naming bans

4.5
(4)

Post photo: woman with book | © Kris Møklebust on Pexels

Our human communication actually works quite well via a common language. Unfortunately, ruling fellow citizens have always tried to influence all other citizens through language manipulation.

The most well-known are probably the bans on names by the ancient Egyptians, who simply erased unwelcome rulers from the scriptures and thus left them to be forgotten for centuries to come. And just a few decades ago it was discussed whether it wouldn't make sense for society to simply remove the names of criminals from the media - at least to make it more difficult for alleged imitators.

A similar procedure is the retouching of images, which also mostly occurs in dictatorships and thus makes unwelcome fellow citizens disappear in press photos.

All these attempts to ban names — even those from the Harry Potter Stories — were ultimately useless and perhaps only worked for the ancient Egyptians for a few centuries — which I think paints a very murky picture of this “advanced culture”.

And what already doesn't work with names will certainly not work with terms! In addition, it has never been good to try to solve problems by simply suppressing them.

For this reason, totalitarian systems and open societies began decades ago to change our language not through mere prohibitions, but through clumsy manipulation. Here, the euphemisms from our western societies are still the best known, such as B. when the cleaning lady becomes a cleaner or an unskilled laborer becomes an assistant manager.

But even these very clumsy attempts at language manipulation only bear fruit for a very short time. Therefore already had George Orwell invented Newspeak and brought it to full bloom in the 1984 novel. As we can experience until today, however, Newspeak only works in totalitarian systems and nobody can predict today whether Newspeak will be able to last for at least a while.

That's why it would certainly be better for everyone involved if problems and conflicts were dealt with openly and in a regulated manner than getting involved in such games with very dubious origins and even more dubious intentions!

And since every language changes by itself - each of us knows countless examples - there is no need for any language, speech, name or even concept bans! Any state that gets involved in such attempts at prohibition must be accused of at least acting in a completely dubious manner, if not following a totalitarian agenda.

If people no longer want the word "Fräulein", then this word disappears from the language by itself and readers or listeners of older books or other media sooner or later have to find out what the speaker or writer wanted to express with it .

It is absolutely insane to then want to delete dead words like "Miss" from all books and other documents afterwards! — which, by the way, we are currently doing with great passion in many parts of Europe.

Everyone is completely at liberty not to put certain words in their mouths. There are innumerable such words in all languages ​​that are not usually actively used. And most of them didn't have to be specially banned.

To this day, all language communities regulate their respective language completely independently, and many of my contemporaries smile at such crazy attempts as I do to this day, such as e.g. B. that of our French neighbors to keep their language free of Anglicisms.

And that's why I can't approve of the current discussion of self-proclaimed German language dictators and their compliant henchmen, who are now scurrying through all the media and propagating an "N-word" and at the same time the ancient word "Neger" that may have also fallen out of modern times. (Latin: black) want to ban.

I suspect that these idiots — also a nice old word — are making the word negro socially acceptable again. The “F-word” can serve as an example, where almost every lady today speaks of “Fuck You!” without hesitation .

But the really bad thing is that in our society it is fashionable and acceptable to want to enforce even the most insane bans. Ultimately, these idiots will then also approve of the death penalty, because whoever does not want to follow their confused ideologies has no right to exist.

Please note: "Whoever burns books also burns people!"

And as we all know, books are made of words.


"Where you burn books, you end up burning people." 

Heinrich Heine, Almansor (1823)
your message to me

How helpful was this post?

Click on the stars to rate the post!

Average rating 4.5 / 5. Number of reviews: 4

No reviews yet.

I'm sorry the post wasn't helpful to you!

Let me improve this post!

How can I improve this post?

Page views: 1 | Today: 1 | Counting since October 22.10.2023, XNUMX

Share:

  • Heinrich, your article seems too general and striking to me. Your headline is called bans on names and should probably be called bans on words. And your theses developed from this culminate e.g. B. that almost every lady says fuck you without hesitation (quote) - I don't know such ladies. And I also find your conclusion about the death penalty to the non-existence exaggerated but that generates attention. Words have changed over the millennium, think of the minstrels how Walther von der vogelweide or the Bible translations by Luther, which is also adapted to the current language mode.
    Two days ago, my 2-year-old granddaughter brought me a book from Klett Kinderbuchverlag entitled 'Wurstkackfabrik'. It's supposed to be of educational value - sorry, I don't understand it. I like to read well-written literature and fortunately there is quite a bit of that. If I now and then correct my grandchildren on certain expressions — ok — then I'm also a bit totalitarian.

    • Thank you Ursula I also like reading good literature and some new children's books leave me speechless. Yes, language is constantly changing, with or without bans. And the thing about the lady was probably a play on words too much of a good thing.

      Yes, my blog posts are deliberately bold and still try to enchant one or the other reader with some wordplay. The goal is to elicit reactions from the readers. A post without any reaction would only be written for me.

      Unfortunately, the “death penalty” as a result of institutionalized (!) bans is not exaggerated, but an event that can be observed again and again. Hence the arc from the ancient Egyptians to Heinrich Heine.

      By the way, there is a huge difference between banning words by the state or simply frowning on them as inappropriate and forgetting them as a result. I, too, have repeatedly tried to talk my fellow citizens out of a word or two, e.g. B. "Hello" or "meal" — which I never succeeded in doing.

  • When I was growing up in the 60s, "shit" was considered an "impossible word" in middle-class families. If one of my siblings or I said it, we had to get up immediately, go to the bathroom and wash our mouths with soap (very effective punishment, not nice). The success of this measure is well known, the S word was socially acceptable even before Horst Schimanski.