An English teacher at my school had his students read 1984 and write a research paper in
response to it. I gave them a quick tour of the online resources our district
offers and showed them how to navigate through some of the databases. North
Korea and Cuba were the two obvious choices, but he wanted them to dig deeper,
of course. The Ted Ed talk by Noah Tavlin, “What ‘Orwellian’ really means’ (http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-orwellian-really-means-noah-tavlin)
was the perfect introduction to the research session.
When Trump began using the term “fake news,” I really didn’t
see it as a term or phrase at all, but it’s become just that. George Lakoff,
linguist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, provided some
valuable insight through NPR’s Kurtzleben. Although Trump may use the term to
refer to things he disagrees with, “calling something fake news implies that it
isn’t news at all.” Using the term the way he does, Lakoff explains, “…undermines
the credibility of real news sources, that is, the press. Therefore it makes it
harder for the press to serve the public good by revealing truths. And it threatens
democracy, which requires that the press function to reveal real truths.” It’s
even more dangerous now, at a time when ideas travel so quickly, with such unfiltered
power.
Language is so powerful. I remember when we bought our son
his first mobile phone just a few years ago. It was a brick-type phone, and he
was embarrassed by it because all of his friends had smart phones, and I
perceived this as ingratitude. In conversation one day, he referred to it as a
dumb phone and I was insulted. What he had to explain to me is that that’s an
actual phrase. It’s not a dumb phone, it’s a dumb-phone. Oh. Does that then
dilute the power of the word “dumb”? I think so.
Kurtzleben, D. (2017, February 17). With ‘Fake news,’ Trump
moves from alternative facts to alternative language. All Things Considered.
Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515630467/with-fake-news-trump-moves-from-alternative-facts-to-alternative-language
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