As you tune in to the weather forecast, you hear the forecaster using specialized terms such as “precipitation” and “relative humidity,” when they could have used “rain” and “dampness.”
These terms convey nothing unique, but it is easy to feel charmed by their surface-level appeal and to perceive the forecaster’s predictions as more credible than they really are. If these words are only ornamental, why are we often drawn to them?
Dan Sperber, a French cognitive scientist, emphasized that when language is vague and difficult to grasp, readers shift from critical evaluation of its content to free, abstract interpretation, leading them to overlook its lack of meaning and consider it more reliable.
As an example of how this tendency commonly appears, consider this sentence I wrote for a literary analysis essay about the shattering of Piggy’s glasses in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: “This moment is especially prescient and symbolic, as Piggy’s glasses represented intellectuality, civility, and cognition.”
Here, “prescient,” meaning “having knowledge of future events,” is used incorrectly, since a moment cannot possess such knowledge, and “intellectuality,” “cognition,” and “civility” function as synonyms of one another.
By using elusive language, I attempted to obscure my lack of genuine insight into the novel. Like many other students, I thought that doing so was an easy and harmless way to achieve higher marks.
Elusive language also frequently appears in misleading “military-grade encryption” promises in VPN advertisements or in corporate announcements that reassure their struggling employees they are merely “restructuring” their workforce.
However, deliberately elusive language can be more than just a hindrance to communication. It can be used to manipulate perceptions of harmful or immoral actions.
English statesman Oliver Cromwell justified his invasion of Ireland—which, according to contemporary scientist Sir William Petty, caused the deaths of over half a million Irish people—by describing the Irish as “devils” and “barbarous wretches.”
Similarly, the Dutch government rationalized the exploitative three-hundred-year-long colonization of Indonesia by downplaying their atrocities as “policing actions.”
Presently, language remains a tool for manipulation. Xenophobic spheres of the internet—which have grown increasingly prominent—dehumanize immigrants by referring to them as “aliens,” thereby promoting hatred against them. Influential public figures further strengthen this hostility by falsely asserting that native European populations are subject to an invasionary “great replacement” by said “aliens.”
Even political leaders use vague, metaphorical phrases such as “democracy is on the ballot” and “the destroyer of democracy” to promote political alarmism and sway public opinion in favor of their party.
So how can we prevent ourselves from being susceptible to verbal deception?
We can first scrutinize our own writing: doing so improves our understanding of how others use language as well. As British writer George Orwell suggested, we should refer to foundational rules when writing: avoid figurative language, be concise, and use direct words.
Thus, the next time you compose an email to a teacher or write a Schaffer paragraph for an English essay, inspect your writing thoroughly and take some time to ask yourself, “Is this genuinely communicative, or merely performative?”
If the answer is the latter, remember that the primary intention of non-fiction writing is to convey precise information while maximizing clarity and minimizing misunderstanding.
