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marquisedemerteuil's picture

big brother is watching you...

if you read 1984, everyone's favorite book at the moment, orwell makes a similar point to your own. "doublespeak" in the book seeks to limit language, so since people will only know this revised language, full of abbreviations and not real words, people will not be able to rebel against society because they cannot conceive of rebellion, they have no words through which to articulate that thought. so does thought really exist outside language? notice we use language to articulate that point. i would argue no, and it's not that doublespeak prevents the people in orwell's world from understanding a non-linguistic concept, rebellion, but rather that rebellion does not exist for those people. it is natural to assume that the language we use relates to "universal" concepts that everyone has, whether or not they can articulate them, and i believe that language controls rather than limits our thought process.

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