Who controls the words, controls the thought. “Cités”, the journal of the Presses Universitaires de France devotes a remarkable dossier to the very current theme of the language under control. We know Aesop's fable; His master, Xanthos, ordered him to go and buy what is best at the market: he brings back language because it is indeed the best thing, "
the link of civil life, the key to science, 'organ of truth and reason
'. The next day, to embarrass him, Xanthos asks him to bring back the worst food: he brings language because it is also the worst thing in the world "
the mother of all debates, the nurse of trials, the source of divisions and wars
".
Moral of the story?
Language is a neutral instrument which depends on the free use that one makes of it.
This idea of a neutrality of the "language of Aesop" familiar to classical thought begins to change at the time of the Enlightenment, and the French revolution will be a paroxysmal moment of this temptation of
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