The Perversion of Language and its Effect on Human Relations

The use of language is inherent to stabilizing and fostering human relationships, but once the foundation of speech gets altered or manipulated, our ability to understand one another diminishes. In her many works, including The Human Condition and "Truth and Politics," Hannah Arendt masterfully presents evidence on how human relationships have drastically shifted due to the misuse of language. This shift is rooted in the way individuals engage politically; in her chapter of The Human Condition titled 'The Public and The Private Realm,' Arendt asserts that "The emphasis shifted from action to speech, and to speech as a means of persuasion rather than the specifically human way of answering, talking back and measuring up to whatever happened or was done.” The blurred boundaries of our public and private lives also stem from our inability to use language as it was intended. Arendt's "Truth and Politics" establishes that lies can only shatter the inherent stability of truthful statements. The unwavering nature of reality counteracts opinion, which is inherent to political life and human relations. What lying does to truth is poke small, The use of language is inherent to stabilizing and fostering human relationships. Once the foundation of speech gets altered or manipulated, our ability to understand one another diminishes. In her many works, including The Human Condition and "Truth and Politics," Hannah Arendt masterfully presents evidence on how human relationships have drastically shifted due to the misuse of language. This shift is rooted in the way individuals engage politically; in her chapter of The Human Condition titled 'The Public and The Private Realm,' Arendt asserts that "The emphasis shifted from action to speech, and to speech as a means of persuasion rather than the specifically human way of answering, talking back and measuring up to whatever happened or was done." The blurred boundaries of our public and private lives also stem from our inability to use language as it was intended. Arendt's "Truth and Politics" establishes that lies can only shatter the inherent stability of truthful statements. The unwavering nature of reality counteracts opinion, which is inherent to political life and human relations. What lying does to truth is poke small, irreparable holes in the fabric of reality, and it does this via word of mouth. Language was not intended to be used maliciously. Still, suppose persuasion is inherent to the nature of speech. In that case, it is to be expected that the very tool that brings us together could simultaneously tear us apart.

Language bolsters our ability to relate to one another, and without it, the very essence of what makes us human becomes eroded. Arendt suggests that how politics has forced us to behave with one another is a primary reason language has lost its inherent usefulness. Looking at the realms of human relations, the public and private, we see their distinction as apparent and axiomatic. In 'The Public and The Private Realm,' Arendt defines what 'public' and 'private' life truly mean and then explains why they have lost meaning in the context of language. To live in public 'means, first, that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity' and 'to live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life: to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by other.' Though these definitions hold weight regarding their legitimacy, we can also establish how to follow the words' meaning. Matters of the private, exclusive to matters of necessity, blend into public issues, which are meant to convey freedom, and these qualities are opposed to one another. Based on these definitions, activities of the home and forum should not intermingle because their relevance to one another is nonexistent. However, how we use language to describe matters within both realms has caused this distortion of what privacy and public life afford men.

In ancient times, the term privacy, as Arendt states, literally meant 'a state of being deprived of something, and even of the highest and most human of man's capacities. A man who lived only a private life, who, like the enslaved person, was not permitted to enter the public realm, or like the barbarian, had chosen not to establish such a realm, was not fully human. We no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word privacy, and this is partly due to the enormous enrichment of the private sphere through modern individualism.' Private things, whether focused on the household or matters exclusive to the individual, are not inherently political. They are not meant to be fleshed out, discussed, or engaged with outside the home. When discussing privacy, Arendt states, 'For instance, love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public. ('Never seek to tell thy love/ Love that never told can be. ') Because of this inherent wordlessness, love can only become false and perverted when used for political purposes such as the change or salvation of the world.' This quote is a wonderful representation of how we not only skew the essence of emotion through verbalization but also devalue privacy's very nature. This distinction between what ought to be private and public is further blurred when discussing perspective, and how we view facts, reality, and the spoken word all depends on how we interpret it. Arendt talks a lot about appearance when she discusses the public realm, stating that 'the meaning of public life, compared to which even the richest and most satisfying family life can offer only the prolongation or multiplication of one's position with its attending aspects and perspectives.' If men can't view things of fact from the same perspective, then the compelling character of speech can tear apart the very fabric of what is true.

Using language to persuade or convince can be done only when the people engaging in conversation understand one another. The problem with discerning fact from fiction is the misuse of language, or the use of language that can only be comprehended by the few. Arendt discusses this point when she mentions the use of mathematical or scientific jargon in everyday speech, "The application of the law of large numbers and long periods to politics or history signifies nothing less than the wilful obliteration of their very subject matter, and it is a hopeless enterprise to search for meaning in politics or significance in history when everything that is not everyday behavior or automatic trends has been ruled out as immaterial." This quote emphasizes that particular language has become so saturated with jargon that the average person can no longer exist or engage in the spaces where that language is used. Economics fits these criteria because it uses the jargon of math and science and applies it to social matters. Matters of the private are no longer deemed to be private due to the language used to speak about those matters, and due to this linguistic evolution, those inherently "private" or "necessity-oriented" issues are moved to the public or political realm. Economic terminology, as described in the footnote of page 33, is the culprit for this shift in language. "The notion that society, like the head of a family, keeps house for its members, is deeply rooted in economic terminology…The fact that this analogy was no longer used may also be due to a development in which society devoured the family unit until it became a full-fledged substitute for it." If language is meant to be a means for understanding a shared reality, using scientific, economic, or any other academic jargon prevents open discourse from commencing.

In her chapter on "Action," Arendt asserts that speech makes human action meaningful. Without the ability to express oneself, the actions or ideas that an individual pursues or creates are seemingly meaningless. This idea is demonstrated when she states, "Men can very well live without laboring, they can force others to labor for them, and they can very well decide merely to use and enjoy the world of things without themselves adding a single useful object to it; the life of an exploiter or slaveholder and the life of a parasite may be unjust, but they certainly are human." Speech is used as a means to convey information, unlike the use of force or violence. However, Arendt covers two critical types of speech: communicative and persuasive. The former conveys information, while the latter is used to lead or sway others. Examples of persuasive speech could be propaganda, lying, or invigorating men to act. Arendt states that the most simplistic definitions of action are "to take initiative, to begin (as the Greek work archein, "to begin," "to lead," and eventually "to rule," indicates), to set something in motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere)." Unlike communicative speech, persuasion is a crucial characteristic of political life. Politics aims to persuade and convince, which is precisely the nature of this type of speech. Arendt emphasized this in "Truth and Politics," Persuasive speech is powerful because the liar or manipulator is still engaged with reality while their victims are entangled in a web of falsehood. The words lose their value because they are no longer tethered to the fabric of reality. Yet, their ability to mobilize individuals to act is still very apparent. Arendt states that in these situations, "speech becomes indeed "mere talk," simply one more means toward the end, whether it serves to deceive the enemy or to dazzle everybody with propaganda; here words reveal nothing, disclosure comes only from the deed itself, and this achievement, like all other achievements, cannot disclose the "who," the unique and distinct identity of the agent." Another great example of persuasive speech is her discussion of the storytellers and their ability to distort or manipulate the tenor of reality. She asserts that "…together they start a new process which eventually emerges as the unique life story of the newcomer, affecting uniquely the life stories of all those with whom he comes in contact." Facts are spontaneous, unchangeable, and irrefutable—unless met with a blatant lie—because they are entirely contingent on reality. Fallacy, on the other hand, relies so heavily on the spoken word and human action. Our control over positive and negative language demonstrates our ability to convey how things ought to be rather than establish what they are.

In her essay "Truth and Politics," Arendt explores our flawed ability to conceptualize the truth more deeply. A common understanding of truth is crucial to maintaining and bolstering healthy political discourse. Yet, the political landscape distorts the truth to fit ulterior narratives perpetually. Our ability to manipulate facts surrounding history and events is representative of their fragility. She supports this by stating, "Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axions, discoveries, theories—even the most wildly speculative ones—produced by the human mind; they occur in the field of the ever-changing affairs of men, in whose flux there is nothing more permanent than the admittedly relative permanence of the human mind's structure." Essentially, things contingent on reality and nature are far more likely to be found out again (if they are 'lost' or 'removed') than any text or event of 'importance' that stems from human action. If an event of history or theory is lost or 'lied away,' the likelihood of someone attempting to rediscover its legitimacy or existence is slim to none. The truth, as I have previously stated, is stubborn and unwavering, "The modes of thought and communication that deal with truth, if seen from the political perspective, are necessarily domineering; they don't take into account other people's opinions…" and these ways of communicating are inherent to political discourse. Opinions are bolstered not always by fact but by how others interpret events and truth, including how a topic is conveyed to them. The truth does not need to be convincing because its existence and indelibility are inherent to reality as we know it. Unlike the lie, which breaks apart the very fabric of reality, truth is directly related to what is real. Arendt uses Hobbes to support this claim by mentioning his statement regarding the eternal truth inherent to mathematics, stating that if "it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square; that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able." This excerpt demonstrates how, regardless of what is done to educational texts or how language is manipulated to alter reality that surrounds scientific facts, the ability of humans to establish mathematical facts as irrefutable can and would occur at any point in history.

Scientific information is directly connected to how life functions, unlike what is connected to human action—events and history. If the realities of mathematics and science were unwelcome in a given society, regardless of whether rulers burn books or destroy relevant documents, those truths would be found again. Looking at totalitarian governments as an example of erasing truth contingent on human action, we see nearly all dictators warping or wholly distorting lived history. This claim is proven when an individual observes the lived realities of totalitarian regimes in World War II instead of the realities they existed within. Arendt stated that "(Even in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia it was more dangerous to talk about concentration and extermination camps, whose existence was no secret, than to hold and to utter "heretical" views on anti-Semitism, racism, and Communism.)" Shared realities became wholly distorted due to verbal and written misrepresentation of events. Is this truly the character of politics or communication?

Arendt's work offers a powerful and essential look at how men have effectively distorted their reality through language. It is easy to manipulate and distort truth to gain power over others. The perversion of language hinders our ability to relate because we no longer share one reality. Arendt asserts through both The Human Condition and "Truth and Politics" that language should be used to foster mutual understanding and empathy, not to wither away the very fabric of our social world. Politicians and other officials use language to perpetuate falsehood as a tool of dominion. These underhanded tactics undermine political life's very foundation. Suppose politics aims to express ideas and freely foster public speech. In that case, manipulating language and ideas isolates us from one another and destroys the integrity of human relationships. Though truth makes it difficult for opinion and political discourse to prevail—in some cases—we should attempt to find ways to safeguard and discuss matters of reality in digestible and critical ways.