Society can be divided among horizontal and vertical lines. Just to be clear; diversity is natural, diversity is one of natural laws. Saying that, I want to explore how language divides society with the emphasis on horizontal division.
Example of vertical societal division due to language: English language vs. French language.
How language shows/emphasizes horizontal division in society? Human language is hard to learn, even more than mathematics.
Children from more affluent families usually spend their time in environment where their parents, their siblings, their peers use mother tongue with greater sophistication. Adding to this, children from more affluent families often have resources at their disposal to learn more than one language. Their immediate surrounding encourages that.
How this reflects in a life of an ordinary person? Whenever we speak a bit longer to anybody, after some time we can understand the level of education – better said – the difference in our educational level based on what words we use and concepts we can mentally juggle.
Yes, we can understand the use of language as – sort of – a tool to establish our position in social hierarchy. Of course, one can forget simple fact that fireman or policeman have no use of words packed with meaning, but usually contribute to society far more than regular babler.
Looking at modern democracy we can understand that power is within the masses. And… who can harness that power? The one who can talk to masses and mobilize them.
So far, the right wing parties are winning this game. People on the left of political spectrum can have good intention, nice visions of the future, even promote and do things which would narrow the economic division between people (horizontal division in society). Giving children from poorer families opportunity to rise from poverty. Giving equal opportunities to everybody, and by doing so, harnessing full potential of the society.
But we, people inclined to the left of political spectrum, have often had difficulty to approach masses. To approach regular person, whatnot one deprived from her/his basic human rights. The very people we are trying to elevate from misery – for the benefit of all of us!
It is a paradox, but existing one. Only by bending backwards and abandoning our eloquence in exchange for clarity of speech we can invigorate the potential we are so keen to harness.
Looking at Diem25, we can see good work done by our prominent figures such as Yanis, who is trained academic and professor. By his profession, Yanis has to “spoon feed” young undergraduate minds with complex and abstract concepts by using allegories, analogies and metaphors. Yanis’ popularity is natural consequence of his ability and we should all learn from him.