Can Language Affect Morality?
BY STEPH KOYFMAN at +Babbel magazine
Language and morality: is there really a link there? Is morality subjective, or does the compass always bend to a “true north” that exists outside of our cultural biases?
Here he is writing about morality using language and then asking whether language can affect morality.
What am I missing here? How could any discussion of morality bursting at the seams with language -- words -- not impart consequences?
Words like these: "How ought one to behave morally in a world bursting at the seams with both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change?"
Given a particular context.
A context is chosen, the arguments are made. And depending on how successful we are at conveying our points, after the discussion we might actually prompt some to change their behaviors.
Indeed, the whole debate about subjective/objective morality itself...try to imagine it unfolding if no language at all was used.
So, of course language can affect morality. The real question is how successful we are at connecting the dots between words and worlds.
The idea of an objective sense of “right” and “wrong” has a strong hold on our cultural imagination, and it’s one that is central to many major religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
With religious language, however, the point is less regarding the words used to champion "commandments" here and now and more regarding the words used to champion "immortality" and "salvation" there and then. Words used to describe Heaven and Hell too. Morality before
and after you die.
Leave it to scientific inquiry, then, to poke some holes in this theory. Various studies have shown that moral judgments can actually change when they’re made in a foreign language, veering toward a more dispassionate, utilitarian take. That’s not to say that foreign languages make us less moral — just that they make us a different kind of moral.
And then the part where, over time, historically, the language of morality can also shift dramatically. And then the part where each of us as individuals can encounter personal experiences so different that "good" and "bad" revolve around ever more problematic exchanges of language.
Thus, for philosophers, the invention of deontology. The belief that, say, ethicists, if they think, really, really hard enough, they might become the next Immanuel Kant.