[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #21 WHEN LINGUISTICS GET SLOPPY

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #21

April 30, 2021

 

WHEN LINGUISTICS GET SLOPPY

 

At its heart, the NLP Communication Model is designed to enable people to be
more precise and accurate in the way they hear and use language.  The model
is all about language- how language works as symbols and representations,
how language gets "distorted, deleted, and over-generalized," and what you
can do about it.  So, what can you do about it?  Detect the kind of
distortion, deletion, and/or generalization and ask specific questions to
establish more precision and accuracy.

 

Criminal Heroes.  Let's begin with how the media uses language to turn
criminals into "heroes."  What's been happening in the past few years is
that they take someone caught in some criminal behavior who got caught
and/or shot and/or killed, and made that person into a "hero."  Now, perhaps
if the person who ended up getting shot was basically a good person- someone
trying to do good in his community, and then somehow he happened to get shot
and killed- that would be a good case for showcasing a person's life and
urging for justice for that injustice.  It would still give no validity to
people rioting, throwing things at the police, burning down buildings,
setting cars on fire, etc.

 

But that almost never happens.  Instead you have a drug addict with a prison
record who is now passing counterfeit twenty-dollar bills, resisting arrest,
and fighting with police for 17 minutes.  Instead you have a person with
warrant out for his arrest for carrying a gun, and driving with an expired
license, and then resisting arrest.  Instead you have a 13-year old boy
running around the neighborhood with a gun in hand at 2:30 am.  These are
not "good" people.  These are people committing crimes.  George Floyd did
not rush into a burning building to save someone, he did not rush into
gunfire to save a boy, he did not courageously stand up against injustice
for someone else.  He was committing a crime.

 

It's very sloppy languaging to call a criminal a hero just because he died.
The media recently reported that Floyd "sacrificed" himself for police
reform.  Are you kidding me?  He did not sacrifice himself on that alter.
He did not offer himself up for anything.  He was tragically killed in the
process by a combination of things- partly by the policeman's reckless
behavior, partly by the drugs in his body, partly by his bad heart
condition.

 

When the media does this, when it turns criminals into heroes and
celebrities and then turns on the police and makes them totally and
exclusively the problem, we have language misuse at the level of what George
Orwell anticipated in 1984.

 

Systemic racism.  Here's more sloppy languaging.  Biden used it as an
indictment against America.  But how could racism by systemic- throughout
the whole system- when America voted twice for a black president (Obama) and
again for a black vice-president (Harris)?  Harris, standing behind Biden
when he made that indictment, is a living symbol that America does not
suffer from "system racism."  How could America have that problem when it
has elected black men and women to Congress, to the Senate, to the Supreme
court, to every level of courts, to Governors, etc.?  All of that shouts
against Biden's indictment and makes his statement completely unfounded in
fact.

 

 

 

 

My friend Kenneth Attwell, UK, sent me the following video.  It is between
John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics and Glenn Lourey about how they, as
African Americans, are experiencing the current media debates.  Very
insightful.

 <https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X0H4M5uP_y8>
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X0H4M5uP_y8

 





 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

 

Books can be purchased at www.neurosemantics.com

PDF books can be purchased at "The Shop" on www.neurosemantics.com

131688 NeuroSemantics ThinkingMetaphoricalyCover FRONT

 

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