Every student of
French or German is familiar with the phrase “false friends.” False friends are
those words one comes across that look enough like some English word that the
unwise student will assume that they mean the same thing. For instance, the French
verb, blesser, which means wound, and the English verb bless, which means to
wish something good.
The idea that false
friends operate only across language lines, however, strikes me as a limitation
on a very useful concept. I think that false friends operate within different
subgroups with different jargons within one language. Look at how the word “woke”
or the term “cancel culture” has shifted between subgroups. When you see a “debate” between the right and
the left in America, it is often like hearing one group of people using “bless[er]”
to mean injure and another group meaning to wish a benediction on. Of course,
often – and this is a common rightwing tactic – the use of the term will be
intentionally mangled, so that the debate (a puzzlingly idolized idea on the
right, ever since the right was all about “debating” the Iraq invasion back in
the early 00s, which involved debaters who spoke no Arabic and had the thinnest
of notions about what Iraq actually was) is poisoned at the root. This is, of
course, one of the diseases to which conversation will always be heir. False
friends show up in every sphere. We live in an era that especially relies on
false friends to make social media happen, and to create both anger and
passivity among the masses. An angry passivity – is this what we want?
2 comments:
I always feel better when I read your blog. Thank you.
Bruce, thanks! My blog isn't read very much anymore and nobody writes comments, like in the old days. Which makes me sad. i plow on anyway. I'm inspired by this street preacher who used to set up in front of the seven eleven on Wiltshire in Santa Monica. I would pass by him when we lived there, and my son Adam was one, and settled comfortably in his stroller. That preacher would be whooping, uttering judgment and in general addressing the streetflow. The streetflow was indifferent. I admired the mission, but I hurried past with Adam, not wanting to be judged. One day he wasn't there. And that was that. I found that guy scarily emblematic. So, here I still am!
Post a Comment