate, isn’t it? No one publicly really wants to be on the other side of that argument (at least, no one polite.)

Similarly, all the problems the rationalist community has had with terms like virtue signalling and motte-bailey. They do define relevant concepts. But the use of such terms is “a phrase to dismiss whatever someone just said without interrogating its truth.” And so even though there are correct definitions for the terms, bigger blogs have just stopped or banned using them altogether, because they just end conversation.

***

I continue to be struck by the dynamics of “relatable content” from this article on tumblr wunderkinds I shared some months ago. And of course, how similar it is to Freddie talking about the behavioralist posturing among online liberal writers who consciously know better. (Go read them. They’re both quite good.)

Contra a simplistic interpretation of my previous post, words are not just memes following transmission vectors, they remain a way for intelligent beings to convey ideas they have generated.

But there seems a contrast or trade-off here. Sometimes words act more like mindless memes, and sometimes they serve as a way to express a complex idea, even the truth.

It’s easy on any social network, but especially tumblr, to become obsessed with how far your post travels. What’s the reaction to it, how many reblogs have showed it to others, how many people liked it, how many new followers did it get you. And it’s clear why instrumentally, reblogs and followers help spread your “good ideas” even more.

But anyone who has spent some time writing here has been struck by the vast and arbitrary difference between posts that go viral, and ones that get a single like or two. You can write pages of effort post, and get no response. But you’ll forever be known for the 100,000-note post about what you texted at 3am last night. @balioc writes beautifully about how to craft our identity in a banal and hostile world, post after post, but gets linked by a big blog for his one off comment about campus politics.

If you want to Make An Impact with your ideas, it can be very frustrating. You want to spread your new, brilliant ideas to as wide as possible an audience, but you don’t know how to phrase them to catch that viral wind.

And the answer lies in thinking about what “relatable” means. It means that many other people who see it understand it, as they had felt the same thing. Which, when you think about it, means… you aren’t actually adding anything new. That post about campus politics didn’t spread because you offered a new insight, it spread because people feel vague anger at campus liberals and you gave one more bullet of ammunition why they should, phrased in a way that also served their identity as puzzle solvers and empathetic thinkers.

The writing most likely to be shared like a mouse pressing a Skinner box, is well, the writing least likely to change people. It’s writing that doesn’t hook into the existing language system and follow the meme-winds to widespread recognition. The viral writing is writing whose qualities have the least to do with you individually.

Your writing has the choice between being part of self-replicating process, or being a lonely shout into the void, heard by many but repeated by few. That second sure is depressing, but in this light, it’s still a lot better to aim for than the first option.