Not only can a writer persuade though the
clever turn of phrase or the well chosen
word, but s/he can also use grammar
itself, sentence structure, in an attempt to
manipulate the way that the reader
thinks about an issue. By controlling the
amount
and the kind of information that
the reader provides through grammatical devices
like
passive voice, abstract words, and
ambiguity, the writer can attempt to control
how a
reader perceives a subject under
discussion.
Agent Deletion
You must recognize the writing
problems associated with
passive voice and nominalization.
Pay close attention to how the
writer can hide the agent, the person
responsible
for the action expressed by the
verb. By hiding the agent, the writer is able
to protect
someone, or to deceive the reader
into thinking another person is responsible by
hiding the real agent.
NEWSPEAK
George Orwell's coining of the term "Newspeak"
was a passionate statement of his belief in the
power of language. Although his concern
targeted mainly the political arena, ultimately
his message was that all language is sacred.
To employ "Newspeak" today is deliberately to
use words that are ambiguous or deceptive in
order to control public opinion. Used in this
manner, language becomes opaque, when it should
be translucent. Newspeak is the language of
delusion.
The interesting thing about
Newspeak is that it works: yet, it
is
actually meaningless!
Orwell knew that if language
became too abstract, too vague,
that it would lose its ability to
convey meaning. That was the
point of his essay "Politics and
the English Language." The reason
that it works is a consequence of the fact that
we human beings are adept at making
meaning from very little. That very human
quality is also the weakness that
Big Brother uses to control human thought.
Grammatical Ambiguity
Using it-cleft sentences, the writer
can delete any mention of the
"experiencer" in the sentence and
thereby hide the fact that the
sentence is mere opinion (the
experience – and opinions – of one
individual), making it sound instead
as if it is a well-known fact. By using
the it-cleft
sentence pattern and by deleting the
"experiencer," notice how the writer
adds a tone of certainty to his/her
statement that seems to disguise the fact that
this
sentence (in any form) is still an
expression of the writer's opinion.
Sentence Variety and Style
Speakers and writers of any human language have
many options when they compose each sentence
they utter. English, for example, has been
gifted with an enormous variety of sentence
types. At first glance, each different sentence
type may appear to mean exactly the same as
every other type in the examples below so that
one has the idea that there is an enormous
amount of wasteful redundancy in the language.
But that's not true. Each sentence has its own
subtleties of emphasis and meaning.
Consider the sentence John sent Mary a letter
below. It expresses the proposition in the most
common grammatical pattern in English — the
grammatical subject expresses the actor, the
grammatical verb expresses the action, and the
grammatical objects express the beneficiary and
goal of the action.
1. The BASIC clause pattern in English
John sent Mary a letter.
In other words, what it means to be a subject
in the basic English clause is to convey
meaning about the actor or agent responsible
for the action realized in the verb, etc.
However, in addition to the basic clause, there
are several more ways to express the same
"basic" information, ways that allow the
speaker or writer to emphasize and focus on
different parts of the sentence.
2. PASSIVE VOICE
In the passive voice sentence pattern, we find
a "reversal" of the information that is
presented in the basic clause pattern. That is,
the subject conveys the goal, not the actor,
and the actor is mentioned later in the clause
(in a structure known to grammarians as the
adverbial); sometimes the actor is not
mentioned at all. For example, consider both
example below, where first the subject
expresses the goal in the first example and
then the subject expresses the recipient in the
next example.
The letter was sent to Mary by John.
Passive voice allows the writer to focus
attention on the recipient or the goal at those
times when the writer wants to ensure that the
readers' attention is focused on the most
important part of the message in the sentence.
3. Wh- CLEFT
To cleave means to cut or split into two parts,
and the cleft sentence takes its name from the
the fact that the single clause of the basic
sentence pattern above is split into two
clauses. (We recognize a clause by the presence
of a subject and a verb.) The Wh- cleft is a
sentence that splits the basic clause into two
parts, with one of the sentence's parts
beginning with a word that starts a wh. For
example, from the basic clause in (1) above, we
can create several different wh- sentences of
similar meaning:
What John sent to Mary was the letter.
In this example above, the fact that the basic
clause has been split into two clauses allows
us to emphasize both John and the letter in the
same sentence. (You can "hear" the emphasis on
John and the letter in the sentence when you
read the sentence aloud — note the extra stress
on those two phrases.) The subordinate clause
What John sent to Mary is the Theme of the Wh-
cleft above: theme is the term used in systemic
linguistics for the part of the clause the
introduces the message in the clause.
The next example, below, splits the clause with
emphasis on the actor (John) and what he did
(the action).
What John did was send the letter to
Mary.
Finally, the last wh- example, below, splits
the basic clause in yet a different way to
allow the writer to emphasize all three
elements of the basic clause at once — the
actor, action, recipient, and goal.
What happened was that John sent Mary the
letter.
Although the wh- clefts above are similar in
meaning, they are not the same as (1) above or
each other.
4. It CLEFT
It clefts allow writers another type of
sentence that splits the basic clause pattern
into two parts. The theme in this sentence
pattern is an "empty" function word, a pronoun,
it, that really has no meaning like an ordinary
pronoun since it refers to nothing. Instead,
the it cleft allows the writer to focus on the
actor in the example below.
It was John who sent the letter to Mary.
5. OTHER MARKED THEMES
In systemic linguistics, the grammatical
subjects in the it cleft and wh- cleft
sentences above are called "marked" themes
since those sentences do not begin with the
expected, common, ordinary subject of the basic
clause pattern (which is called the "unmarked"
theme). Another type of marked theme can be
seen below, a type characterized by the use of
the grammatical object at the beginning of the
sentence.
The letter John sent to Mary.
In the example above, the direct object (the
letter) holds the focus of attention as it
takes the lead in the sentence. Occasionally, a
writer will seek to add extra emphasis to the
object by using a pronoun (it) to serve as
another grammatical object in the in usual
position of the grammatical object, as in the
example below.
The letter - John sent it to Mary.
When a sentence has an indirect object, that
constituent may also function as a marked
theme, the focus of attention, by beginning the
sentence. In the example below, notice too the
use of the "second" pronoun (her) object for
added emphasis.
Example - Mary, John sent her the
letter.
There are two points I hope you gather from
this rather detailed, technical discussion.
First, that each and every sentence you write
is important to building an intelligible,
"readable" essay. Second, that human language
has this much variety not to confuse or create
redundancy, but rather to allow us to choose
the part of our message (the sentence) where we
want to place our emphasis. For example, as an
answer to the question Was it John or Bill who
sent the letter?, we would more likely get It
was John who sent the letter to Mary than Mary
was sent a letter by John. Likewise, as an
answer to What did John send Mary?, we would be
more likely to get The letter, John sent to
Mary than Mary, John sent her the letter.
Each sentence is a remarkable package of
information, tailor-made for the situational
and linguistic context. A good writing style
grows from an awareness of how a writer crafts
his/her sentence to its context.
There are two sentence patterns that are
particularly praised as hallmarks of excellent
prose — the resumptive and summative modifier.
Appositives as Resumptive Modifiers
Appositives are grammatical structures that
rename and elaborate upon another part of a
clause. Appositives can be used effectively by
writers as 'resumptive modifiers.' A resumptive
modifier repeats a key noun, verb, or adjective
and then resumes the line of thought,
elaborating on what went before. The effect is
to let the reader pause for a moment, to
consider the most significant part of the
message, and then move on. It also helps
resolve any problem the reader might have with
ambiguous modifiers. Moreover, if you pick your
spots carefully — and not too frequently — you
can use resumptive modifiers to highlight
important ideas:
A real danger in this digital revolution is the
potential it holds for dividing society, a
society that will divide into two camps, the
techno-elite and the techno-peasants, a society
where a "wired" few will prosper at the expense
of the masses.
Relative Clauses as Summative Modifiers
Relative clauses often function as modifiers
within another clause, allowing a writer to
pack more information in a clearly
understandable way into one sentence. Relative
clauses are recognizable since they usually
begin with a wh- word (like who, whom, whose,
which or that in place of which). Careful
writers often use relative clauses as summative
modifiers. With a summative modifier, you end a
segment of a sentence with a comma, sum up in a
noun or noun phrase what you have just said,
and then continue with a relative clause.
Summative modifiers let you avoid the ambiguity
of a vague which and let you extend the
sentence without becoming monotonous:
In the last twenty years, the world has
moved from the industrial age to the
information age, a sociological event that will
change forever the way we work and think.
MORE ON NEWSPEAK
INTRO BY MOE
I have chosen the
following essay as an excellent discussion of
the power of newspeak as it relates to the
Holocaust. I edited the essay as it was much
too lengthy [and rather wordy at times] for our
spatial limitations. I have taken care,
however, not to
compromise the coherence and natural flow of
the author's argument. Hoffman presents us with
a
solid argumentative essay, so that we can
benefit both from the structure and substance.
Again, watch for all the components of a good
persuasive essay. You should also be
well-versed in the language, deceptive
capabilities, and nature of newspeak after
reading this work. Always read with skepticism.
Question the claims made by the author of the
essay. Watch out for fallacies of logic,
false comparisons, and faulty conclusions that
some essayists [even here] will employ to
persuade you to
accept their thesis.
This analysis by
reading
essays is intended to make you fully aware of
the power of language. Reading will make you a
better writer for you will observe the tools of
the trade. Note, as well, the transitional
phrases [e.g., similarly - Is there really a
similarity or is the author skewing the
evidence?] Accept nothing as fact, regardless
of pretentious diction, i.e., the unnecessary
use of obscure words or references. Don't be
intimidated by lofty language. It is often used
to cloud and confuse the reader's judgment.
Note how Hoffmann peppers the reader with
questions. [Although he never asks the
question, "Have you ever seen the rain?"] Be
sure that he answers these
honestly and fairly. In short, use what you
have learned thus far on these pages to be an
informed reader and, by extension, an improved
writer of the essay.
Here are several of
observations to get you started. Note how the
author begins with a DEFINITION, expands on it,
leading to a question, which he then attempts
to answer.
Observe his comparison or analogy
between the newspeak of the Holcaust and NASA.
Is this a valid analogy? Note, too, how he
speaks of an "agenda" on the part of what he
refers to as "Exterminationists" as well as
media, suggesting conspiracy. Does Hoffmann
himself not have an agenda? Would his agenda be
his thesis? What, precisely, is his thesis?
What organizational strategies does he use to
develop his argument - comparison and contrast,
cause and effect, definition, example, process,
and perhaps elements of all these strategies?
Do you tend to agree with his arguments? Why or
why not? Does he fairly address obvious
objections to his claims? Does he conclude with
a convincing summary of his major statements
and are you left satisfied that his discussion
was fair and complete? Be sure to ask these
same questions of your own essays. This
analytical approach is the best advice I can
give. Read closely and practice what you learn;
then you can confidently call yourself an
"essayist"!
"Psychology and
Epistemology
of
'Holocaust' Newspeak" by
Michael A. Hoffman II
"Holocaust" is a Newspeak word whose
exact definition exists, in the society of
the spectacle, as a bundle of images. It is
recognized on the visceral rather than the
rational plane by its targeted audience. It
does
not exist in the public mind as a specific
event, but as a command phrase summoning a
sensory overload of images of piles of naked
bodies and persons with stars of David on their
coats being force-marched by gun-toting German
soldiers. How can any person say it didn't
happen?
When Abba Eban's Civilization and the Jews TV
series installment on the "Holocaust" omitted
any mention of homicidal gas chambering -- the
central event of the history of
Exterminationism -- there was no apparent
notice or comment among critics or the public.
It was as if NASA had produced a mini-series on
the moon flights without mentioning the rockets
that carried the astronauts, and no one even
noticed.
The spectacular "Holocaust" has the quality of
a myth because it has an existence independent
of its history.
Specific descriptions of a variety of actions,
events and principals having tremendous
diversity in significance and meaning have been
absorbed into a single, narrow category. Prior
to the imposition of "Holocaust" Newspeak,
precise allusions and direct references were
made to the allegations at issue, as for
example, the claim of six million slaughtered
Jews, mass murder by means of poison gas, soap
manufactured from human fat and so forth.
Now, under the aegis of "Holocaust"
Newspeak, the preceding allegations are
combined into an
aggregate which includes the reality of
National Socialist internment of Jews in
concentration
camps, the "Kristallnacht," an officially
enshrined policy of anti-Semitism and the
displacement and death of hundreds of thousands
of Jews as a result of war-related combat,
typhus and privation. Which are upheld and
which are denied when one is accused of saying
"the 'Holocaust' didn't happen"?
The masterstroke of the "Holocaust" cultists
was to impose a Newspeak slogan upon a
combination of historical realities and
historical impostures, thereby achieving a
psychological and epistemological device for
condemning researchers skeptical of homicidal
gas chambering accounts or human skin
lampshades as deniers of the existence of
concentration camps, Hitlerian anti-Semitism
and persecutions; and the death and
displacement of hundreds of thousands of
European Jews.
By exploiting this confusion, the
Exterminationists can depict persons who
question even the wildest flights of
"Holocaust" sadomasochistic fantasy as lunatic
nay-sayers
to the spectacular, overwhelming enormity of an
entire era's history when conveniently grouped
under the Newspeak heading.
The utility of Newspeak for the maintenance
of an indoctrinated mindset is glimpsed in the
intriguingly stubborn affinity many journalists
have for the "Holocaust" Newspeak agenda. With
comical monotony, reporters refuse to describe
revisionists in terms of the specific question
they have about a specific event. Instead, both
the event and the questioner are located within
the artificial agenda of "Holocaust" Newspeak.
By continually referring to a researcher who
doubts the technology described for the Nazi
gas chambers, for example, as one who "says the
'Holocaust' didn't happen," the doubter is
cleverly saddled with the enormous connotations
which are summoned in the public mind by the
invocation of a Newspeak buzz word. Suggesting
that gas chamber accounts might have been faked
requires the logical defense of that particular
assertion. Being presented to a conditioned
audience as someone who says the "Holocaust"
is a fake, is tantamount to being announced as
one who proclaims a flat earth.
As in any
cult, the doubting Thomas is not addressed in
terms
of his specific doubts but as one who negates
an entire cosmology.
Newspeak obscurantism produces an iconic mental
state among the "Holocaust" cult's true
believers which is indistinguishable from that
of the hypnotic because, "Newspeak was designed
not to extend but to diminish the range of
thought. " (George Orwell, 1984 ).
The imposition of "Holocaust" Newspeak as
the
officially proper academic and journalistic
term for German-Jewish relations for the period
from 1933-1945 is a recent innovation. As late
as 1977, the "Holocaust" word was written in
the lower case, within quotation marks
("holocaust"), when used as an optional
reference to the experience of Jews in the
Third Reich. In the middle of the decade of the
1970's, dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks
and newspaper indexes were altered to
incorporate Newspeak, without any qualifiers,
in accordance with the demands of the Big
Brother Exterminationist party.
Webster's Dictionary and Encyclopedia and
the
Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary of the 1960's
define holocaust as a burntoffering on the part
of pagans and Jews. By 1975, however,
"minitrue" has entered the New Columbia
Encyclopedia, which now defines holocaust as "a
name given to the period of persecution and
extermination of European Jews by the National
Socialists, or Nazis. "
A name given by whom? By whose authority was
the fact of persecution mixed together with the
notion of "extermination"? Who decided on this
word's authoritative application? How did it
enter popular usage? Why "Holocaust" with its
nebulous reference to reality (anti-Semitic
persecution) as well as disputed claims
(extermination)? Why wasn't the word
"Exterminationism" chosen for official,
dictionary-definition recognition? The latter
term accurately denotes a specific allegation,
that the Jewish people were "exterminated"
during World War II. Such a word does not
depend upon ambiguous connotations or confusing
allusions to disparate events for its
utility and validity.
To be accused of
denying
Exterminationism does not place the denier in
the position of a flat earthist
nonsensically denouncing the massive evidence
of
concentration camp internment and Jewish
casualties. To deny Exterminationism is to deny
that Jews were in fact exterminated. This is
not much of a denial since millions of Jews
were alive at the end of the war.
The novocaine of the media ensures that no one
asks these reasonable and obvious questions.
Linguists of the caliber of Noam Chomsky and
Orwell pontificators of the stature of Cronkite
and Moyers, accepted and even endorsed the
issuance of a license akin to the
ecclesiastical imprimatur for use as the
exclusive referrent of one nation of people.
Was World War Two itself a holocaust over-all,
or does the term have a proprietary
relationship with Jews alone? How is it that
the atomic and thermite incineration of
approximately one million helpless German and
Japanese civilians, mostly women and children,
in deliberate mass murder firebombings by the
Allied air forces, does not rate as a
holocaust?
Revisionists are forced to endure from the
Exterminationistsa particularly chilling and
grotesque example of self-aggrandizement when
revisionists are accused of denying a World War
Two holocaust.
The overwhelming holocaust of the modern era,
for which there is all of the forensic proof
the Jewish "Holocaust" is supposed to contain
and from which it is also intended to distract,
is the merciless Allied fire-bombing holocaust
against Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and dozens of other major
civilian centers.
The racism of the ethnocentric "Holocaust" cult
is confronted full force in the special
criterion established for the phrase "Holocaust
survivor." Such people are always the victims
of the National Socialists and are mostly Jews.
Human perception has been so impaired by this
cult category that Germans and Japanese who
escaped death in the unprecedented firestorms
which transformed their cities into pits of
mass human incineration, are not referred to as
holocaust survivors.
A media-certified Jewish "survivor" of the one
and only "Holocaust" with a capital H
symbolizes the pathetic partisanship with which
the entire epoch of the holocaust that was
World War Two as a whole is invested.
Revisionists do not deny the holocaust in the
fully human sense of that word. Let the TV
cameramen and the professors focus their
attention on the mass burning of hundreds of
thousands of women and children in deliberate
Allied slaughters, and they too will come to
realize the degree to which Zionist racism and
hatred of gentiles has suppressed this
holocaust to such a degree that it is totally
dismissed from discussion of the history of the
Second World War.
Hence, when revisionists question this or that
aspect of the Sho'ah theologian's theory about
an expiational Jewish inferno, it signals to
the cultist that "the 'Holocaust' didn't
happen. "
The logic of the "Holocaust" zealot permits the
visualization of only Jewish suffering; only
Jews burning. If one says the gas chamber canon
is questionable, contradictory, possibly false,
it must then signify that one is saying the war
was a picnic! The cultist is incapable of
understanding that German and Japanese
civilians suffered an unparalleled holocaust in
World War Two which is not being denied when
revisionists investigate Jewish claims; on the
contrary, it is freed for the first time from
an imposed silence.
It is from a desperate need to take world
attention away from the authentic "burnt
offerings" of that horrid war that the
traumatizing monomania of Jewish "Holocaust"
preoccupation has warped the conscience of the
West.
Mt. Zion decrees, "The 'Holocaust' cannot be
debated" and in a sense this theological fiat
is
quite true. In free and open debate, linguistic
mystification would no longer shield partisan
generalizations and falsehoods. Charges and
assertions would have to stand on scientific
and forensic evidence alone. The diminishment
of thought Orwell pointed to with regard to
Newspeak is noted in the current circumstances
surrounding investigation into the numerous
contradictions, discrepancies and outright
absurd ities in the claims made about homicidal
gas chambers.
There are many aspects of the
gas
chamber claims which deserve -- even demand --
critical, scholarly analysis. Authentically
sound historiography does not shrink from such
scrutiny but assists it with all the resources
available. Truth need not be protected beneath
a shower of fascist-baiting expletives and
left-wing McCarthyist smears about
"anti-Semitism." Truth welcomes every
investigation and every manifestation of
curiosity.
In the movie "The Wall", giant
crematorium "smokestacks" belch massive clouds
of evil-looking black smoke and ash. It was
scientifically impossible for the crematoria in
Auschwitz to emit smoke or ash, according to
the builder's patent by Topf and Son. In fact,
no crematoria produce these emissions.
Cremation technology was devised in the late
19th century specifically for the purpose of
suppressing the emissions which accompany
open-pit burning. There are no such things as
crematorium "smokestacks. " Cremation uses
heat, not flame for reduction of the corpse
into ash and crematorium chimneys emit heat and
not smoke or flames.
Because there is no business like sho'ah
business, these technical facts have not had
any influence on the cinematic promoters of the
myth. Since cultic true believers do not permit
scientific facts to get in the way of religious
"truth," and since the majority of Americans
are members of the "Holocaust" cult, there is
very little impetus for challenging movies like
"The Wall."
These fantasies about giant smoking furnaces
are shown repeatedly in 70 mm. and Dolby stereo
constituting an intensely hallucinogenic
experience.
"You are there, in Auschwitz!" -- rather like
the increasingly sophisticated video simulators
which let us imagine we are piloting a starship
past Orion. The illusion is exceedingly slick.
It is crucial to the Exterminationists
that the public fails to grasp the distinction
that the
Pop-metaphors of the "Holocaust" are capable of
interpretation. No revisionist of even minimal
standing denies concentration camps,
anti-Semitism or the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Jews from disease, hunger and
combat.
The objective of the "Holocaust" cult is to
ensure that the public does not learn that
revisionist research does not deny the Pop
imagery but seeks to discover whether the
constantly repeated photographs of body piles
and other images of Jewish suffering were the
result of mass murder by poison gas and
deliberate starvation or failed policies of
preventive detention and deportation stemming
from Germany's defeat in war.
Judaism is of course not unique in this
endeavor. "Churchianity" and Islam have mounted
similarly ambitious undertakings, which did not
prevent certain high-spirited human beings from
casting off the mental shackles of those
cruelly oppressive hoaxes. It remains to be
seen if the especially authoritative
superstitions of the Church of the "Holy Hoax"
-- wedded as they are to the formidable and
unprecedented indoctrinating abilities of
modern communications technology -- will defeat
or will be defeated by the empirical
investigations and doubts of the infidels of
our time, who dare to blaspheme against the
sacred logos of "Holocaust" Newspeak.