The Power of Language

The definition I would assign language would be a way of expression through words and the power behind those words. Language is a form of communicating, which is also portrayed through images a person may believe represents them or simply an image found amusing on social media. This form of communication through the media does form an influence because a person is sharing an image with the entire world, if the account is not private, and the image is then reposted on another account and so on leading to one simple image affecting many other social media users. The image that may be continuously reposted could be representing something important like certain awareness's, which allows all users to connect and communicate in that form.

The five guidelines for communication-friendly language are: Be accessible, Be clear, Be respectful, Be provocative, and Be interesting. I do not necessarily agree that our generation follows these guidelines because we all use different forms of wording or terms when communicating. Some individuals may use abbreviations and keep things short or some individuals may use more difficult terms that not many of us understand which may make many messages unclear. I also believe that this generation lacks respect in the way they approach individuals by using foul language and are not as provocative as older individuals may be. This generation tends to lack emotion and so they keep conversations blunt and short, uninteresting, and inaccessible.  

In the chapter The Power of Language, the quote, "War is peace; Freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength" ... "enables Orwell's totalitarian government to unleash a continuous war of infinite reach and endless duration"(107). In Orwell's novel, he believes that citizens are so enwrapped in their governments form of language that they forget their own ability to think beyond their situations (107). This form of language is influencing us through social media because we are only shown what the government want us to know. Now a days, some posts or images that are posted by certain individuals are able to be removed by the social media being used and banned off of all accounts it was posted on. The government has the ability to show us what they want us to see and not what we should be seeing. By this, we are enwrapped in the news that is shown on television and on social media but not of the news that is found more important.

The media and the world is influenced through propaganda by encountering false ideas that are consciously spread and proliferated (116). The book states that "each individual is somewhat responsible for acquiring accurate information" but today we are forced to believe that the information being introduced by the media into the world is completely accurate. This ties in to the previous question because we are only receiving information that the government also to be portrayed and so we begin to believe that what is shown through media is correct although it may not be. The intention of media is to earn recognition and the interest of individuals, and so the media is capable of displaying false information in order to coninue grabbing the worlds attention.