Language Barriers as a Form of Censorship

When a philosopher writes a work on language, whether about the question of meaning, pragmatics, or reference, they write about the philosophical homunculus ‘natural language’. The notion of natural language is that common languages, the world’s living languages, share underlying semantical structures while their syntax may differ. The English word ‘wheel’ means that thing which rotates round an axle in order to move an object, the German word ‘Rad’ means the same thing. Whether we talk about ‘wheel’ or ‘Rad’ does not matter when we are asking ourselves about the semantic or pragmatic questions about language with which philosophy busies itself. Such an idealization, from differing languages to universal structure, is likely a necessity if philosophers wish to practice a productive philosophy of language. But I believe that such an abstraction leads to a missed aspect of human interaction that is caused by the fact that the languages people speak do differ. Namely communication or the attempt thereof between people who do not speak the same language.

Suppose there are two speakers, for simplicity’s sake I will call them Smith and Oscar. Smith is a native French speaker, and Oscar a native German speaker. If the two were to meet, then in order to communicate they have a number of options. They could find an interpreter or use a translation tool such as Google Translate but most likely they would choose to try and speak in a language they both speak which is not their own, a lingua franca. Currently English fills that role, but in the past the role has been filled by French and Latin. While the example of Smith and Oscar, both speaking their nonnative language, is innocent, the majority of cases are not so. In the majority of cases whether one speaker is a native speaker of the lingua franca or one simply has higher proficiency, the communication that takes place does not take place neutrally, one person has an advantage. By an advantage I mean ease of expression, access to a larger vocabulary, comfort with speaking the sounds of a language, etc. When a person is forced to take part in unneutral communication in a language they are not a proficient speaker in, a constraint on the expression of their ideas is imposed. A lingua franca creates a structural form of censorship for those who are not proficient in the lingua franca¹.

A further analysis of censorship is necessary here, as the censorship mentioned above is atypical. It does not function through explicit prohibition, nor is there a punishment attached to violating it. Censorship is widely understood as a forced restriction on freedom of speech, but this is a vague and inadequate definition. Censorship restricts a number of different forms of expression, the most obvious being the restriction of speaking and writing, but movies and plays have also been censored in the past. What these situations all have in common is the restriction of expression, of ideas, beliefs, or desires, for example, on a certain subject matter. The act of expression I understand as having a certain belief in proposition p and the desire to express p, these two manifest the intention to act. When the intention to perform an act of expression is manifested but forcefully suffocated, in such a way that the actual act of expression cannot occur, nor can it occur in any other way, I believe is censorship. The fact that a lingua franca causes a structural form of censorship follows from three points: speaking a lingua franca is forced, a lingua franca restricts a person’s expressive capabilities, and that restriction results in the same consequences as explicit censorship.

Firstly, while the censorship caused by a lingua franca is not done explicitly, through legislation or threats, it is forced. For participation in international organizations proficiency in English is required, for participation in the majority of academic institutions (as this paper proves) English is needed, migration to a new country with a different native language English serves as the vital communication source. In the majority of situations where interaction between two speakers of different native languages occurs there is little alternative then the use of English as a tool of communication. Secondly when a non-proficient English speaker is forced to speak English a restriction is placed on their expressive ability. A belief and desire will manifest an intention to act in their mind but while such an intention could be fulfilled in their own language their non-proficiency with English suffocates this intention to perform an expressive act. And finally, the forced restriction that a lingua franca applies to non-proficient English speakers has the same results as more typical forms of censorship. Namely that of silencing a specific group, non-proficient English speakers, and inequality as those who are proficient in English dominate spaces of open debate and discourse. Further proficient English speakers set standards for what is deemed as intelligent, credible, charismatic and a large host of other cultural standards.

While the aforementioned definition of censorship is likely much too wide, using it to analyze the use of a lingua franca shows us important things about censorship. Censorship does not have to be performed intentionally by a person or explicitly through legislation. When a restriction on expression is forced and leads to the silencing of ideas and inequality that is a form of censorship, whether any person intentionally enforces it or not. I would term such a distinction as a distinction of explicit censorship, intentionally enforced censorship, and structural censorship, censorship that is not intentional but is still forced onto a group of people implicitly through how human interaction is structured.

In light of this distinction, I would like to look at two texts, firstly Kant’s essay What is Enlightenment, this text deals directly with explicit censorship, and Lorde’s essay Transforming Silence Into Language & Action. Both texts provide a prescription for what one should do when they are suffering from censorship. But I will argue that both make a baseline assumption that all people are in a state to communicate with all other people, which is simply not the case.

In What is Enlightenment Kant responds to an explicit censorship executed by the state and the church, “But I hear from all sides the cry: Do not argue! The officer says: Do not argue but drill! The tax official: Do not argue but pay! The clergyman: Do not argue but believe!”² Kant makes the distinction between a public and private sphere. The private sphere is the sphere of our lives where we are a cog in the machinery of society. Kant says that in this domain we should obey, we should not speak out when our boss or government official restricts our reason (the Kantian term for what I have called expression). In other words, we must perform our duties as citizens. On the other hand, there is the public domain, the time we have where we are not bound to a boss or an official where we are free to spend our time as we wish. Our reason in the public domain cannot be restricted, we are free to argue and yell that the governmental decrees are unjust and the stories of the clergyman false and corrupt. What Kant argues against in What is Enlightenment is the censorship of reason in the public domain.

Kant’s proposed solution to the censorship of the public domain is the process of enlightenment:

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! Is thus the motto of enlightenment.³

Kant believes that human beings need to stop relying on the tax official and the clergyman to direct their reasoning in the public domain but must instead act based off of their own understanding and reasoning.

Kant’s understanding of the public domain hinges on the fact that all the people in it can make their reasoning public, that they can in fact express their thoughts in such a way that all other members of the public domain can understand it. This does not hold in the case of those who do not speak the native language of the community they are a part of. Thus, even if Kant proposes an individual acts from their own understanding and beliefs, their reasoning is free, they cannot express themselves in such a way that properly conveys the entirety of their thoughts due to a language barrier! I believe Kant makes the mistake of equating the ability to reason to the ability to express oneself, even if one dares to be wise in the face of explicit censorship they can still be subjected to the structural censorship of language.

In Transforming Silence Into Language & Action Lorde writes about what I have called in this paper structural censorship. For Lorde, the majority of our acts of expression are suffocated, while we may have a belief and a desire, the intention to express them might be there the act itself does not come to fruition. This Lorde calls being silent, in the terminology of this paper we can also refer to it as being censored. As to why we are silent, Lorde talks of two forms of structural censorship which she sees as closely intertwined. Firstly, self-censorship. Whether we wish to or not we fear the judgements of others, the visibility that our acts of expressions give us, and we worry what others might do to us because of our acts of expression. A second form of structural censorship is the censorship of being in a marginalized community. Lorde speaks on the fears and doubts that lead to self-censorship as being formed and linked to the person somebody is in society. The fear is not something one feels in isolation but is dependent on somebody’s position in society, their race, their gender, their sexual orientation are all directly touched upon by Lorde.

For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.⁴

Lorde’s proposed solution is the transformation of silence into an action through the use of language. One must realize that no matter what the situation is the silence, censorship will not protect them, and it will not help them. Importantly it is not the negation of those fears, it is not saying that those fears do not exist, but it is acting even though those fears do exist that Lorde insists upon.

Lorde’s account of silence reveals how fear, internalized through social structures, suffocates expression. Yet her analysis assumes that once one has the courage to speak, speech itself is possible. Much like Kant, the censorship of the speaker who is at a disadvantage in communication when a language barrier is present presents a bleak picture. They suffer from the sort of structural censorship that Lorde deals with but the solution she offers is not available to them. The choice to push past that silence is not a possibility because one needs proficiency with language in order to transform that silence into action. No matter how much one wants to express oneself, to fight for oneself, to act with the intention to, it will always be suffocated. Yet the most powerful part of Lorde’s analysis of censorship is the fact that I think she is right. The answer that she gives to the problem of censorship is the only answer that seems possible if one wishes to fight the censorship, yet in this case it is not applicable.

Bibliography

Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Edited by Mary J. Gregor. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Penguin Modern Classics. Penguin Books, 2019.