Post n. 4 (of my own choice)

Yesterday night I went to see the play Othello by Shakespeare in New York. That is a great tragedy of 'discourse'. Shakespeare did talk about it centuries before the modern linguists.
Discourse is the way language can be used to contruct thoughts and ideologies that support the interests of specific groups and have a direct effect on the world. Language can indeed affect the world. Expecially nowadays, when we are exposed to language on a large scale because of the media and TV.

In the play Iago was speaking all the time and he was using all the time what linguistist call presuppositions. He did not tell Othello: "Listen, since you are black your wife is cheating on you with a white guy". That would sound suspicious. Othello would wonder what was the purpose of Iago saying that. On the contrary, Iago was insinuating things all the time, and Othello was making his own inferences, making his own logical links among the various disconnected sentences. And little by little in his mind would grow the idea that black is bad and women are bad.
This is how certain ideas are installed in people's mind and become common sense. People start thinking that it is natural and obvious to think so. Their mind made very logical connections. But they were not aware of the fact that they were being manipulated by someone pursuing very specific purposes meant to make his own interest. While watching the play one would like to shout at Othello: "Why don't you ask yourself the reasons why Iago is saying all these things, what his purpose could be? He is making an effort in speaking so much that he must have a reason to do so!" And then : "Why don't you go and ask other people's opinions? Why don't you make sure that those words reflect the real situation? Why do you trust words so much?"

And this is what happened in Italy with Fascism, as shown in the video. People were reading newspapers and listening to political speeches that all said the same things, without questioning. And once certain things had become normal in their minds, then they were unable to question anything anymore. Even what was clearly unacceptable.
And they became like the woman in the movie The Reader who did not think twice before burning alive about one hundred Jews in a church because in her society that was considered as perfectly normal.
The point of the movie was that the fact that she could not read was the cause of her doing so. But what should she have read? We've just said that most of the things written on newspapers would support these practices, and thus be the cause of her behaviour...
She should have read Shakespeare, Flaubert, Moliere, Dante, Voltaire and all those writers who did not write to make pople accept the dominant ideology, but who did write to make people think about it, to give them a different opinion.
Many of them used satire or metaphors because they would not be allowed to speak freely, and they used presuppositions to share with us their views. Did they want to manipulate people? For what purpose? They had no interest in doing so. They did not receive money from those who had economical or political power, they were censored by them.
They did not want to convince people of their ideas, they just wanted to tell them: "Hey, here you have an idea which is different from the dominant one. Are you sure that what people in power say is true? Why don't you check it?"
Many great writers talked about the power of language and of discourse a lot in their books, to make people aware of their powerful effect. They used language to expose the dangers of language.