Iraqi Elections
Out of context: Reply #3
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- paraselene0
too true. at the moment i've got a blinding weed hangover so the only concrete example that i can come up with is "pestilence".
the subversion of language is a classic dystopic trope, though, and it's always interesting to see this fictional convention bleed into political "reality". if you look at historical totalitarian dictatorships (particularly those in countries with splintered regional minorities, qua franco's spain) or futuristic dystopias (i don't get that coincidence feeling about the fact that burgess stuck a glossary into that one), the overwhelming logic of societal control demands linguistic control.
if you can't use the words, you can't think the thoughts.
equally, if through brutal media desviation of meaning, like you're talking about, vespa, the words mutate into new signifiers, this also is a bastardization of language that is effectively a form of censorship.
and it's not just semantics, either. any resident of the goddamned 20th century knows that semiology is equally at risk.