Review of Plastic Words: The Tyranny of A Modular Language

Poerksen, Uwe. Plastic Words: The Tyranny of a Modular Language. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995.

Abstraction, particularly in the computer age, is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. Separating the principle from the thing, seeing alternative uses for the thing based on the underlying principle, understanding unintended consequences, and managing complexity all rely on abstraction. Abstraction, however—like all things—has tradeoffs.

One of the tradeoffs of the habit of abstraction is the mathemication of language. As language becomes abstract, or more like math, it becomes both narrower and broader at the same time.

A word becomes more narrow by being reduced to a single meaning in some contexts—a single meaning that is then imposed on its every use in history. For instance, “death” once had a very broad meaning centered on the concept of separation. When our cultures killed God, death came to mean one thing, and one thing only. Death now means the end of physical life and all that entails—the inability to think, feel, or decide. Imposing this meaning on ancient texts has caused no end of theological trouble in the modern world.

A word becomes broader by being applied to everything. “I’m going to die if I don’t get …” Eventually, everything is “to die for,” or an existential threat via death. In this way, the word comes to mean a single abstract meaning which is then applied to everything, eventually acquiring a meaning so broad as to mean one thing and everything at the same time.

These are plastic words.

The author quotes Tocqueville as saying:

These abstract terms, which abound in democratic languages, and which are used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact, enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey; they render the mode of speech more succinct and the idea contained in it less clear. But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to labor. P35

Poerksen says:

As a result, ‘Information’ becomes superior to mere opinion, of only intuitively grounded suspicion, or even feeling. It is fortified with data It can be checked. As a datum, it is the essence of the thing. It opposes everything that is not information. As soon as it is quantified, its opposite inevitably becomes a zero. One begins to feel the “information gap” or the “information deficit.” Something called an “information advantage” also appears. The person who possesses information has preeminence, even in the everyday world. There is such a thing as “freedom of information” and “the need for information.” It b a “good,” a value. p42

These plastic words not aggressive or picturesque, but “neutral”—and their neutrality conceals an underlying passive-aggressiveness. “What I say is a bland uncontestable fact, no matter how much you might disagree, while what you say is mere opinion” has become the most common line of argument in the modern world.

When an opponent will not “yield to the observable facts,” the name-calling commences:

His most convincing argument is name-calling. Anyone who refuse: to get involved is hopelessly backward. Such a one is sleeping through development. The expert replaces the pair “good” and “bad” with the pair “progressive” and “backward” and in this way instills his order oi values. Here he has a rich vocabulary available to him. On the one side the electrifying suggestion of the “modern,” “the current,” “the coming thing”—on the other the feeble appearance of the “old-fashioned, ” “the anachronistic,” the “out-of-date,” the “ancient.” P81

This short book is a treasure trove of examples and explanations of progressive and “scientific” modes of communication. It’s well worth reading.