|
|
2004-09-19 - 3:40 p.m. Newspeak Revisited: The Lexical Management of Political Discourse Abstract: In Singapore, the depoliticisation of its population has been achieved primarily through limiting avenues for political discourse. While this may take the form of restrictive policies pertaining to freedoms of speech and assembly as well as the delegitimisation of civil society groups, I will explore instead how language has been manipulated to serve the ideology of the ruling party. Through the active promotion of certain chains of equivalences (for example between the government and the country, or the public and the conservative constituency), the epistemic arrest of certain terms (such as ‘communism’ or even ‘idealism’) and the co-option of certain definitions (NTUC was once described as the ‘ideal NGO’ by former PM Goh) the State generates semantic monopolies which effectively forecloses the possibility of alternative ideas. In essence, the current state of political apathy among youths can be largely attributed to a systematic impoverishment and enervation of a shared political lexicon. As a writer, I am concerned with words. That’s of course something that’s very evident. But growing up in Singapore, under the shadow of a press that is very much a pro-government mouthpiece, I find myself quite often questioning how words are used. I am not speaking from a pedantic position; so you won’t find me bemoaning the overuse of semicolons or warning against the encroachments of Singlish syntax. What I am concerned with is a much insidious kind of contamination. I will illustrate with a passage I once wrote, called ‘The Prisoners’: The Prisoners My friend Hassan, while sitting with me at the entrance to the library, makes a confession. “For a long time,” he says, “I had believed that Marxists were evil people. It was only recently when I read about Marx that I realised that it’s not just about violent revolutions, that Marxism is actually a draft of Utopia, a blueprint which assumed, wrongly or rightly, a common goodness among humankind.” “It’s not surprising,” I tell Hassan. “There was the supposed Marxist Conspiracy in 1987, where the State rounded up people from disparate backgrounds and accused them of a plot to overthrow the government. Up till today the government has yet to produce convincing evidence to justify their arrests. But the damage is done. The word ‘Marxist’ is now irrevocably soiled, and people hesitate to even mention it in daily conversation for fear of how it would brand them. A political alternative has become a political taboo.” “Do you know what happened to those who were detained? Were they eventually released?” Hassan inquires. “They made a few public confessions and received their freedom,” I said. Hassan sighs. “But there’s one more prisoner left behind. It is the word ‘Marxist’ itself. We must free it from the shackles of semantics. Once you have the power to define a word according to your own terms, then you have won the argument even before it has begun. The real conspiracy, back in 1987, was when someone broke into the dictionary and vandalised an entry.” Today, I am supposed to speak about idealism. And yet I find myself asking, 'What is the current consensus on what this word means?' There are three ways to look at idealism. The first is a philosophical definition, which should not concern us here: mainly that reality consists only of ideas. Let’s look at the remaining two. One is to focus on its aspirational aspects; idealism is the attitude which insists that there are certain elevated standards of human conduct, in how we treat one another and ourselves, which should be pursued. The other, and the one that has been played up in our local context, is that which is almost invariably paired with its superior opposite, pragmatism. This is idealism as being too romanticised, unrealistic, out of touch. In explaining many of our policies, the tendency has always been to appeal to the supposedly pragmatic nature of Singaporeans. And thus we have an argument that is circuitous and tautological; we have pragmatic policies because we are a pragmatic people. Because we are a people who care deeply about bread-and-butter issues. Because for us, political vocabulary consists of upgrading, not gerrymandering; of letter-writing, not demonstrations; of statistical pie-charts, not the opinion-piece; of the economy, not of ideology. And maybe, at some point, pragmatism really means abandoning language and placing our faith in numbers: what excites us are figures denoting growth, our position on world ranking charts, CPF percentage cuts, the Goods and Services Tax. But are these assumptions true, or are they constructed myths that are so entrenched that they become for us transparent realities? In saying that we are a pragmatic people, we automatically presuppose that this is a somewhat natural and inherent feature of being Singaporean, almost like a citizen’s birthmark. But we know for a fact that the political animal is a product not of genetics, but the environment. We are conditioned to be a pragmatic people. Our education, our media, our politicians, constantly remind us that pragmatism is not only what drives us, but is the very basis of our identity. As a post-colonial nation in the throes of defining its identity, it has been harnessed as a national trait: the French will have their finesse, the Portuguese their nostalgia, the Germans their industriousness, the Malaysians their boleh, Singaporeans will have their pragmatism. Pragmatism is thus patriotism. There’s no big leap there, just shuffle a few letters. As a nation already known for its historical amnesia, let’s add another symptom: a national dyslexia. Once we valorise pragmatism as indispensable, as ingrained, then idealism recedes to a distant shadow. We corner it as a privilege of those who don’t have to worry about their next meal. We constrict it as a phase, which is why today we are talking about youths and idealism, as if idealism itself is a juvenile luxury. Idealism thus becomes an adolescent pang, an extra-curricular activity, a campus hobby. We will all, ideally, grow out of it as we mature into productive citizens. We will look back at our folly and laugh; our blood will cool; we will become mellow and wise—in Singapore-speak this is equivalent to being non-confrontational and consensual. Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of forcing this hierarchical dichotomy between idealism and pragmatism is when we see idealism as something that is not practical. The dyslexic citizen will immediately impose a misrecognition: what is not practical becomes what is not practicable. Suddenly idealism belongs purely to the realm of theory, with no effects on real life. My point is this: if there is, at all, a diminished torch of idealism, it not due to the death of idealism among us. The real crisis lies in the search for agency. How do we translate our idealism into action? When I think of the metaphor of the torch, I think of Prometheus, the Titan in classical mythology who defied the gods and brought the gift of fire to humans. The point I’m making is that the flames of Prometheus' torch have not been extinguished. It is Prometheus himself who is unsure of his next step. Why this uncertainty? First of all, as a journeyman, he realises that there are very real obstacles in front of him. I don’t have to repeat what many of us here already know. We live in a country with repressive laws that severely restrict the growth of civil society. Freedom of assembly? Five or more people after midnight is considered an illegal gathering. Freedom of speech? No race or religion please, which effectively means that an evangelist on Orchard Road has more liberties than if he were to stand in the middle of Speaker’s Corner. Freedom of organisation? The Registrar of Societies ensures that groups that stray remotely from the status quo will not be recognised. Freedom of information? The Official Secrets Act guarantees that certain classified documents will always remain under lock and key. Freedom of the Press? Don’t make me laugh. I know there are people from the press today who might be offended by what I’m saying, but really, the stuff carried by the newspapers in this country is a running joke told by running dogs. But let’s not get carried away. Prometheus is a resourceful man. In front of him might lie the deepest canyons, the most impenetrable forests. But he has with him a compass and a map. Let’s look at the map that he’s carried along with him. Prometheus himself is not a cartographer, quite obviously the map was designed by someone else. And this is what I mean when I said at the beginning that whoever controls words, controls political discourse. Whoever plotted this map, also plots Prometheus’ path. Let’s hear these words: right, left, liberal, conservative, social justice, human rights, equitable distribution, capitalism, communism, universal suffrage, independent journalism. Very clearly they are missing from the map. This is the first strategy in re-writing the political landscape. Leach the language of the words that might empower the citizen. In their place, sell aphoristic headlines that seem self-evident: Don't rock the boat. No free lunch. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. We’ll help those who help themselves. Stability and security come at a price. Father knows best. The second strategy is to designate some words as so taboo they are unspeakable. I have mentioned one of them: Marxist. Never mind that Marxism is a useful critique of capitalism. Associate it with guerrillas hiding in jungles, with the overthrow of the government, with armed struggle. As recently as 1994, the word still carried with it its witch-hunting charge. Theatre practitioners from The Necessary Stage were accused of using theatre for political ends just because they trained under a Marxist theatre practitioner, Augusto Boal, and subsequently Forum Theatre was banned. Other words are not to be uttered, because they are ontologically libelous. Christopher Lingle mentioned ‘compliant judiciary’. More recently, the lexicon of the taboo have included words like ‘dynasty’ and ‘nepotism’. On Prometheus’ map, these are indicated as places of danger; a swamp is inscribed on the site of an actual lake. The third strategy is to establish chains of equivalences among various words such that they are synonymous, maintained in a state of epistemic arrest. On Prometheus’ map, the legend for both road and river are the same. I have mentioned pragmatism and patriotism. Public funds becomes the government’s money. Self-censorship becomes responsible journalism. Anti-singles becomes pro-family. Alternative becomes subversive. Heartlanders are conservative. Cosmopolitans are liberal. The fourth strategy is via neologism, or the invention of new terms. It has always struck me how the cosmopolitan and heartlander typology actually allows a re-orientation of the political landscape. We don’t need separate parties that represent the right and the left, the liberals and conservatives. By designating the electorate as consisting of vaguely-defined cosmopolitans and heartlanders, one can reconcile whatever differences these two constituencies might possess under the umbrella of a single party. In short, the party is relieved of any responsibility to take sides. On the map Prometheus finds some unfamiliar words whose meanings he can only guess at—they never describe the condition of the terrain nor the possibility of access through it. The fifth strategy is by claiming sovereignty over the enunciation and employment of certain words. What this means is that the State can paste labels on certain entities, while being itself immune to the debilitating effects of such labels. The State gets to decide whether you are a fundamentalist. Or a threat to national security. Or even, as George Yeo has coined, a 'counterfeit artist'. What this means is that Tang Liang Hong can be called a ‘Chinese chauvinist’, but the same accusation cannot be leveled against Lee Kuan Yew. A video made by polytechnic students and staff, on JB Jeyaretnam, is banned because it is a political video. On the other hand, a VHS tape of the National Day Parade does not qualify as one. Sintercom eventually closed down because it was on the verge of being gazetted as a political website. On the other hand, the Straits Times Interactive, probably one of the most political websites on the Internet, is merely a news provider. Prometheus realises that not only his map, but his compass, too is flawed. The magnetic North apparently keeps shifting, dictated by some higher and powerful will. This notion of castrating political discourse through lexical management is perhaps best described by George Orwell in an appendix to his magisterial book, 1984. In this appendix, he describes a variety of language known as Newspeak: In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist…It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile, it gained ground steadily, all party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech…The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to [its] devotees…but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of [the status quo]- would be literally unthinkable, a least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever. To give a single example, the word ‘free’ still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. The landscape appears daunting to Prometheus. The instruments that he has been provided with are defective. But perhaps he still has some faith that his sacrifice will one day be appreciated, maybe even glorified. But more important than such acknowledgement is that his gift is beneficial to humankind. In the Greek myth, for the crime of his transgression Prometheus was chained to a rock, and suffered the torment of an eagle pecking at his liver for eternity. This image, of a man suffering so that others may benefit, is that of a martyr. Throughout our own history, there were many like Prometheus who sought to bring the light of knowledge to the people. Many were imprisoned, exiled, bankrupted, and defamed. Most of them were called communists and chauvinists, who believed in hazy concepts like social welfare and press freedom. If Prometheus came down to Singapore, he would not have become a martyr, because that word does not exist in our political vocabulary. This is because we have no martyrs, only scapegoats. On a final note, let me recount PM Lee Hsien Loong’s speech at the 2004 National Day Rally. He said: "Once in a while the Think Centre say they want to go to the Speakers' Corner and want to plant 100 flowers there - let a hundred flowers bloom. Let them go ahead. If they want to water the flowers, go ahead." Let a hundred flowers bloom—these were the same words used by Mao Zedong when he announced a campaign to open up a forum for his critics. In 1956, a year after coining the infamous phrase, Mao, surprised by the outpouring of criticism against his policies, began to round up his detractors and send them to labour camps for "thought reform". PM Lee might have said "let a hundred flowers bloom", but those of us only too aware of how politics has corrupted language in Singapore will also read, "But remember, the poppies that grow too tall are the first to be chopped off."
|