The Power of Language

Language is a mixture of words, signs, gestures, and pictures that allow you to be able to communicate in different ways. In each language, words have different meanings to them. I think that language connects with the media to grow an influence because language allows the media to communicate to you in so many different ways.

The five guidelines to language and communication are to be accessible, to be clear, to be respectful, to be provocative, and to be interesting. I think that our generation follows these guidelines today.

The quote “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” from George Orwell’s book 1984 represents the totalitarian government that Orwell creates in the book. It “…enable[s] Orwell’s totalitarian government to unleash a continuous war of infinite reach and endless duration. The citizens of that regime are besieged by linguistic power and never think to question the perversity of their sociopolitical reality. They are so enwrapped in their governments language that they have foregone the ability to think beyond their situations, enabling the government to act as it wishes,” (Rhetoric for Radicals 107). In his book 1984, Orwell portrays a totalitarian government that controls the language that everyone speaks. The government controls everything he citizens due and watches them through a screen. Language on social media is influencing us like the language did in Orwell’s 1984 by using language that persuades us to perceive something in a certain way.

The book Rhetoric for Radicals by Jason Del Gandio defines Propaganda as “…any [type] of communication that distorts or obscures people’s understanding in the service of social, political or economic power,” (116). The five basic filters of social media are profit, advertising, unquestioned authority, direct control, and ideological bias. The book states that the media has a profit-driven motive. Anything that would lower their profits is ignored from the media.