hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0633.txt

Episode: 633
Title: HPR0633: The Language Frontier Episode 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0633/hpr0633.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:12:20

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So one language defines reality.
I am speaking to you and you are hearing me.
Your brain is processing the words that I am saying.
And as far as you know, everything I am saying is based on fact.
So is the spoken word language.
Whether it is written, spoken, recorded or shouted in the street corner,
we hear it and it makes an impression on us.
To communicate to one another our ideas, our thoughts, our opinions, our feelings, we use language.
Hi everyone. This is a very good morning.
With the late night show or any time show for your iPod about language.
So what is going on today with language anyway?
We have seen some major films out recently actually that have language portrayed as a major theme.
At the close of 2006 the public saw Babel Borat, Mel Gibson's Apocalyptic,
which was actually rendered in an ancient dead language mine.
Many films with not only language themes but also cross cultural references and themes.
What is all this interest in language?
I mean we use it every day and it does a lot for us.
But it does a lot against us too, as we will see.
In fact, we are using language right now on this podcast.
And as you are listening you are using it too as you are deciphering these audio waves hitting your ears.
Over the next six episodes of the language frontier.
We are going to be examining language inside and out.
It is impact on us and the world around us.
Consider the language barrier.
In an age when self expression is celebrated in many cultures,
the irony of it is this very medium use for expression.
Language is the same that disconnects and divides the human race.
Today there are 7,000 languages spoken throughout the world.
Ever think about how the world is defined?
Well, it is defined with words.
Wording shapes life on this planet.
Contracts, memos, messages, they are all vital to our way of life.
But the way we do business.
Contracts, memos, and messages shape every person's life to one extent or another.
Laws govern society.
And what are laws, their language.
Language is the single most powerful tool or weapon if you will, used by men to control men.
And if something is written, it is believed in books and in media.
Isn't that how it works?
You hear about something on the news.
You assume it's factual.
And how is that news coming to you?
It's coming via language.
So how does this break down?
Language governs and defines society in three major ways.
With laws, printed media, and advertisements.
And it's really in the writing that language defines reality and look at how and why over the course of the next six episodes.
For now, let's consider advertisements.
These are things we hear all the time and we accept them as part of our reality.
Try driving around in LA, for example, and not read.
It's absolutely impossible.
As are literally everywhere.
They're on the tops of taxi cabs, the sides of buses on benches, the sides of buildings inside subway cars, in the subway stations, installs of public restrooms.
They're printed on banners hanging from lamp posts, on parking garage tickets, painted on walls, of the parking garages, inside elevators, banners on websites.
They're even in movies in the form of product placement.
It's one thing to open up a magazine or turn on the TV and see an ad.
You expect them to be there, but advertisements fill up your mailbox every day and your email.
You cannot get advertisers to stop sending you junk mail and spam even if you try.
There are organizations whose mission it is to get rid of junk mail.
That's their purpose, but it's impossible to be totally effective.
As a relentless is my point, they're even on your clothes.
Ads are part of the common consciousness.
And to their own credit, ad agencies would be pleased to believe that ads do infect shape reality for us.
And they'd be right.
Let's look at how ads affect a couple of everyday things like food and computers.
I mean, who can't recite the top five bad food elements?
Trans fats and carbs are definitely at the top of the list.
And it's very likely that the vast amount of people out there don't even know what these words mean,
but they know that they must avoid them.
And the only reason why they know this is because the ads keep playing and telling them,
don't worry, this has no trans fats.
And you think, well, that must be a good thing.
And this is a real concern for people when they go out to pick a meal.
How about the way that words portray things, other things like recycling or clothes or computers?
Let's get some background on that.
A couple of years ago, the computer manufacturers got into a megahertz race.
And all the ads, all the advertisements were proclaiming how fast the CPUs had gotten,
how fast the computers had gotten.
And it wouldn't, a week wouldn't go by.
You'd look in the paper and say, new, faster computer at 800 megahertz.
New, faster, faster computer at 900 megahertz.
And then they broke the gigahertz.
And then it was a race for how many processors you could have.
And if you ask any computer engineer or computer geek, they'll tell you that in fact,
the quality of the computer isn't necessarily solely dependent on the megahertz of the CPU.
There are a lot of other considerations when talking about speed and performance.
There's the RAM speed.
There's the bus speed so that the pathways of getting the information actually in front of your face is faster.
I mean, you might have a 900 megahertz chip in your computer or two gigahertz chips in your computer.
But if it still takes 10 seconds for the information to get from the CPU onto the monitor in front of you,
you're not going to think it's that fast, are you?
Furthermore, notice in the media that many times all the public at large needs to hear
from someone with some kind of credibility is something like,
you could tell that Jack Black's band was really something special.
And then everybody that reads it is like, hey, yeah, Jack Black's band is really something special.
And the next thing you know, people are actually seeing it.
It's literally affecting their vision.
The same goes for TV. If it's on TV, it must be true.
That's only now beginning to change. 50 years after TV was invented.
People are starting to realize that the truth is not black and white.
And there are many sides to the truth to examine and consider.
And why is that?
One major reason is because alternative information is becoming more and more available.
Now that's being accelerated with the digital revolution.
Still, most people believe what they hear on the networks,
which is being spoken to them via language.
There are other opinions and perceptions of these events floating around,
but the general opinion and consensus comes from mainstream broadcasts.
Take religion. Religions are based on words, language.
And in many way, govern people's lives.
Many people dictate their behavior based on words or language written in religious books or printed media.
Jewish people, for example, have a strict code about what they are permitted to eat.
And it's based on, you guessed it, language.
These words were written down about 5,000 years ago.
Many of the mores and ethics that we take for granted today,
such as do not kill, do not steal, covet,
are from texts that was written 3,000 years ago.
That is text upon which legally binding laws are based off of today.
By laws, I mean the dense and difficult to navigate language of law.
Taxes, investment, insurance, partnerships, as in financial enterprise,
property, merges, software like intellectual property, copyrights, agreements,
you read some of these contracts.
They are written in a code that requires specialized intensive study to be able to understand.
That is one of the ways that language divides people,
but not the way that a Chinese person is divided from an English speaking person.
This is an economic and educational language barrier.
What is legal writing doing?
It's defining process, process that businesses and citizens are required to follow
according to laws or language that enforce compliance.
And we'll look at that in greater detail later.
For now, just keep in mind that legal infrastructure is built with language
and it governs our society in every way.
What is more, groups of people feel an emotional attachment to their language for better or worse.
They do.
Think about how you might feel if suddenly you were told your language wasn't going to be spoken anymore
and you were going to have to learn Japanese or Portuguese or Latin
and use that for all your communications.
I know it sounds a little sci-fi, but even if you learned the language,
you probably would have a really hard time not thinking in your own language.
People have a certain inherent pride or shame associated with where they are from.
Their personal, historical context defines reality for them,
everyone to one extent or another.
You know, I was in Paris recently and it's a beautiful language, French.
It's marvelous to hear people speak it.
And the French are actually rather infamous for their love of their language.
They safeguard it.
And French is one of those few languages that don't actually use the typical adopted words for new inventions
like email, computer or television.
They invent their own words.
You know how sometimes you hear some Chinese person speaking a stream of Chinese
and all of a sudden you'll hear something like AIM or email or Starbucks.
The French don't do that.
They use their own words for these otherwise universal terms.
I don't know if every French person does this,
but they definitely have alternative words for that sort of thing.
And I think also Latin, in the Vatican City, they invent their own words.
They come up with their own words for these new terms too
and they keep updating the language even though, as we all know,
Latin is a dead language.
And it's a documented fact that many people that learn another language
other than their native tongue and speak that language all their life
will cry out in their own language if they're in mortal danger.
Our language is woven into the very fabric of our beings.
Look at the movie frantic, starring Harrison Ford.
In a climactic moment, one of the key characters cries out to express her moral fear in her own language,
not the language she was speaking through the entire movie.
The result, a more powerful emotional expression.
There is a certain attachment that a person feels for the language they express
all of their deepest emotional feelings in.
Language is emotive.
And for someone to come along and say,
you can't use your language anymore.
You have to use this one.
It's just a little bit insulting, like a slap in the face.
People associate national pride.
They feel for their country with the language that they speak there.
I'm sure this can sound like some high and mighty philosophical stuff
that doesn't really seem to matter.
But in a way, it does matter, even to your everyday life.
You just have to look at things.
Like, for example, these trans fats and carbs and advertisements.
We have to wonder how our everyday perceptions of just simple things,
for instance, the price of gas or whether you're buying better gas
or a better car than our old one or whether our gas emissions
are judged to be better or okay versus not okay.
These are all laws and ideas that are set down through language.
And we accept them without our ever-knowing.
Maybe if you put your nose down in your tailpipe,
you wouldn't think your gas emissions were that acceptable after all.
It's all language is my point.
And it does shape our reality.
Not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing.
It's just a fact.
On an even larger scale, how about the way language defines reality?
Here in America, we've all taken some kind of U.S. history class.
We all have some idea about how we ended up in this country.
But your sense of history is yours via language,
and it differs from region to region.
Just like language differs from region to region.
I picked up this book at Barnes & Noble.
It contains excerpts from textbooks using classrooms around the world.
Let's take a look at an example that everyone's probably familiar with,
the cause of World War I.
It's typically cited that the murder of Franz Ferdinand was at the onset of the Great War.
But let's take a look in here at some very differing perspectives on the same event.
The Italian text backtracks a little bit to discuss conflicts in the Balkans between Austria, Russia, and Turkey
who were all interested in extending their influence in the region.
Then Italy claimed Libya from the Turks,
and the Balkan countries seized a number of the Turk-O-Autumn Empire's territories.
The text goes on to describe the murder of Francisco Ferdinand by a Serbian student in Sarajevo.
And finally, how the war actually promised an opportunity, an enticing opportunity to shape the world,
and how every Italian man aspired to be part of this great shaping of world history.
The British text mentions the conflicts in the Balkans as well,
and outlines the events of the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne.
But basically, it just says how the overall feeling is why should Great Britain care about a shooting halfway across Europe
when there was the possibility of an Irish Civil War looming at home.
The French textbook cites blind nationalism that spread across Europe at the turn of the century
and caused fear and suspicion of the European countries of one another.
Kind of can't help thinking to yourself, so what things do I assume are true
and take for granted when in reality they might not be so.
What are things that people take for granted?
The US is a democracy, when in fact it is a republic.
Genetically modified foods are a good idea.
Global warming is a myth.
Dog is man's best friend.
Dog is a really good meal.
What else do we take for granted?
History that we learn in school, for example, how accurate is it?
Remember, history is written by the winners.
And how much of what I am saying are you actually understanding the way I am intending it?
The bottom line is language equals perspective.
So let's try this.
What do you think of when I say the word house, a shack in Rio, a housing project in San Francisco,
Prague or New York City, a mansion in Beverly Hills, sprawling track homes, a trailer mobile home,
a high rise apartment in Tokyo, and where do we get our different perspectives from what we see and hear around us?
And that's usually language.
The thing to realize is that much of what we are perceiving is open to interpretation.
And if we are armed with that understanding, then we will be less likely to take things that face value.
We might even do a little more research and even see things a little differently.
We might see things more objectively, in fact.
Language is a very passionate thing, and there are 7,000 languages in use today.
Some of them more than others, but how does this perspective affect our world and experiences?
And what if there was a language that was not native to any country, group or people?
How would that affect the world?
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
We are going to explore all of these things in the coming episodes of The Language Frontier.
While I was looking so sad, she was just a child herself with a child beneath the bed.
And she stuck without the only friend she had.
What are all those helicopters for?
What are all those helicopters for?
They ran on my house when they just fly at once.
I wonder what they do when you want more.
I wonder what they do when you want more.
While I was with the widows tonight, while I was with the widows tonight, I did tell the children that it's never coming again.
Somehow, it just doesn't seem right.
Where are all those helicopters now?
Where are all those helicopters now?
How much do they cost?
Are they worth more than their love?
How does anyone ever win a war anyhow?
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-A-T for all of those things.
Thank you very much.