On Linguistic Inflation

Minor Revisions 14-05-2023

I. Introduction

When I was in middle school, just beginning to discover the rabbit hole of political ideology, I became convinced that I was cool because I knew the "real" definition of “socialism” — I knew that socialism involved worker ownership of the means of production (a concept I always struggled to describe), and I’d use the word wherever I could find an excuse to. Then I figured out what Libertarianism was, and in early 8th grade I started trying to identify ‘my own ideology’ (as though that was a badge of honor and I’d actually come to my beliefs through thoughtful consideration); I took a political test and decided I was a Moderate Libertarian Leftist. (Normally I wouldn't put this online, but it's relevant to the story and also I was in like eighth grade.)

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about it, and got so excited I threw all my favorite terms at her like I was showing off my toy collection. “Communism isn’t a synonym for socialism, also the reason socialism is so complicated is because it’s mainly an economic organization and it can be combined with a statist/libertarian axis of belief which would change how the ideology manifests <span style="color: linear-gradient(to right, #003300 0%, #ffffff 100%);">
and also capitalism is when the…" </span>

I found out from her later that at the time she had gotten very different meaning from the conversation. When I used the word “libertarian” to describe myself, she identified the word with the belief system of the American third party -- the Libertarian party. That tainted all the other things I said with the implication of a very different belief system — she interpreted the whole conversation through the lens of me being an isolationist "taxation is theft" advocate, because we both knew the word in different ways. So not only had I maximized my pretentiousness, I had also made myself less understood.

Last year I took AP Psychology at my high school. One part of the curriculum detailed the basics of communication between neurons, and we had to memorize and understand the roles of various neurotransmitters. Before that, I’d heard the words dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins used interchangeably: I saw YouTube videos about “Dopamine Detoxes” and I personally used all three of them without thinking. They were all just different ways to say pleasure, with endorphins being that but vaguely related to physical activity. Upon learning the differences between these compounds, I realized I was using the terms entirely wrong.

I’ve seen both sides of the “using words in ways that they’re not really supposed to be used” experience; I think everyone has. There are two lessons I’ve tried to learn from it:

1. Don’t use expensive words when dollar-store words will do, especially not when you don’t really know what the expensive words mean.
2. Specialized terms can easily lose or change meanings when they enter public consciousness.

This post is about the second point; I’m still struggling too much with the first. A friend of mine introduced me to the term linguistic inflation to describe it: formerly-specific words lose or change their meanings via overuse or ‘inappropriate’ use, in domains ranging from philosophy to neurobiology. I wanted to write a post about this because it’s a common phenomenon, and I might use the word elsewhere on the blog.

II. Linguistic inflation is like cultural assimilation

The initial reason I wanted to write this post was to describe it in its political context. (It's funny but also annoying when people use communism/neoliberalism/critical race theory/marxism to mean "thing I don't like".) But it's evolved into a broader thought on language itself, one that I hope is more interesting.

Any kind of jargon can be added -- or rather, assimilated -- into the public lexicon. I like using human cultural assimilation as a metaphor for this process, because they have some similar aspects. In the same way that an individual might lose parts of their culture in the process of assimilating into a new one, words lose parts of their meanings when they enter new contexts of use. Whether not this is good or bad is likewise based on a judgment call, one I don't believe even should be made in the context of culture or meaning for the most part. There are exceptions to this, if you're willing to ignore for a moment any doubts you have about objective truth; words assimilating into a language as slurs, for example, is probably a bad thing, just as a person entering a cannibalistic culture and learning to eat people is a bad thing. But for the most part things are just different, not better or worse when it comes to meaning and culture.

But in general, I think this metaphor is useful, and helps us better visualize the evolution of language. Generally individuals retain some semblance of their original culture when they assimilate; in extreme circumstances or communities, though, they might be totally changed. Language works similarly, as we'll see with the political example.

III. Linguistic inflation in politics

There are two ways that linguistic inflation usually happens, as far as I can tell:

1. Someone uses the word in its 'correct' technical context, someone else hears it, uses it in the 'wrong' way, and that usage gradually catches on after many iterations
2. Jargon is used incorrectly deliberately, for the purpose of equivocation. The only context I can think of this happening in is politics, hence why we get a whole section dedicated to it. (it's the initial inspiration for this post anyway, so of course I'll write more about it.)

Like I wrote, we see case #2 in politics, and we see it constantly. Specialized words for political philosophy or economics get co-opted, turning into buzzwords, vague enemies to bash, immediate mind-numbers. They become what Eleizer Yudkowsky calls "semantic stopsigns": when used, the word functions function as a "cognitive traffic signal: do not think past this point."

The newest examples that I've seen gain a lot of popularity this year are "critical race theory," "fascism," and "Postmodernism." I'll go through them briefly.

Critical race theory was an obscure school of thought that originated with legal scholars in the late 20th century. It expanded from there, and now I think no one really knows what it is -- as far I can tell it's a lens through which to undertake sociological and legal analysis based on the idea that race is a socially-constructed phenomenon. This one is the easiest to trace of the three; around 2020, conservative politicians started bashing 'critical race theory' as being 'anti-white race indoctrination' taught in elementary schools across the country. It was, in fact, not taught in schools across the country, and on its face at least was not anti-white race indoctrination. It sounded scary enough and liberal enough, though, that it entered the political lexicon as a term to describe "anything that seems vaguely race-related in a cultural progressive kind of way, in any educational context." CRT, in other words, went from having a specific meaning in academic disciplines to having a vague and broad meaning when brought into public usage.

(According to The New Yorker, a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo is to blame for this, though it looks like he at least did a little homework on the term before appropriating it.)

"Fascism," on the other hand, is a more elusive term -- but one that has nonetheless been subjected to a great devaluation in meaning over the past few years and before. As I learned it in my eighth grade Political Economy class, Fascism describes right-wing authoritarianism -- a tyrannical government aligned with the interests of private capital. This was good enough to satisfy me until I found out that Fascism in its original Italian form arose out of National Syndicalism, a... far-right form of socialism? No matter, let me just read a book on it... oh wait, Madeline Albright's definition has nothing to do with capital in particular, she's talking more about the nationalist and ethno-centrist ethos of the movement -- wait, I'm not really sure what this word means in the first place. But it has something to do with describing specific forms of extremism related to nationalism, anti-democracy, and ethnocentrism, and draws from cultural myths

But whatever specific meaning "Fascism" had, it became even more blurred as it entered broader cultural usage. Fascism is now the word of choice when [right-wing person in government] tries to do [right-wing thing I disagree with], because using the government and being right-wing means that you are a right-wing authoritarian. It's disappointing because the term is powerful when used in its limited scope, but now there's a clear optical loss to using the term; like any other semantic stopsign, calling something "Fascist" indicates tribal allegiance -- and when I'm trying to just be descriptive, that's a vibe I'd like to avoid.

Other honorable mentions for this phenomenon are Neoliberalism ("thing I disagree with that's vaguely capitalist" OR "thing I disagree with that is vaguely symbolic of modern society" -- this is an interesting one because both left and right contribute to the inflation, making it a semantic stopsign for two disparate groups), Imperialism ("when a powerful country does stuff internationally" among others), postmodernism ("when someone doesn't like 20th-century social values"), Libertarianism, and of course, the most egregious examples, Communism and Socialism ("when the government does stuff" and/or "when workers do things").

All of these are (were) useful words with specific meanings, and became used so broadly outside of those original limited contexts that they're of doubtful utility -- using them risks losing an audience that reacts to the emotional charge that the term has developed through usage in political discourse.

IV. Ideas as viruses

One of my favorite mental models I have for the evolution of language in this sense came from my interpretation of Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash”: without spoiling too much, the story depicts a 'virus' that's spread through language, and advances some very interesting ideas through the vehicle of that virus. After reading the book, I began to think about ideas as naturally selecting like viruses in a host mind, evolving into their most potent, spreadable form -- the form that requires the least cognitive effort, and which has the most emotional impact, i.e., creates the most activation energy in people who perceive it.

Hating and fearing Communism is much easier to spread when 'communism' is left poorly or even undefined -- it's a complicated word, so it naturally sounds scary; it's simple, low-cognitive-effort, and emotionally powerful because of the vestiges of McCarthyism and the Cold War, as well as the Chinese Communist Party being called the Chinese Communist Party. Socialism is even better, because its definition is so vague; even if you try to engage with it in an effortful manner, if you don't have the relevant knowledge of political/economic philosophy it makes no sense. What the hell is the means of production?

The meaning of these words evolves into their most spreadable -- and therefore least useful -- form. Human brains don't like complexity, because it requires cognitive effort to untangle; specific and nuanced words therefore become bland and vague because they're easier to spread that way.

V. Conclusion

Noticing linguistic inflation helps me identify and avoid pitfalls in communication; I try to avoid using these words, though sometimes they're so useful that I still do and just hope that the surrounding context will be enough for that meaning to persist. I love the phrase, and I hope you will too. It's almost free to use, too: only a small amount of cognitive energy is expended, and in return you get to send someone this fun blog post when they ask you what it means!

My only ask is that you don't overuse the word -- I might cry if linguistic inflation becomes the victim of linguistic inflation. Lingustic inflation is not "when someone applies a specific term in a way I don't like" -- it has this specific and useful meaning, a meaning so nuanced it needs a whole blog post to explain it!