Language and Power

Edited by Birgit Brock-Utne and Gunnar Garbo. Language is a tool used to express thoughts, to hide thoughts, or to hide the lack of thoughts. It is often a means of domination, and the question is who has the power to define the world around us. This book demonstrates how language is being manipulated to form the minds of listeners or readers. Innocent words may be used to conceal a reality people would have reacted to had the phenomena been described in a straightforward manner. The innocent-sounding concept of ‘cost-sharing’, which suggests communal sharing and solidarity, may actually imply privatization. The false belief that the best way to learn a foreign language is to have it as a language of instruction becomes a strategy for stupidification of African pupils. Thirty-three independent experts from sixteen countries, North and South, show how language may be used to legitimize war-making, promote Northern interests in development, and retain colonial languages as instructional, juridical, and political media.