[sudo-discuss] revolutionaries and the creation of new language

[GtwoG PublicOhOne]

Romy, Yos-

Good example.  Also an example of what happens when power is wielded
without checks & balances, by people who are so enamored of a theory
that it obscures the real world. 

The Khmer Rough also routinely slaughtered or interned & tortured anyone
found wearing glasses, because they believed that glasses were a sign of
an attempt to assert status by the intellectual and technical classes. 
But the fact is that by middle age, almost all men and probably at least
a majority of women require the use of glasses to read and perform other
short-distance visual tasks.  That inconvenient fact didn't get in the
way of the Khmer Rouge's theory. 

Everyone reading this email is a member of the "intellectual and
technical class," even if a large plurality of us are living on working
class income or less.  And the vast majority of us are going to live
long enough to need glasses.  Fortunately none of us has the power to
compel any of us to use words a certain way, even though we can & do
argue (as peers) about that.

-G.



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On 13-05-08-Wed 10:21 PM, Romy Ilano wrote:
> There is a yin and a yang to everything.
>
> Here are a few examples of the "dark side" of reshaping language... 
>
>
> I've read a lot of history about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and
> the Cambodian Khmer Rouge... these groups were very interested in
> reforming a corrupt society, finding new ways of doing things. They
> are not shining examples but I can say that their intentions started
> out pure.
>
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia#Establishing_the_Constitution_of_Democratic_Kampuchea
>
> On the surface, society in Democratic Kampuchea was
> strictly egalitarian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarian>.
> The Khmer language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_language>, like
> many in Southeast Asia, has a complex system of usages to define
> speakers' rank and social status. These usages were abandoned. People
> were encouraged to call each other "friend", or "comrade" (in Khmer,
> ????? mitt), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as
> bowing or folding the hands in salutation.
>
> Language was transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new
> terms. People were told they must "forge" (/lot dam/) a new
> revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (/opokar/)
> of the Angkar, and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (/chheu
> satek arom/, or "memory sickness") could result in their receiving
> Angkar's "invitation" to be deindustrialised and to live in a
> concentration camp.
>
>
>
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