The Language of National Socialism Nancy Kerr and Jonathan Edwards

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The Language of National SocialismNancy
Kerr and Jonathan Edwards

• Nancy Kerr and Jonathan Edwards

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Relationship Between Language and Politics

• Dont you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is
  to narrow the range of thought? In the end we
  shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,
  because there will be no words in which to
  express it. George Orwell, 1984
• This quote exemplifies a link between language,
  perception, and potential action. In this
  particular case the state aims to govern peoples
  actions by controlling the language which thereby
  controls the peoples thoughts.
• The Nazis were aware of this significance and
  created a communicative environment which
  perpetuated their political power and facilitated
  their goals
• Changes in structural and stylistic features
• Effective linguistic methods of imposing their
  ideology and silencing their opponents

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1) Changes in Structure Stylistic Features
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Heightened attention to / use of existing
features

• The perception of Jews as Christian enemies led
  to extensive anti-Jewish vocabulary woven into
  the German language during nearly two millennia
  of Anti-Semitism in Europe.
• Nazis expanded on a preexisting vocabulary of
  contempt for Jews and increased its use. They
  used this vocabulary to create a false, hateful,
  and dehumanized image of Jews.

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Modifications and Changes in Structure and Style

• Lexical innovation
• Creation of designations for new organizations /
  institutions / policies such as Blitzkrieg and
  also abbreviations such as Gestapo (Geheime
  Staatspolizei) and SS, which sometimes became
  intimidating symbols
• Creations of new compound words with a
  particularly high frequency of the compounding
  elements Volk, Blut, and Rasse (12) (13)
• Germanization process in which archaic German
  words were reintroduced or new German words were
  coined to replace foreign words

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Modifications and Changes in Structure and Style
(cont.)

• Redefinition and Re-association of Existing Terms
• Examples
• Abstammungsnachweis (pedigree) ? changes from
  referring to animal husbandry to defining human
  racial origins
• Blutschande ? changes from referring to familial
  incest to one denoting sexual relations between
  Aryans and non-Aryans
• Words that had previously carried negative
  connotations became positively charged, such as
  fanatisch and brutal
• Extensive use of euphemisms opaque and
  distorted camouflage or code words were given new
  meanings to render their new purpose ambiguous
  while also retaining their original meanings as
  well
• Euphemisms used extensively in official and
  unofficial texts when the horrific connotations
  of a particular euphemism became too well known
  it was requested that a new word be used instead
  which would ultimately acquire the same
  connotations
• Evakuierung (evacuation) substituted for
  Auswanderung (emigration) to mean forced
  transportation of Jews to ghettos and
  concentration camps even though both retained
  their original usage throughout.

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Creation of Powerful Metaphors and Imagery

• Truth is always relative to a conceptual system
  that is defined in large part by metaphor and
  the people who get to impose their metaphors on
  the culture get to define what we consider to be
  true absolutely and objectively true.
  Townson
• Subjects
• Struggle and contest contains images of war and
  competitive sports such as boxing
• German people compared with boxers wiping blood
  from their eyes so they can resolutely go into
  the next round
• Anthropology and medicine Self-exaltation and
  defamation of opponents through such oppositions
  as the health of the Germanic and the
  sickness of the non-Aryan
• Religion extensive use of Christian imagery and
  references to the Bible
• Hitler presented as a savior figure
• The people were all of Adolf Hitler and through
  Adolf Hitler. Herman Goering
• Hitler is the incarnation of the thought of the
  race. Völkischer Beobachter (the Nazi Party
  newspaper)
• Technical images using vocabulary of
  metal-working where people are the objects rather
  than the subjects of the activity and also people
  being referred to as material has a
  dehumanizing effect

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Absence of Argument and Dialectic

• Methods of propaganda (pamphlets, speeches, etc.)
  often consisted of blocks of slogans, memorable
  phrases, and/or claims placed next to each other
  but which were independent of sentence structure
  and without logical connectors (a predominance
  of nouns with comparatively very few verbs) the
  result was appeal to emotions rather than to
  logic
• The Nazi worldview as absolute and final led
  their discourse to have no room for argument or
  deviations within its framework
• The liturgical nature of Nazi discourse where the
  role of the masses was restricted to pre-ordained
  responses required no use of personal intellect
  and therefore prevented deviation

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2) Effective linguistic methods of imposing their
ideology and silencing their opponents
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Creation of Identifying Groups

• In-groups and out-groups for friend and foe
  identification
• This division was linguistically achieved through
  naming and definitions creating one acceptable
  discourse and the abolishment of rival or
  opposing discourse

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Media Regulations

• Methods
• Censorship
• Banning and destruction of texts
• Incarceration of authors or intimidation
• Control of publication outlet and distribution
  networks
• Voluntary self-censorship rewards
• Enactment
• Cancelled basic rights (press assembly)
• Assumed responsibility for national radio
• Seized publishing facilities
• Ban on formation of new periodicals
• Instructions on acceptable phrasings and topics
• Reserving key terms for special usages by
  forbidding use in other contexts
• Führer could only be used in reference to
  Hitler. The title for a U-boat captain
  (U-Bootführer) was changed to (U-Bootkommandant)
• Forbidding positive terms for reference to the
  enemy
• The Press had to refer to Britains Central
  Office of Information as The Ministry of Lies and
  Advertising (end)

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Examples

• Compounds
• Blut
• Blutschutz (protection of German blood)
• Rasse
• Rassenschande (violation sexually of the race
  German)
• Volk
• Volksbazillen (bacteria) referring to the
  Jewish people, an idea based on Anti-Semitic
  scientific principles (back)

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Examples

• Volk und Rasse
• In the context of Nazi Germany, Volk is almost
  always translated as race because of the clear
  intent behind Nazi policy and Hitlers own
  obsession with racial purity and pollution.
• Rasse and Volk were not interchangable in Nazi
  Germany
• völkish translates accurately as ethnic
• race was so empirically defined, even the most
  zealous Nazis could not accurately describe it.
• Nazi writers labeled Jews racial comrades
  (Rassengenossen)
• Nazi writers labeled Aryans as ethnic comrades
  (Volksgenossen)
• Neither Hitler nor the other major Nazis spoke of
  a racial state (Rassenstaat). Instead they used
  such terms as Volkskörper (body politic),
  Volksgemeinschaft (ethnic community) and
  Volksseele (ethnic soul) (back)

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The intentions behind the attempted regulation
of language are clear by seeking to impose a
standardized discourse, the fascists wished to
impose a standard worldview, stifle opposition,
and commit the population to their policies in
other words, the regulation of language serves to
regulate thought and behavior. Townson
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References

• Klemperer, Victor, and Roderick H. Watt. An
  Annotated Edition of Victor Klemperer's LTI,
  Notizbuch eines Philologen. Studies in German
  Thought and History. Vol. 17. Lewiston Edwin
  Mellen Press, 1997.
• Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge,
  Mass. Belknap Press, 2003.
• Michael, Robert, and Karin Doerr.
  Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi German An English Lexicon
  of the Language of the Third Reich. Westport,
  Conn. Greenwood Press, 2002.
• Orwell, George. 1984. New York Penguin Book,
  Inc., 1977. 52.
• Pringle, Heather Anne. The Master Plan
  Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. 1st ed.
  New York Hyperion, 2006.
• Townson, Michael. Mother-tongue and fatherland
  Language and politics in German. Manchester
  New York New York Manchester University
  Press Distributed in the USA and Canada by
  St. Martin's Press, 1992.