Loaded Language

Patricia Hodges

As is generally acknowledged by sociolinguists, anthropologists and psychologists, language is rarely neutral but rather reflects its social environment, reinforcing its cultural and social belief system. In other words, language encodes ideologies. For an effective understanding of a text such as a journalistic piece, extracting inferences is crucial, without distorting the writer’s intentions. Reading attentively, we can accept or challenge ideological assumptions which attempt to position the reader and shape perception. Writers can subtly do this through a variety of lexical, structural and stylistic choices, often transforming their subjective viewpoints into apparently natural ‘common sense’ propositions. These strategies allow authors to influence reader perception, shape social realities and bolster or contest power dynamics (e.g. writing ‘freedom fighter’ rather than ‘terrorist’). Words can be selected to produce particular, often emotional thoughts that direct readers’ judgment: opposing pairs—e.g. working people/landlords—create value-laden categories; or a particular belief appears as a universal, objective truth (e.g. 'everyone wants to be rich and famous’). These techniques are often used together, producing a consistent and credible viewpoint.

English contains a variety of linguistic tools and rhetorical strategies that offer personal, subjective views as objective. These techniques are designed to make a claim appear as generally accepted, true and therefore unarguable, thereby deterring debate. In English, a sentence is typically based on two mutually dependent parts: noun phrases and verb phrases. In the simplest representation of the world through language, the noun phrases designate entities and the verb phrases designate processes or actions. But this structure can be changed to hide the actors behind contentious actions, for instance using the phrase ‘the bombing’ rather than ‘they bombed’: in this case, the difference between entities and processes is made less clear, transforming somebody’s actions into an abstract notion. This obscures agency (who is responsible), changing possibly difficult political issues into apparently objective terms. Another strategy that encodes ideology is changing the active voice of the verb into the passive voice. This technique has the effect of deleting or moving to the background the agent/actor of the action, foregrounding the recipient (‘The protesters were attacked’ rather than ‘The guards attacked the protesters’). These two techniques are often used, together or separately, in the media and political discourse but also in scientific papers to create an objective tone by focusing on the process rather than the agent. By deciding what is placed in the subject position in a sentence, a writer can control what the reader perceives as important, thereby shaping his or her interpretation of events. Language, then, rather than simply proposing ‘truths’ and ’facts’, has the power to transform these into interpreted experiences that support particular views, often with persuasive intention.