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ARTS AND CULTURE

The ecology of words

  • 04 March 2020

 

Ecology is an expansive word. There is an ecology of just about everything. That is to be expected because ecology has to do with the relationships between things. The word itself is derived from the Greek oikos, meaning a house or home. In itself a house is a thing of wood or brick, with windows, doors and perhaps chimneys. A house becomes a home through the relationships that give it individuality. Of these the photos on the walls, the toys in the corridor, the books on the shelves and the cat fur on the rug are signs. Home is an ecological word.

To speak of the ecology of words can be illuminating because it evokes the wide range of relationships that words embody. It also invites us to ask broad questions about the healthy and unhealthy use of words in a society.

Words are most often judged by their relationship to truth and falsehood. Good words tell it as it is; lies deny what is real; weasel words draw attention away from it. The relationship between words and reality, of course, intersects with relationships between people. A society in which lies and evasions of truth dominate is by definition a sick and polluted society.

Words are also related to persuasion. If used attractively, words can confirm or change our view of reality. If used unattractively, they can prejudice people against truth.

The political and church world, in which words are used mostly for exhortation, evocation and other forms of persuasion, offer good and bad examples of the use of words. The sermons of St Augustine and of Lancelot Andrewes and the speeches of Cicero, for example, are persuasive because their words are beautifully matched to the reality they evoke. You will be able to supply enough of your own examples of sermons and speeches that are delivered without conviction, hose the listener with superfluous information, rely on stale language and images and try to intimidate rather than attract assent.

In the public world words are often carefully deployed to persuade people to ascribe to brutal and destructive untruths. When referring to people who have sought protection from persecution, for example, politicians were able to prejudice the public against them. They made them accept the need to treat them brutally by associating them with criminality, cheating, infection, invasion, terrorism and threat. Similarly, in order to evade the responsibility of the State to
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