Gobbledygook and Social Change

Social change is the task of altering social consciousness, and much of that task is done through language and communication. Though the actual effort required to speak is low when compared to other activities, words carry a lot of power. In the affairs of humans, language is very important. Whether written or spoken, language may be the greatest weapon used in a social change journey. Words carefully crafted for mass consumption by a gifted communications expert can elicit mass support and social change; how we use language as a tool is important for it can orchestrate creation, or it can shape destruction.

One of the most interesting ways to explore communications as a tool for social change is through the lens of nonsense, or gobbledygook. Marshal McLuhan while touring the South Pacific in the late-1970’s was interviewed on the Australian Broadcasting Commission program, Monday Conference (Moody, 2001). Throughout the interview McLuhan discussed dialogue as an alternative to violence, and developed his precept that the task at hand is to understand media because understanding the nature of these forms neutralize some of the adverse effects. McLuhan often inferred a predilection for teasing, challenging and confusing people. As an example, McLuhan frequently punned on the word "message" changing it to "mass age", "mess age", and "massage"; a later book, The Medium is the Massage was originally to be titled The Medium is the Message, but McLuhan preferred the new title which is said to have been a printing error (Wikipedia).

The phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The individual words make sense, and are arranged according to proper grammar, yet the result is still nonsense. The inspiration for this attempt at creating verbal nonsense came from the idea of contradiction and irrelevant or immaterial characteristics (an idea cannot have a dimension of color, green or otherwise), both of which would be sure to make a phrase meaningless. The phrase "the square root of Tuesday" operates on the latter principle. This principle is behind the inscrutability of the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", as one hand would supposedly require another hand to complete the definition of clapping. Still, the human will to find meaning, even in nonsense is strong.

The dreamlike language of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake sheds light on nonsense in a similar way; full of portmanteau words, it is bursting with multiple layers of meaning, but in many passages it is difficult to say whether any one person's interpretation of a text is the intended or correct one. There may in fact be no such interpretation.

Jabberwocky is a poem of nonsense verse found in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language. The word jabberwocky has also occasionally been used as a synonym of nonsense.

George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm is about a group of animals who take over a farm in the name of freedom and democracy. Eventually the pigs gain control over the rest of the animals and it becomes a totalitarian state. Similarly, Orwell’s 1984 is about a totalitarian society which controls and manipulates recorded history and the language to control the populace. In his work Politics and the English Language Orwell writes, “Political regeneration is indeed within our package of tasks” (Orwell, G.). He further identifies the marks of political writing such as “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision” the ability to dissolve the concrete in the abstract. Orwell persists like a priest identifying the mark of the devil, in his case it is the mark of totalitarianism. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases, one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy; a feeling which becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying. This reduced state of consciousness is favorable to political conformity.

Of all the discordant and truly fantastic theories about language is one that personally provides the most fun; it is that of Linda Goodman (1993), who proposed that in the beginning of all things, the creators spoke certain sounds which produced differing sets of vibrational frequencies in the ethers. Some of these were of such low frequency that they formed particles of what we call matter or physical substance. In this manner were tiny word druids created. These nature spirit druids were charged with the sacred mission of hiding and protecting the Anglo-Saxon alphabet until the preordained time for it to be resurrected and gradually re-seeded into the mass collective sub consciousness of humans. Part of the work of these word druids is to place deeper esoteric meaning within words; many of us have played these anagram games. According to Goodman, by treating each work as an anagram, we discover deep meaning. Goodman calls these Lexigrams. An example of what she does to discern true meaning from words, is here from the word ABORTIONS (Goodman, p.113):

It is torn
It is not born
It is a robot
A robot is not born
No sin
Is abortion sin?
No, it is not a sin

Now, to try this personally it is an opportunity to give common sense a work-out. Chosen arbitrarily the random word selection next lexigramed herein is BULLSHIT:
Is this Bull?
It is still bull.
Thus this is bull.
This is but bull.

A relatively harmless and fun theory, and as silly as it may seem, in an odd and different way it too demonstrates the power which can be hidden in words; incredulity assists us in seeking ways of discerning meaning and truth. Like McLuhan’s teasing, challenging and confusing, these uses of language and communication have the capacity to halt socially conditioned responses and ordinary patterns of interacting and perceiving - and by so doing assist in a next logical step in social change which is to expose the ‘what if’s’. Like discovering positive deviance, these discordant processes and theories have the potential for birthing innovation and to allow new knowing to emerge.

It is truly disheartening however, to learn of a growing body of literature and practice which suggests that innovation does not have to be an uncontrollable force. Instead, it can be a rational management process with its own distinct set of processes, practices, and tools (Keeley, 2007). In fact, some research shows that this type of systematic innovation in an organization typically yields much more productive, scalable, and sustainable ideas over time. Systematic innovation requires well-managed and repeatable processes, to move an organization beyond a dependence on the lightning-strike of sporadic innovations and to create a more constant and dependable flow of new ideas:“Innovation that works is a disciplined process…. The real frontier is to not think of it as a creative exercise, but to think about it as being disciplined in using the right methods.” (Keeley, p.78)

Governments and businesses—especially large corporations—have responded to these insights about systematic innovation by improving their research & development teams, using more collaborative design processes, open-sourcing to find innovation and innovators, and restructuring to offer greater incentives. There are a wide range of new methodologies and strategies that have been developed to help foster and promote innovation. Yet in the social sector, where creative thinking abounds it is in fact the nonsensical and the move to unknowing which is more powerful than the knowing; it is the offering of questions and not the answers which brings the greatest innovation and social change (Born, 2008)

Other than indulging my cultural paranoia, there is no single meaning in this missive for there could be several, I merely wish to demonstrate that truth can be elusive; that knowledge is personal and relative; and to emphasize Orwell’s warnings, be conscious of the world of language and communication. As awareness of deep social trauma enters our lives, we must be aware of the attempts to conceal it. We must be aware of political attempts to use language, written or spoken, to create generalities of reality, to undermine the freedom and rights of all. Listen to your bosses and politicians adopt carefully crafted phrases and listen to yourself as you adopt those phrases; and remember what is suggested here, that nonsense and the incredulity it generates, may be more masterful marriage in the creation of positive and fruitful social change.

References:
Born, P.. 2008. Community Conversations, BPS Books, Toronto ON
Fivebodied, retrieved November 9, 2009 from http://www.fivebodied.com
Goodman, L. 1993. Linda Goodman’s Starsigns. St. Martins Press, New York, NY
Keeley, L., 2007. Taming of the New. SuccessBooks retrieved from
http://books.google.ca/books, November 15, 2009
Moody, B., 2001. Redeveloping Communication for Social Change. p. 878 from Communication for Social Change Anthology, Gumucio, A. Retrieved from http:// books.google.ca/books November 10, 2009.
Orwell, G., Politics and the English Language retrieved from
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit, November 7, 2009