Totalitarian collective language is as vacuous as private stylistic caprice
Evidence
The fact that human beings are absorbed by the totality without being humanly equal to it, makes institutionalized linguistic forms as vacuous as naively individualistic tone-values, and equally fruitless is the attempt to turn the tables on the former by admitting them to the literary medium: people incapable of reading a diagram posing as engineers. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 237
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Adorno’s later critique in The Jargon of Authenticity and to a general theory of reified language. — connects to: Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 930; Ideology operates through language itself, not merely through false beliefs — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 698; Totalitarian elites treat ideology as content-free organizational function — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 890 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Totalitarian elites treat ideology as content-free organizational function
#corroborates(0.78) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 890 - Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds
#expands(0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 930 - Ideology operates through language itself, not merely through false beliefs
#corroborates(0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 698