Repeated slogans sever language from lived experience, linking advertising with totalitarian control.

Evidence

The blind and rapidly spreading repetition of words with special designations links advertising with the totalitarian watchword. The layer of experience which created the words for their speakers has been removed; in this swift appropriation language acquires the coldness which until now it had only on billboards and in the advertisement columns of newspapers. Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes; in this sense, words are trade-marks which are finally all the more firmly linked to the things they denote, the less their linguistic sense is grasped. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Direct precursor to the modern critique of political catchphrases and brand language empting out meaning; connects to media-studies treatments of sloganeering. — connects to: Fragmenting dominant slogans linguistically lets colonized subjects remap their own identity — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2505; Advertising doubles language into a mockery that linguistics cannot analyze — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 310; Advertising-saturated media itself demonstrates the flattening of critical thought. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 101 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Fragmenting dominant slogans linguistically lets colonized subjects remap their own identity #responds-to (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2505
• Advertising’s suspicion-inducing logic extends to political propaganda #expands (0.85)
• Propaganda slogans embedded in organization become un-questionable reality #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 846
• Advertising doubles language into a mockery that linguistics cannot analyze #expands (0.80) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 310
• Hitler’s propaganda theory held that repetition of a few slogans beats factual accuracy #corroborates (0.80) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3061
• Repeated negative representations lead audiences to accept them as truths #corroborates (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 498
• A descriptive term can be re-encoded as a racist slur by repeated association #exemplifies (0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 993
• Advertising-saturated media itself demonstrates the flattening of critical thought. #expands (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 101
• Hate speech can achieve genocidal ends through repetition rather than reasoned persuasion. #complicates (0.75)
• Advertising compels consumers to identify with and demand the products imposed on them #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 98
• Vague ideological slogans can mask rather than resolve real political contradictions #corroborates (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2766
• Audiences can decode the same message in a globally contrary or oppositional way #complicates (0.75)
• Ideological labels move people through affect, not cognitive content #expands (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1995