A Word for a Dystopian Language
Inverted Language
Definition: the corruption of the meanings of words in a language in order to crush progress and sustain a dystopian status quo.
Origin: English
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A couple of weeks ago, the word for the week was “welfare” because it provided a clear example for how American English is often an inverted language. Welfare essentially means “good,” but in America it basically means “bad.”
Inverted language is a common feature of dystopian fiction because an inverted language will blur the line between good and evil. In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 the authoritarian representation of the state is called “Big Brother,” and in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We the authoritarian leader is called the “Benefactor.” When a people have been indoctrinated to use positive language for describing something negative, it becomes much harder for them to realize that they are doing bad things or live in a bad place.
The corruption of language is a key feature of a dystopian world, both fictional and real, so it is imperative that Americans remain aware of our corrupted and inverted language.
A key aspect of an inverted language is that not all of the words are inverted. If all of the words were inverted then the language would actually be right-side-up for the speakers, but would appear incredibly bizarre for outsiders who encounter the language. An inverted language instead has the capacity to invert certain words in order to crush progress and sustain a dystopian status quo.
Within 1984 and We, not all of the words have been inverted, but it is required that a positive word is used to describe the oppressor. If the bad actions of Big Brother and the Benefactor are considered good deeds by the populace then the damage has already been done.
An inverted language is foundational to ethnocide, so Americans need to understand that our language has always been inverted.
Ethnocide and Inverted Language
The inversion of language happens almost at the inception of an ethnocidal society because no person would knowingly engage with an ethnocider if their motives were known. Therefore, the ethnocider must engage in mauvaise foi, or bad faith, in order to create ethnocide’s exploitative, culturally-destructive foundation.
Through mauvaise foi, the ethnocider must lie to the person or people they intend to exploit. Sometimes they knowingly articulate lies. They know that the other person should not trust them, but they tell them that they can be trusted.
Other times, the bad faith derives from a lie that they have told to themselves. For example, the ethnocider might believe the lie that Europeans are a superior race of people and protectors of civilization, and that non-Europeans are savages. This lie, which they believe to be true, would influence all of their actions, and encourage them to believe that they are good people engaging in good actions as they inflict genocide on Indigenous people and ethnocide on African people.
In both manifestations of mauvaise foi language has been inverted so that one group of people can harm another. In the former, the ethnocider knows that they are bad, but convinces the ethnocidee that they are good so that they can engage in bad actions. In the latter, the ethnocider has become so delusional that they genuinely believe they are good people while they commit atrocities. In both scenarios, the language of the ethnocider would name the villain as the hero. The people who implemented unimaginable destruction would be described as great men.
Many of America’s Founding Fathers owned slaves, and they did not treat non-Europeans as equals. We know that their beliefs regarding how they treated their fellow man are bad, and we also know that they wrote and spoke extensively about how their bad actions were supposedly good actions. These truths are well known, yet American English still pressures all of us to describe them as good people. Instead of being bad people who may have done good things on occasion, we are told that they are good people who were imperfect and how it would be unfair to negatively judge their bad actions, but imperative that we positively judge their good actions.
This is how an inverted language becomes the status quo of a society. The key thing to recognize regarding America’s inverted language are the tipping points. What actions prompt some Americans to invert language in order to sustain a dystopian status quo? As “welfare” demonstrates more often than not the inversion of language occurs when segments of American society agree to recognizing and embracing the humanity and Geist of people of color, or the ethnocidee.
Similar to the word “welfare”, the controversy over “critical race theory” is another example of how America inverts language. Critically examining America’s past with a particular emphasis on race is considered to be a good and beneficial area of study by Americans, and especially people of color, who want to make sure the experiences and perspectives of people of color are equitably incorporated into our history.
Opponents of critical race theory have worked to redefine the entire field of study as being bad because it may depict some white Americans in a negative light. The truth of the information has become irrelevant according to the detractors of critical race theory. And instead they would prefer to educate Americans about the supposed greatness of our society while also ignoring our bad foundations.
If America agrees that Black people are human beings then it becomes much harder for America to celebrate and embrace the white Americans who have denied their humanity.
Our Founding Fathers could no longer be considered heroes. Hypothetically, they might still be considered the greatest American men during their era, but their lives and ideals would not be anything we would want to pass on to the next generation. They would not be ideas that should shape the present.
Colonization and the founding of the United States consists of inverting language, and America still embraces this inverted discourse because it is the only way we know how to speak.
An Inverted Language from the Bottom Up
In dystopian fiction, the inversion of language normally comes from the top down. An all powerful government that controls society and the people has consciously engaged in an agenda of manipulation and propaganda, and the inversion of language is part of their strategy. The dystopian threat comes from above. America’s ethnocidal dystopian discourse is not nearly as straight-forward.
The language of colonization created an intra-discourse between the colonizers, and the horrors of their language would become apparent only once they recognized the humanity of the people they have oppressed. There would rarely be the need to invert language within a community of ethnociders. If they all agreed to oppress the ethnocidee, there would be no need to engage in mauvaise foi within their community. They all could believe that they spoke an honest, truthful language, so long as they oppressed and dehumanized the people they considered to be the other.
This intra-discourse means that their language was both bottom up and top down while also being exclusionary. This was the only language they spoke, and eventually they would attempt to teach this language to the people whom they had oppressed. They would teach the oppressed that their oppression was a good thing, and this dystopian discourse could remain unabated so long as the oppressed never said their oppression was bad.
Yet as the ethnocidee seeks to liberate themselves, their liberating words do not merely challenge an oppressive government, but an entire collective of people who are accustomed to a status quo where the ethnocidee was voiceless and could not articulate critical thought.
Ethnocidal Americans without the power and wealth to knowingly oppress the ethnocidee would still yearn for their oppression, and these ethnocidal Americans would gleefully embrace the inverted language that aspires to demonize and render meaningless the truthful language of the ethnocidee.
America’s inverted language is both bottom up, top down, and the only language Americans have ever known. Within our inverted discourses, good words that champion equality and our shared humanity become inverted and rendered bad so that we will become conditioned to believe that America’s sustained division and exploitation are in fact good.
