Say What? A few thoughts on language and the Left

Here is my article in the new issue of Scottish Left Review. Some of it is adapted from previous material on Luna17.

There is one thing that most people forget about the Poll Tax: it wasn’t called the Poll Tax. It was called the Community Charge. But nobody remembers it as the Community Charge, do they? The left’s preferred name for it – Poll Tax – entered popular usage and helped create the widespread rejection of the policy. The Scottish left played a particular role in this – and more generally in initiating a mass movement – as it was introduced north of the border a year earlier than in England.

Similarly, if you do an online search for ‘bedroom tax’ you might discover that the government doesn’t call it any such thing. It is in fact the ‘under-occupancy penalty’. That’s the sort of term that you forget as soon as you have read it. ‘Bedroom tax’ is much catchier. Names and phrases like these have the capacity to mobilise people in opposition: nobody will ever join a protest against an ‘under-occupancy penalty’, but they will join protests against a bedroom tax.

The war in Iraq, too, was always a linguistic battlefield. Its supporters called it anything except a war: it was an ‘intervention’, quite possibly a ‘humanitarian intervention’. As the Stop the War Coalition’s name indicates, our side did the opposite: we rammed home the fact that it was a war, we labelled it (correctly) as ‘illegal’, and we linked words like ‘war’, ‘bombing’ and ‘invasion’ to powerful visual imagery (see, for example, David Gentleman’s powerful use of splattered blood in Stop the War posters at the time).

Language is a vital part of how political controversies are perceived and discussed by large numbers of people. It therefore makes a difference when the left successfully finds an accessible way of talking about issues, framing them in a way that increases our influence in the wider debate.

In many ways we are swimming against the stream, due to the pernicious influence of right-wing media representations and the language deployed by mainstream politicians. Notice how words like ‘welfare’, ‘benefits’ and ‘immigration’ have become so ideologically loaded – they are almost assumed to be negative, rather than merely neutral (or, for that matter, positive). But that doesn’t mean we are resigned to irrelevance – we can challenge and subvert this ‘common sense’ language, and give expression to a kind of ‘good sense’ that is widespread among millions of people.

This is not to subscribe to a kind of linguistic determinism and suggest that language is responsible for the outcome of political struggles. It is merely one factor, but it is one that can often be neglected on the contemporary left. Also, it does not mean – or shouldn’t mean – a patronising ‘dumbing down’ whereby we assume that a broad working class audience can’t possibly understand words of more than one syllable.

I would love to see three overlapping types of language consigned to history: cliches; pointlessly obscure terms and pseudo-academic expression; and retro phrase-mongering.

When I refer to cliches I’m thinking of a sort of left-wing auto-speak, i.e. things we say or write without really being conscious about whether they mean anything to our intended audience. We won’t be able to agree on which phrases do and don’t come under this category, but ‘fightback’ (as a noun) would definitely be on my list. So would ‘the class’, as in the line ‘It’s important we conduct political debates openly in front of the class’. The sentiment is fine, but if you really do want to conduct debates openly within a wider working class milieu then it would be a good start to think about how you express yourself.

Let’s also drop phrases like ‘ConDem’ which simply haven’t been picked up by anyone beyond the left. More controversially, I’d like to see the phrase ‘left unity’ ditched. Why does hardly anyone on the left realise that it is alienating to anyone who is not already part of the left? The implication, after all, is a cobbling together of the exisiting fragments of the left. Not a terribly attractive proposition, is it?

What about the problem of obscure and academic expression? I’m thinking here of writers and public speakers deploying language that is specific to the world of the academic social sciences. Most people who do this aren’t even aware they are doing it – they have become so influenced by that academic world they forget that many people are alienated by its language.

The radical left has never been more rooted in academia than it is today: most socialists who write for left-wing publications, have blogs or websites or get books published, are influenced by it. They are university lecturers, postgraduate (or sometimes undergraduate) students, or have previously been part of the academic milieu. The language they use is often, unsurprisingly, influenced by their social conditions.

Retro fetishism – the use of phrases that nobody in 2013 ever actually says – is especially problematic. A speaker at a recent anti-cuts rally in Newcastle – which was mostly characterised by superb, passionate and crystal-clear speeches – actually uttered the words “TUC general council, get off your knees” (a phrase that should not be heard outside the auditions for an Arthur Scargill biopic).

Another example: shop stewards. When almost nobody under the age of 35 has the faintest idea what a ‘shop steward’ is, why on earth would anyone on the left use the term? What’s wrong with ‘workplace reps’ or ‘grassroots activists’? Clinging to dead language is not the same thing as principled fidelity to a set of ideas for understanding the world. It is possible to remain faithful to a political tradition and communicate with people in a way they understand.

It is sometimes suggested that we should learn about political language from right-wingers. Here’s what Owen Jones once wrote:

‘Raid the language of the right. Why not? They started it, nicking words like ‘progressive’. The cheek. They use words like ‘modernising’ (privatising stuff) and ‘reforming’ (cutting services and sacking people), because it helps paint the left as dinosaurs and the ‘real’ conservatives. So how about we start talking about bringing the railways into the 21st century, for example?’

There is something to be said for this, but we need to be careful. The right stole the language of the left because they wanted to sound more ‘progressive’ than they actually were. It was the Blairites who mastered the art of linguistic re-definition: they wanted to win people’s consent to right-wing policies, but the people whose consent they wanted were not right-wing. Their linguistic contortions were part of the rightward shift of ‘New Labour’: pretty words to disguise the bullshit beneath.

Saying we should ‘bring the railways into the 21st century’ is valid if we then go on to outline what that means in policy terms, i.e. renationalisation. On its own it is empty and meaningless. It is an example of the vagueness characteristic of modern political language, which is hollow, managerial and devoid of ideas.

We on the left should prioritise the specific over the vague because we actually stand for something. We have no reason to conceal what we stand for – we want definite action, not inaction disguised as radicalism. We need to be concrete: language that lives and breathes, not dead or retro clichés and empty phrases.

Different styles are appropriate for different audiences. An accessible writing style is a greater priority when trying to reach a wide audience. But even in more theoretical or academic writing, perhaps targeted at a niche audience, it is surely better to write clearly and succinctly than to be convoluted and tedious.

Some jargon, however, is unavoidable. If someone writes about physics they must inevitably use some technical and scientific vocabulary, even if they are writing a popular science book or article for a lay, non-specialist audience. The same applies to politics. There are good reasons for having specialist vocabulary. A good example is the word ‘neoliberal’ – you can’t avoid using it. This is because there’s simply no other, better-known, word that describes the same thing. Of course, a good writer catering for readers unfamiliar with the concept will provide relevant examples or elaborate on what they mean with more familiar concepts.

Also, it’s good to expand our vocabulary. As children we learn and broaden our horizons precisely by picking up on new words and working out their meanings – not normally by looking them up in a dictionary, but by figuring them out from context or, quite simply, asking someone bigger than us the question ‘Why?’ The same is true for adults; and it applies to politics as it does to anything else. We therefore shouldn’t be afraid of sometimes using words our readers may not be familiar with.

It’s essential we avoid the trap of thinking ‘clear, direct and accessible’ has to mean basic, plain and unimaginative. When reading online it isn’t terribly difficult to look up an unfamiliar or obscure word. The problem comes when there’s so much arcane vocabulary that your reading is disrupted by frequently switching to Google search.

In general the weaknesses in left-wing language come from long years of relative isolation, which encourages defensive dogmatism and an insular focus on communicating with each other rather than reaching out. Hence the sterile vocabulary, pointlessly obscure references, and hopelessly dated expressions. But let’s not wait until an upturn in mass resistance before we give ourselves a language reality check. How we communicate is of paramount importance if we are to influence the direction of mass politics and shape a new left.


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Why Owen Jones is talking sense about language and the left

There is one thing that almost everyone seems to forget about the poll tax: it wasn't called the poll tax. It was called the community charge. But nobody remembers it as the community charge, do they? The left's preferred name for it - poll tax - entered popular usage and helped create the widespread rejection of the policy. The Scottish left played a particular role in this - and more generally in initiating a mass movement - as it was introduced north of the border a year earlier than in England.

I put 'poll tax' into a search engine and got the Wiki entry for the community charge. Wikipedia calls things by its proper name, so Community Charge (not Poll Tax) is the heading for that page. But the image accompanying the Wiki entry is the one I reproduce here: an official government leaflet which refers to it as The Community Charge (The So-Called 'Poll Tax').

The government's PR people clearly wanted to popularise the proper name for it, but also had to acknowledge the popular term which was in circulation (while being sniffy towards it) because that's what most people knew it as. Indeed the main text makes a point of stressing what its proper name is, rather like a disapproving English teacher correcting a student's sloppy written expression (I'm an English teacher myself, so...).

Similarly, if you do a search for 'bedroom tax' you might discover that the government doesn't call it any such thing. It is in fact the 'under-occupancy penalty'. That's the sort of term that you forget as soon as you have read it. 'Bedroom tax' is much catchier.

Phrases like these have the capacity to mobilise people in opposition. Nobody will ever join a protest against an 'under-occupancy penalty'. But they might join protests against a bedroom tax. Then again they might not - we don't know yet if the bedroom tax will become 'Cameron's poll tax' (there's a powerful bit of political shorthand, by the way) because the jury is out on whether it is a shrewd use of political language. Time will tell.

The war in Iraq, too, was always a linguistic battlefield. Its supporters called it anything except a war. As the Stop the War Coaltion's name indicates, we did the opposite. Language is a vital part of how political controversies are perceived and discussed by large numbers of people. It therefore makes a difference when the left successfully finds an accessible way of talking about issues, framing them in a way that increases our influence in the wider debate.

This is not to subscribe to a kind of linguistic determinism and suggest that language is responsible for the outcome of political struggles. It is merely one factor, but it is one that - as Owen Jones suggests here - can often be neglected on the contemporary Left. Also, it does not mean - or shouldn't mean - a patronising 'dumbing down' whereby we assume that a broad working class audience can't possibly understand words of more than one syllable.

What it means, in short, is that we ditch stale and empty phrases, pointlessly obscure terms, sterile pseudo-academic expression, and retro phrasemongering. The retro fetishism is especially noticeable and problematic. A speaker at Saturday's anti-cuts rally in Newcastle - which was mostly characterised by superb, passionate and crystal-clear speeches - actually uttered the words "TUC general council, get off your knees" (a phrase that should not be heard outside the auditions for an Arthur Scargill biopic). And when almost nobody under the age of 35 has the faintest idea what a 'shop steward' is, why on earth would anyone on the Left use the term? What's wrong with 'workplace reps' or 'grassroots activists'?

Clinging to dead language is not the same thing as principled fidelity to a set of ideas for understanding, and changing, the world. It is possible to remain faithful to a political tradition and communicate with people in a way they understand. Owen is right to stress the importance of this elementary point. He is also correct to cite George Galloway as an example - someone, it should be noted, who is famed for his creative deployment of obscure but vivid verbal expressions (this is a reminder that calling for clear and vigorous communication does not mean putting a strait jacket on the range of vocabulary we can use).

I haven't always agreed with everything Owen has written about language and the left, although the provocative title of my February 2011 post '5 reasons why Owen Jones is talking bollocks about language and the left' was in much the same spirit as the Indy sub-editors responsible for Owen's attention-grabbing headlines, rather than reflecting a massive disagreement. But on this occasion I think he's got it pretty much spot on. It is merely a bonus that he's wound up Labour right-wingers (and some sectarians) who really hate George Galloway.


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Less tweeting, more talking (or blogging)

"Don't talk to her - she's a colonial feminist"

If something can't be said in 140 characters or less, why bother trying to say it in 140 characters or less?

I was reminded of this elementary point today by two faintly depressing spats on my Twitter timeline. Both of them illustrate the limits of Twitter, which I recognise is handy for many things - and I'm hardly Twitter-shy myself - but inadequate for developing an even remotely coherent argument.

The first spat concerned the Home Secretary Theresa May's ban on all marches across large swathes of London, an opportunistic response to the planned EDL and anti-racist marches in Tower Hamlets on 3 September. Some tweets are at the playground level, barely more sophisticated than 'Billy Bragg is a smelly poo' or 'The SWP are fatty stupidheads'.

But even the more intelligent interventions in the debates about the banning of racist marches and how to respond to the EDL are weak. This is no surprise - you can't articulate a reasoned critique in a tweet.

The other dispute is between two fine Egyptian revolutionaries Gigi Ibrahim and Hossam el-Hamalawy in the red corner and US-based commentator Mona Eltahawy in the blue corner (or blue and white corner, if slurs about her being a 'Zionist' are to be believed). Hossam called her a 'colonial feminist', which is like calling someone 'fatty stupidhead' after reading some Edward Said. It is name-calling as substitute for political argument. The marxist wing of the greatest revolution of our times can do much better than this.

What's even worse is that Twitter means lots of other people get drawn in too, even if just at the level of reading such silliness. The adversaries retweet supportive comments - or, more likely, tweets which disparage the other side. Polarisation rapidly shuts down any space for thoughtful debate; personality clashes obscure political issues.

My grandad used to say when I was a bairn, "if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". Or, to be more precise, if you want to say something not very nice then take the time to explain, substantiate and critique. And without the personalised mud-slinging. (That's not strictly what my grandad said - let's call it paraphrasing).

It's a reminder of why those who claim Twitter's 'microblogging' has made blogging redundant are missing the point. A blog post (and the same goes for a comments thread) is a chance to - in a phrase I associate with the late Chris Harman - think things through. Subtlety and balance, not to mention scope for offering evidence to support your assertions, are possible.

Talking is even better. There's no substitute for face-to-face meetings as a way of conducting political discussion. It is possible to pose questions, interpet tone and refine ideas. And if anyone denounces someone as a 'colonial feminist', the immediate laughter of derision operates as an instant reality check.  

It occasionally crosses my mind that Trotsky would have made an amazing blogger. On Twitter, I fear, it would have been different - and, with that level of distraction, there's no way he'd have finished 'A History of the Russian Revolution'! 
 

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Sanum Ghafoor on the language of war

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'All that is solid melts into air' - political writing and language

The young Karl Marx

I've always regarded it as important that political writing is clear, direct and accessible. It shouldn't be a chore or an endurance test to read. Neither should it be wilfully obscure, thus excluding large chucks of the potential audience, in a misguided belief that a pseudo-academic style makes the author appear 'clever'.

There are, however, four modifications needed to this brief and at first sight possibly uncontroversial statement.

1. Different styles are appropriate for different audiences. An accessible writing style is a greater priority when trying to reach a wide audience. But even in more theoretical or academic writing, perhaps targeted at a niche audience, it is surely better to write clearly and succinctly than to be convoluted and tedious.

2. Some jargon is unavoidable. If someone writes about physics they must inevitably use some technical and scientific vocabulary, even if they are writing a popular science book or article for a lay, non-specialist audience. The same applies to politics. There are good reasons for having specialist vocabulary.

A good example is the word 'neoliberal' - you can't avoid using it. This is because there's simply no other, better-known, word that describes the same thing. Of course, a good writer catering for readers unfamiliar with the concept will provide relevant examples or elaborate on what they mean with more familiar concepts.

3. It's good to expand our vocabulary. As children we learn and broaden our horizons precisely by picking up on new words and working out their meanings - not normally by looking them up in a dictionary, but by figuring them out from context or, quite simply, asking someone bigger than us the question 'Why?' The same is true for adults, and it applies to politics as it does to anything else.

We therefore shouldn't be afraid of sometimes using words our readers may not be au fait with (yes, even cod French might just be excusable). When reading online it isn't terribly difficult to look up an unfamiliar or obscure word. The problem comes when there's so much arcane vocabulary that your reading is disrupted by frequently switching to Google search.

4. An enriched vocabulary can make for more engaging writing. It can help produce a more lively, enjoyable writing style. There's nothing wrong with a dash of poetic flair or an unexpected metaphorical leap. A particularly complex, sophisticated sentence might express an idea in more depth than would be possible in short sentences.

It's therefore essential to avoid the trap of thinking 'clear, direct and accessible' has to mean basic, plain and unimaginative. It might instead involve vivid and well-chosen images, sparkling sentences, or a sprinkling of humour. Marx's famous 'all that is solid melts into air', for example, is a simultaneously poetic, memorable, concise and clearly-understood way of describing the impact of capitalist development on social relations.

* This blog post was prompted by reading others' exchanges on Twitter. Sometimes a tweet just isn't enough to express what you want to say!

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5 reasons why Owen Jones is talking bollocks about language and the left

I apologise for the uncharacteristically blunt headline, but I'm taking advice from Owen Jones, whose blog post 'The left needs to watch its language' recommends blunt, direct language that people can easily digest.

While there's plenty of valid advice therein, Owen's post strikes me as a case of setting up a 'straw man' argument in order to make your views sound far more original/heretical/iconoclastic than they actually are.

1. Owen urges us to 'drop the jargon', claiming: 'you’re trying to convince people, not write a university seminar paper. Skim-read a left-wing paper (I dare you), and all too often it seems that only someone with at least one postgraduate qualification can really understand what’s been talked about.'

There are only two possibilities here. Either Owen has never read a left-wing paper or he's never read an academic essay. The fact is the language of Socialist Worker/Morning Star/The Socialist has bugger all in common with the great bulk of academic writing. A typical contributor to a socialist paper is someone who is smart enough to write an academic piece if they wanted, but they know a different style is required for a newspaper.

2. Owen writes: 'Raid the language of the right. Why not? They started it, nicking words like ‘progressive’. The cheek. They use words like ‘modernising’ (privatising stuff) and ‘reforming’ (cutting services and sacking people), because it helps paint the left as dinosaurs and the ‘real’ conservatives. So how about we start talking about bringing the railways into the 21st century, for example?'

This misses the point. The Right nicked the language of the Left because they wanted to sound more, well, 'progressive' than they actually were. In fact it's the Blairites who mastered the art of linguistic re-definition.

Why? Because they wanted to win people's consent to right-wing policies, but the people whose consent they wanted were not right-wing. Their linguistic contortions were part of the rightward shift of 'New Labour': pretty words to disguise the bullshit beneath.

So why would we want to steal their language? There's no political basis for doing so. Saying we should 'bring the railways into the 21st century' is empty and meaningless. It's supposed to be - that's the point. It's a way of evading action while sounding good.

We on the left should prioritise the specific over the vague because we actually stand for something, and have no reason to conceal what we stand for - and we want definite action, not inaction disguised as radicalism.

3. Owen claims: 'Some left-wing activists think that being radical means being contrary and iconoclastic, and waging war against mainstream culture. You get articles slagging off football, or monogamous relationships, or other things that most working-class people hold dear.'

In my 17 years as a socialist activist I've read a handful of articles that fit the category of elitist puritanism. I still recall a silly, dismissive article on sport in Socialist Worker precisely because it was ununsual, not typical.

Owen at this point links to a New Statesman piece by Helen Lewis Hasteley, who I've never heard of, as evidence. She doesn't strike me - on the basis of this article - as having anything to do with the radical left. It's like bemoaning the problems of the Labour left then offering a Richard Littlejohn rant as an examplar of what's wrong.

4. Owen tells us: 'Get your priorities straight'. He explains: 'Look, I marched against the Iraq war about a dozen times. International issues are important, particularly when they are a matter of life and death, or when a government is repressing people ‘on our behalf’. But the problem is the left often emphasises international issues at the total exclusion of things that matter to working-class people on a day-to-day basis: like housing, workers’ rights, low pay, jobs, and so on.'

There's a somewhat obvious problem here. If Owen has marched against the Iraq war a dozen times he'll know those marches could be rather big. One of them was two million, by far the largest demo in British history.

Suggesting Iraq or other international issues didn't, or don't, matter to working class people is therefore plainly absurd. It is wrong to juxtapose 'international issues' with those topics, sometimes referred to as 'bread and butter issues', which 'real people' care about.

Socialists have very good political reasons for giving prominence to key international issues, not just on occasions but consistently, and I won't patronise readers by recycling those reasons here. The radical left does of course  address - in its publications and websites, and through its activities - 'bread and butter' issues so this is in any case a rather-divorced-from-reality argument.

5. Finally, a general observation. Owen sometimes writes as if left-wing activists are a breed apart, separate from the working class. Er, no.

These activists (and the bloggers and journalists and contributors to left-wing press) are constantly interacting with the world beyond radical left activism - and the people in it. If you have a job - pretty much any job - this is unavoidable. My colleagues and the kids and teenagers I teach are a daily dose of reality (sometimes a bit much, in the case of bottom set Year 9 on a Friday afternoon).

Let's ditch the shallow caricatures of socialists, even if it is from an ostensibly sympathetic perspective. Such a shame, too, because Owen's a good writer and a number of his tips are correct. It's true there are those who could learn a few things here, but let's not pretend they are typical.

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My top 40 words of the Noughties

9/11, 24/7, Asbo, avatar, Axis of evil, bailouts, bling, blogosphere, Bolivarian, Bushisms, chav, climate sceptic, dodgy dossier, downloads, eco-towns, Facebook, financialisation, green economy, ground zero, Hogwarts, iPod, obesity epidemic, poke, quantitative easing, sexed up, staycation, swine flu, toxic debt, tsunami, tweet, Twitterati, War on Terror, white working class, Wii, Wiki, WMD, X-box, X factor, YouTube, Z-rate celebrity

Any important words missed off the list?
What do these words and phrases say about our times?
And are there any - since it's New Year's Day, start of a new decade and all that - you could quite happily leave behind and never hear of again?

Signifying nothing

"Through active employment and training programmes, restructuring the financial sector, strengthening the national infrastructure and providing responsible investment, my government will foster growth and employment."

I love this line from the Queen's Speech. I've seen it in print but haven't actually heard the speech - it's so hard to imagine the Queen uttering such managerial New Labour gobbledegook. Clearly there's no attempt to match language to the person delivering it, as nobody can possibly believe Her Majesty is in the habit of using phrases like 'restructuring the financial sector' or 'foster growth and employment'.

It is such banal, empty and convoluted language, yet we've become used to it. We don't notice the total absence of meaning. New Labour politicians are in love with the discourse of vigorous action: 'active', 'foster', we'll restructure this and strengthen that. They must at all times give the impression that they are really doing things, even if most people are baffled by what they are in fact doing.

When making empty promises this vagueness is of course deliberate. Politicians can be held accountable for specific promises, but woolly talk of 'restructuring the financial sector' is far easier to opt out of. The vocabulary is sophisitcated, so they sound like reliable experts who we can trust to get on with running our world, and relentlessly positive.

But at the same time its distance from everyday speech reflects how alientated most people are from Westminster politics. And I can't help thinking it further feeds that alientation.

EXTRA: Channel 4 News has produced a clever gimmicky thing revealing how many times various words were used in the Queen's Speech. Click HERE.