It is described how Confucius when asked by one of his disciples what he would do if he were given his own territory to govern the Master replied that he would first and above all “rectify the names” ‒ that is, make words correspond to reality.
It is of the utmost importance that our political leaders communicate with us clearly and truthfully and also not hide essential, even if unfavourable or distasteful, information or prevaricate or seek to mislead or misinform. One of the great lessons of history is that there is a direct relationship between how language is used and how power is exercised. Good governors use language that tries to reflect truth and is clear and understandable. Bad governors use language that hides, manipulates, or cosmetises the truth and is customarily obscure and cliché- ridden to the point of meaninglessness.
Since human nature at its weakest is what it is, people quite often prefer what is cosmetic and obscure to what is true and clear and so bad governors can and do get by quite well for quite long. This is so true that even good governors are sometimes tempted down the road of high-sounding but feckless rhetoric. Fortunately, however, since human nature at its best also is what it is, people in the end prefer truth and want to understand clearly what is affecting their lives and so bad governors do not prevail forever.
History shows this and quite recent history shows it most clearly of all. The official use of language in the old communist empire grew so corrupt in the end that the rottenness infected the empire through and through, weakening it irredeemably. And do not scoff at the claim that something as abstract as the misuse of language can bring down a government or even an empire. When the language used by those in power deteriorates to the point where it bears no relation to reality, no relation to truth, society simply cannot function properly. Laws become meaningless, rules need not be obeyed, political exhortations are ignored, all functions of the state are undermined, and men seek their own solutions outside the charade of official promulgations.
Even terror hides its terrible truth in hideous verbiage, in language supremely misused and corrupted. George Orwell pointed this out long ago in his magnificent essay ‘Politics and the English language.’ People were imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck, or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic tundra waste; that was called “pacifying unreliable elements.” Such phrases are used if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. The supporters of Hitler/Stalin did not say plainly “I agree with him killing off his opponents because he gets good results by doing so”. No, they said “While freely conceding that the German/Soviet regime exhibits certain features which humanitarians may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the German/Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”
Thus does a society, through language’s debasement, inexorably sink beneath a mass of lies, evasions, unspoken fears and hatreds and public/private schizophrenia.
There was, of course, never anything in Guyana remotely resembling such terror. However, when one thinks back with a shudder to the days when Guyana sunk to its lowest point, late 1970s to l985, it seems so clear now that what was being said and written at the highest level of government was language contrived to defend the indefensible – the need to mobilize the people as grounds for party paramountcy, the goals of proud self-sufficiency and self-reliance to explain the ban on flour and the empty shelves, the need to focus and advance the development effort to excuse stifling freedom of the media.
Indeed, I have no doubt at all that the political and economic decay which overtook Guyana at that time was accompanied by a parallel decay in the art of expressing ourselves clearly, concisely, properly, truthfully. An effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in intensified form. Thus the decay in Guyana caused deterioration in the teaching and use of language and that deterioration intensified the decay of the state.
I believe, in fact, that President Hoyte when he came to power, fully recognized the dilemma and the problem. I think he saw the danger to the state which language’s debasement threatened. I think he meant it completely when he launched the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1987 and said that we must give as much status and scope to our makers of words as we do to our makers of things. Here indeed he wrought dramatic change. Certainly what he achieved in giving more space for Guyanese to speak more freely, more truly, must always be applauded and governments since then have reinforced the achievement. There must be no retreat from that. Any hint of retreat must be opposed. What Guyana must never again relinquish is, in Elias Canetti’s words, “the tongue set free.” Never.
I recall as I often do a friend and great Guyanese. No one in the Caribbean, very few anywhere, have written more clearly and passionately, with more power and truth, than Martin Carter. When he wrote about the strong and weak there was never the slightest hint of gush or lies or slickness. His work is lit with the purest of light; there are no shadows of outworn rhetoric in his sentences. His absence weighs heavily on us. No one has more hated and despised language’s debasement in the nation than Martin. May his work and his example never be forgotten.
