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Language can have "hypnotic" or "propagandistic" effects. But with the right knowledge we can resist. This article uses Bush and Blair quotes as examples of propagandistic language.
We list below several types of language "distortions" which are often used for hypnotic or propagandistic effect. These are divided into two categories: semantic and cognitive. (For short, we'll lump them all together under the term "Cognitive-Semantic Distortions", or "CSD".)
If we regard language as a map of the territory of reality, it follows that the more CSD in language, the more inaccurately the map represents the territory.
CSD can occur "naturally" in everyday communication (often causing misinterpretations, communication breakdowns, arguments, hostility, etc), but propaganda intentionally loads language with CSD to induce "hypnotic" effects. This normally works by the "map" so inadequately representing the "territory", that the audience has to "fill in the gaps" in their own minds. This process of "going inside" one's mind to fill in the gaps of the "map" corresponds to "hypnotic induction."
(When professional hypnotists perform hypnotic inductions, they try to avoid using jarring language by letting the patient fill in the gaps. They do this by being non-specific. For example, they might say, "...you feel pleasant feelings in your body...". The hypnotist doesn't say what the pleasant feelings are – that's left to the patient to fill in. Being more specific runs the risk of jarring the patient into resistance.)
Rabble-rousers do the same thing. For example, they might talk of "defending our deeply-held values", and each audience member experiences a different personal interpretation of "deeply-held values" according to their own inner maps.
Most propaganda tends to be more subtle than this. In fact, it sounds indistinguishable from "respectable" political speech. Probably the only difference is that propaganda (according to our definition) is designed, whereas most political speech contains CSD due to an institutionalised habit (going back centuries) of minimising content likely to alienate voters or offend power interests. (This results in extremely banal communication, which nevertheless has propagandistic and hypnotic qualities.) The higher the level of political speech, the more likely that the speech-writers design the speech to have a propagandistic effect.
When Tony Blair says: ,most people probably fill in the gap by projecting their own interpretation of "extreme" onto their map of the campaigners. "Extreme", to most people, undoubtedly means lunacy and/or destructive tendencies. We resist this simply by asking: "How, exactly, does Blair define 'extreme'?"
Or, when Blair says:, most people probably fill in the gap by projecting their own understanding of what "necessary" means. Alternatively, we can resist this "hypnotism" by asking: "According to whose criteria is it necessary? By what standard is it necessary?" We'd then be attempting to obtain a more accurate map of the territory, rather than "lazily" falling back on our preconceived maps.
(Many people naively think that by disliking or disagreeing with someone like Blair, they are immune to his propaganda. But effective propaganda already takes "disagreement" into account. Better to "deconstruct" than disagree.)
It only takes a slight change in focus to shift from an essentially passive, hypnotised state (hypnotised by your own reactions to language), to an active, semantically discriminating state. No work or effort, just a little knowledge and paying attention.
The "Meta-Model of Language" (which originated in NLP) is a useful way to categorise distortions in language. The main categories it uses are: Deletions, Generalisations and Distortions, with subcategories as described below.
For example, consider the following "Blairisms" (Tony Blair quoted or paraphrased) in terms of Meta-Model categories:
1. Simple Deletion
"People say that America is the real evil"
"People" refers to whom exactly? We don't know – it's deleted/excluded.
Used in the context of criticising anti-war campaigners, the effect of this
deletion is to associate campaigners in general with anti-Americanism.
2. Unspecified Adjective (sub-category of Deletion)
"The extreme views of many of the campaigners..."
Extreme in what way? The speaker's definition of the adjective "extreme"
is deleted/excluded.
3. Simple Generalisation
"Without continued threat of force we will never
make any progress..."
Never? Does all progress depend on threat of force?
4. Modal Operator (sub-category of Generalisation)
"We have to act now..."
"We must not allow this to continue..."
Terms like "have to" and "must" express internal rules of
the speaker's modus operandi for functioning in the world. The speaker
generalises that these rules apply to everyone.
5. Simple Distortion
"Only Saddam can avert this war..."
A basic cause-effect distortion. A war is averted by the aggressors deciding
not to attack. Such a decision can be caused by many things – eg
a preference for avoiding mass slaughter.
6. Complex Equivalence (sub-category of Distortion)
"They're always criticising the President –
they hate America..."
How does criticism of a President equate with hatred of a country? The equivalence
of the two statements appears complex and is unstated by the speaker.
7. Lost Performative (sub-category of Distortion)
"The bombing is unfortunate, but it's necessary"
"We don't like doing it, but it's inevitable"
"We don't want to kill civilians, but it's unavoidable"These phrases assert a type of judgement (eg "necessary",
"inevitable", "unavoidable") without taking responsibility
for that judgement. Who evaluates it as unavoidable? According to whose
criteria is it inevitable?
According to what standard is it necessary?
These questions identify the "performative" (performer or source) of the evaluations, thereby exposing the statements as someone's opinion rather than unquestionable fact.
8. Presupposition
"If people knew the true extent of Saddam's brutality
they would not question our decision..."
A presupposition is a silent assumption or unspoken paradigm (either a sub-category
of Distortion, or a category in its own right). Such "paradigmatic"
assumptions need to be questioned: "How do you know that knowledge of
Saddam's brutality would cause them to stop asking questions?"
Propaganda is like Cognitive Therapy in reverse. Cognitive Therapy is a psychological technique for curing irrational fear, hatred, anger, etc. It dissolves cognitive distortions by restructuring the language that led to those distortions.
Propaganda works in the reverse way: it uses language to induce cognitive distortions, often leading to irrational fear, hatred and anger, which is then used to justify an action (eg bombing a country).
The following is a list of cognitive distortions identified by Cognitive Therapy. Examples of corresponding propaganda are given:
1. Over-Generalising
"This is the world's fight, this is civilization's
fight"(George W Bush).
"Killing is a way of life for Afghans –
it's a barbaric culture"(seen
on a newsgroup).
2. All-or-Nothing Thinking (eg black-and-white, either/or thinking;
polarising at extremes).
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"
(George W Bush).
"It's kill or be killed" (Jonathan
Alter, Newsweek).
3. Labelling (eg repetitive name-calling; dismissing something
via label, or emotional trigger-word).
"Terrorist", "anti-American", "appeaser",
etc.
4. Mind-reading (eg projections/assumptions about someone's thoughts).
"They hate our freedoms" (George W
Bush).
"American pacifists... are on the side of future
mass murders of Americans" (Michael Kelly, Washington
Post).
5. Emotionalising (eg valuing emotions over objective information).
"In our grief and anger we have found our mission"
(George W Bush).
6. Should-ing (eg Putting pressure on people to conform to "divine"
rules. Statements containing "should", "must", "need
to", "have to").
"We must be vigilant" (George W Bush).
"Now that we've started the bombing, we should see
it through to the end – we need to have strong stomachs" (two
examples in one sentence, heard on a BBC Radio 4 interview).
"We have to show our patriotism".
7. Filtering (Over-focusing on one aspect of something to the exclusion
of everything else).
Eg: focus on military solutions / exclusion of non-military solutions.
8. Can't-ing (Imposing linguistic and semantic limits on oneself and
others using the "can't" or "cannot" word).
"It's unfortunate, but we can't avoid causing civilian
casualties".
"We can't just sit back and hope diplomacy will work".
"We cannot tolerate anti-American sentiments".
There is some overlap between the cognitive distortions listed by Cognitive Therapy (CT) and the Meta-Model categories (MM):
Acknowledgement/source for terminology: L. Michael Hall, on the "Meta-model of Language", in "The Secrets Of Magic", Crown House Publishing, 1998.
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