Ideological Abuse Series: Take Care When Discussing "Loaded Language"
Less than useful as a red flag of ideological abuse
[Previously: Some Terminology; Ideological Abuse Is A Spectrum.]
“Loaded language” is a term which comes from Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, a very popular book about ideological abuse. “Loaded language” refers to the jargon used by an ideologically abusive community.
There are three different ways that loaded language makes it easier to ideologically abuse people. First, loaded language can make it hard to relate to outsiders: if you’re using terms like “thetans” or “new light” or “calling” in ways that don’t make sense to people outside your community, it can be hard to talk to them. Many people find excessive use of jargon confusing or even creepy.
Second, loaded language can enforce the beliefs of the abusive organization. Sometimes this happens through connotations: all the positive connotations of, say, “fruitfulness” become attached to, say, the concept of not using contraception. Other times, it happens through the abusive organization’s ontology: an abusive organization can redefine “freedom” to mean “doing whatever the organization tells you without question,” and this makes it harder to think about being able to make your own choices.
Third, loaded language can be a response to doubts or questions via thought-terminating cliches (a term originally invented by Lifton). When you start to wonder whether something about the abusive organization is a bit off, or if one of the claims is wrong, a thought-terminating cliche immediately jumps to mind: “God works in mysterious ways,” maybe, or “work the steps,” or “cut off toxic people who don’t believe in you,” or “you just have to put positive energy out into the universe.”
So far, so manipulative. But “loaded language” can also be one of the most difficult ideologically abusive dynamics.
You know who else uses jargon? Everyone.
Every group—even low-commitment groups—has its own language it uses to refer to subjects of interest to itself and of little interest to outsiders. Fans talk about “shipping” and “whump”; basketball players use terms like “alley-oop” and “fishhook cut”; programmers discuss “pull requests” and “whiteboarding.” Basketball players are not an ideologically abusive community just because I have no idea what a fishhook cut is.
And every group ends up developing its own jargon even about things that you’d think everyone would have a reason to reference. The best way to get a real sense of this, in my opinion, is to listen to a podcast aimed at some subculture whose members you’ve never talked to. You’ll discover that, say, evangelicals are forever deconstructing things. Every five minutes an evangelical is deconstructing something. Even after having listened to all of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, I am not entirely sure what it means when they deconstruct something, but they sure are very enthusiastic about it.
(And, of course, if an evangelical listened to a podcast from my ingroup, they would be equally baffled by why everyone is constantly going to Schelling points.)
A group’s jargon is a way of expressing its ontology. Having a word like, well, “ontology” is an implicit claim that this is a useful way of cutting up the world. That’s just… kind of how words work? Of course, if you have a messed-up ontology, you have a bunch of unusual words to express it—but if you have an accurate or useful ontology, you also often have a bunch of unusual words to express it. Scientists use words like “evolution” or “theory” or “work” differently from how most people use them, because they have a different set of concepts they use and distinctions they make. That doesn’t make science ideologically abusive.
Even thought-terminating cliches aren’t necessarily a sign of an abusive community. Most thought-terminating cliches are also, in other situations, useful if hackneyed insights. Sometimes you do need to cut off toxic people who don’t believe in you, sometimes an alcoholic does need to stop ruminating about things that don’t concern them and concentrate on the twelve steps, and sometimes religious people do get legitimate, nonabusive comfort from the idea that they’re suffering because God has a plan they don’t understand yet—comfort which doesn’t stop them from taking steps to leave bad situations. The mere fact that these sentences are floating around doesn’t mark a community as abusive.
Even if an individual is using thought-terminating cliches, their community might not be abusive. People use thought-terminating cliches to avoid confronting all sorts of inconvenient or uncomfortable truths: that their relationship is going nowhere, that they’re a bad parent, that their meds aren’t working, that they don’t really believe in God anymore. No community has, unfortunately, managed to eliminate rationalization.
“Loaded language” is an accusation that, with a little creativity, you could make against nearly any community. While it is useful for abuse victims trying to understand exactly how abuse worked, it’s often not very helpful to identify abusive communities from the outside.
…In other words, it’s loaded language?
Maybe a better way of identifying cults is to zero in on groups that do not allow members to opt out of the loaded language. In other words, if a person who uses standard terminology will be immediately attacked and corrected for doing so. (No, we don't have "rules," we have "agreements," and if you think otherwise, you're wrong).