Nothingspeak
nothingspeak (noun)
Language or communication that appears profound or meaningful but is constructed with vague, semantically empty, or imprecise words, provoking emotional responses rather than conveying substantive ideas.
Origin: [21st century]: a compound of nothing and speak, denoting speech or language with no substantive content.
Words
The above is a word I’m trying to single-handedly formalise into 21st century speech. I [thought I] came up with it today while sipping coffee and earbawing Stuart Chase’s sublime 1938 work Tyranny of Words - available at all [the] good bookstores.
Tyranny
Perhaps the book is more apt than ever in human history. The title alone gong-smashes your head as you think of our current ideological landscape.
Coming off the 2024 election, I don’t think anyone with a functioning brain could argue current use of the English language in ideological messaging is remotely defined or concrete. I use the term ‘ideological’ because this affliction spans all nodes (nodes, not modes) of existence. Tech, wellness, politics, religion, economics, business. With an aperture wide enough it appears to me the same pattern is visible:
Garbled bullshittry.
This is where Chase’s book is such a gift. He advocated for education in Semantic Discipline:
Operational Definitions:
Words as observable actions, measurable facts, or specific conditions.
Example: Instead of babbling about “Freedom” - define freedom: “freedom to [do something]” vote for idiots, say dumb things, whatever.
Avoiding Abstractions:
Abstract nonsense like “justice” “progress” “wokeness” or “patriotism” are pure nothingspeak. People who talk like this would have an aneurysm if asked for a concrete definition.
Example: What does "justice" mean in context? Legality? Revenge? Reform?
Reality Check:
Words and statements have to have verifiable, empirical evidence. If there’s none, it's likely a form of manipulation or misdirection. Essentially
anythingeverything Jordan Peterson says.Example (from Peterson himself): "Postmodernism leaves its practitioners without an ethic. Action in the world (even perception) is impossible without an ethic, so one has to be at least allowed in through the back door. The fact that such allowance produces a logical contradiction appears to bother the low-rent postmodernists who dominate the social sciences and humanities not at all." Which postmodernists specifically reject ethics? Contradictions how? What are you TALKING ABOUT bro?
Challenging Emotional Appeals:
Look out for Voight-Kampff language without providing substance. Stuff designed to provoke an emotional response while masking paper-thin arguments or being manipulative in nature.
Example: "We must protect our values": Define ‘values’. Which ones? Protect from what? The bad pixies?
Glittering Generalities:
Banal positive but non-specifics like "hope" or "progress".
Example: When someone says, "We need progress," ask, "Progress toward what? Whose? What’s the trade-off?"
Semantic Hygiene:
Defrag language to ensure precision and bin unnecessary ambiguity or emotional manipulation.
Example: Replace "Kids are soft these days" (arbitrary broad and emotionally combative) with “Younger generations prioritise mental health and work-life balance more than previous gen models [and it makes me butthurt because I’m so fragile]"
The Point
I don’t mean to belabour, but if I’m going to talk about semantic precision I should at least provide some background and context around it.
I’ve written adjacent to this before in Voyheuristics - the email pretty much nobody got because spam filters thought it looked sus, and aim to cover Philosfluencers down the line here or the other place. I’m often driven to make noise about this because I see otherwise smart cookies reposting absolute garbage because it ‘sounds right’ despite being pure nothingspeak.
I’m not asking anyone to become a skeptic neckbeard ackchyuallying their way to splainville. I am just letting everyone know that the term nothingspeak might become a nice ruler to keep in the pochette arrière.
/EOF
Lore for Today
“earbaw” means “listen” with an origin in “eyebaw” (eye+baw where baw = ball) meaning “watch”
Tyranny of Words is public domain and scans of the book are available on the internet. I chose to convert PDF to text, embedding fonts, then use GPT to strip and format the .txt file, then upload to the Elevenlabs Reader to have Laurence Olivier read it to me (of course).
The “good bookstore” is Bookshop.org - they support Indie bookshops in a very cool way.
I also want to cover what I call ‘inverse precision’ - obsessive categorisation of trivial details while failing to define the important bits at some point.