Time to read: 12 minutes(s)

How can I convince my neighbor, Marya Ivanovna, that many people around her are actually against the war? Why did state media curators order Donbas residents to be referred to as "compatriots" and never as "refugees"? What weapons do the weak use against the strong? We spoke with a social anthropologist. Alexandra Arkhipova about her future book Language and WarAnd also about what happens to language during war, what reality it creates, and what techniques are used to achieve this.   

"This book isn't just about the language of propaganda; it's more about how language creates reality," says Alexandra Arkhipova. "Have you ever wondered why there's such a huge number of jargons—criminal, youth, and so on—in such diverse cultures? And they're gradually spreading and permeating the language of educated people: we now use a large number of words that originated from 'low' criminal jargon. And if we look at the development of any jargon, we'll see that all these 'languages ​​within languages' share two specific features. First, it's the vocabulary that most often changes, not the grammar or syntax, meaning a new set of words emerges. Second, some areas are lexically overrepresented: we open a dictionary of youth slang, for example, and find, say, 50 names for drugs. Meanwhile, in Bengali criminal jargon, there are just as many designations for, say, a bomb, a policeman, and a girl." Through such lexical overrepresentation, the vocabulary shifts, and certain areas of life are described in much greater detail. In other words, a language emerges that constructs reality differently and restructures the hierarchy. 

Take, for example, the acclaimed TV series "The Word of a Boy"—thanks to it, the word "chushpan" has reentered the language. Previously, in the 90s, this word and its derivatives were used in criminal slang, but why did it return? Because a word was needed that clearly described this opposition: "us and them." Some linguists call such "languages ​​within languages" anti-languages—not because they are bad, but because they seem to create a different reality and, within this new reality, create different interests and a different social structure. This is precisely the process taking place in Russia now: through changes in language, the presidential administration and Russian journalists working for official media are creating a different reality. This is why Putin's reality diverges from ours. And at the same time, people trying to adapt to this new world are also creating a different language. And if I were to briefly formulate what my book, “Language and War,” would be about, it would be about how new realities are created with the help of language, how people adapt to these new realities with the help of language, and how we are manipulated with the help of these new linguistic forms and new realities. 

— To what extent are these spontaneous processes and to what extent are they controlled? 

"We're currently dealing with several different linguistic processes. There's the language of state media and officials, and the language of the Presidential Administration. It's not at all spontaneous: I have guidelines sent to me by journalists from state media. In them, the curators relay instructions they heard at a meeting with the Presidential Administration on how to write about something." 

— Is this about the “explosion” and the “bang”? 

"No, 'cotton' appeared earlier. These are detailed instructions that have been in place since the beginning of the war: what can be said and written, and what can't. For example, instead of the word 'war,' you should write 'special operation' or 'special military operation,' but there's also a very subtle caveat that the word 'war' can be used in phrases like 'sanctions war' and 'information war.' So, war as a metaphor is okay, but war as a real action is not." 

There are also numerous examples not directly related to the war: for example, during the financial panic in March 2022, the presidential administration indicated that the phrase "restriction on cash issuance," especially in headlines and especially when combined with the word "bank," would result in very hefty fines. Instead, it should be written as "special issuance procedure." That is, if the words "restriction on cash issuance" and "bank" are used together, it evokes a negative association (linguists call this a negative connotation). Therefore, phrases free of any negative associations must be invented. 

I call this technique neutralization: not war, but a special military operation; not a restriction on the issuance of funds, but a special procedure for issuing them. Even earlier, it was not the killing of militants in Chechnya, but their liquidation. In other words, a word that evokes negative connotations is replaced by something vague. Our authorities are quite good at this: their specialty lies in the fact that they don't use euphemisms in the classical sense, but rather neutrononyms. It wasn't a missile that was shot down, but rather "an aerial target was hit." What aerial target? What is an aerial target? Perhaps a balloon? In other words, as a result of neutralization, it's unclear who hit it, why they hit it, what the target is, and so on. 

The second technique used in these official instructions is what I call "super-euphemism": for example, journalists are told outright that residents of Donbas shouldn't be called "residents of Donbas" or "refugees"—those are neutral constructs—but should be called "compatriots," a hyper-positive, slightly archaic term. Or an editor scolds a journalist for writing that some territory in Donbas has been "taken under control": that's not a good enough word; a neutron is not needed; it should be "liberated." 

And the third technique is the use of dysphemisms, aggressive expletives that "destroy" the object or phenomenon being described. Dysphemisms are used to refer to "them": during a tense moment on the front lines, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces were advancing, journalists received manuals prohibiting the use of the word "Ukrainian Armed Forces"—instead, they were to write "National Battalions," "Nazis," "neo-Nazis," "neo-fascists," and "gang formations." Disobedience carried a fine equal to a year's salary, so don't think all this is being done under duress—it's a duress indeed. 

Belgorod Region Governor Gladkov, for example, is a master of these techniques—he uses phrases like "there were claps again today" and even a further development of the neutron word: "loud sounds were heard." He has become so famous for his loud sounds and claps that residents of the Belgorod Region, to whom I am eternally grateful for the various screenshots they send me, have nicknamed him "Governor Khlopkov." 

If language shapes reality, how does this impact the lives of ordinary citizens, especially those who rely on official sources for their information? What reality do they ultimately experience?

Research conducted in experimental linguistics and experimental psychology over the past 50 years shows that manipulating words—that is, substituting synonyms for one another—can alter our perception of reality, shifting it toward the negative or positive. There's a famous experiment by memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus that demonstrates how people recall different things and how they create false memories. Students were divided into five groups and shown a film lasting a few seconds, depicting two cars driving along two deserted roads and colliding at an intersection. Each group was then asked approximately how fast the cars were traveling when they crashed. The question used verbs of varying strengths, all with the general meaning of "to crash": hit, bump, crush, etc. It turned out that the group that received the question with the strongest synonym for "to crash"—crush—estimated the car's speed to be, on average, 10 miles faster than the group that received the verb "hit." That is, the stronger the verb in the question, the greater the force of the blow seemed to people.  

Or take a recent experiment in which psychologists in America asked general practitioners how they tell patients they have heart problems. It turned out that general practitioners don't like to say "heart failure" directly, but rather use a complex system of neutralizations and euphemisms. The psychologists collected all the doctors' favorite variations, mixed them up, and distributed diagnoses to patients: some received the diagnosis written outright, while others received these euphemisms. A week or two later, it turned out that the patients who received the "softened" diagnosis were much less serious about assessing their health, taking their medications less carefully, paying less attention to their diet, and so on—they were simply less frightened. 

Such experiments—and there are many of them—show that our choice of words influences how seriously we take a problem: using euphemisms calms us down, while aggressive dysphemisms tend to be more memorable and increase anxiety. 

"Continuing with the medical theme, the condition of our patients, that is, Russian citizens, is quite serious, but with the help of the Newspeak techniques you described, they were somewhat reassured. So, it turns out they're not assessing their condition very adequately and won't take treatment very seriously?"

"Just look at the most virtuoso speaker of this language—Putin. He speaks only in neutral constructions, avoiding dysphemisms. He avoids words like "mobiki." He's not particularly fond of euphemisms either, but he uses a wide range of neutrons. His job is to say that everything is fine, we have some kind of special military operation, unemployment is falling, all goals will soon be achieved, and there won't be a second mobilization. This is his know-how: you listen to him, and you really do feel calm." 

"But why do seemingly sane people accept everything Putin and his entourage tell them? Why do they live in complete detachment from reality?" 

People like to be detached from reality. More precisely, people like to be in what you and I call a detachment from reality. They focus on the things they can control: their health, their children, grandchildren, work, home, dacha... And yet, Russia's political development over the past twenty years has been geared toward people focusing solely on their private lives and not venturing beyond them. Let's remember how any attempts to engage in non-political, even social, activities, such as environmentalism and animal rights, were persecuted. Two things that would seem to be incredibly far removed from politics, and yet activists are constantly being persecuted—in Yekaterinburg, Tomsk, Novosibirsk... 

We've all had the experience of trying to reach out to loved ones after the Bucha killings or other similar events, only to find they say, "We don't need all this." People don't like feeling trapped in a terrible situation they can't even control. So it's perfectly natural that they try to shield themselves from it. They're very good at creating this cocoon: to emerge from it, you have to believe something can be changed and you have allies. But there aren't any. That's exactly what the Russian government does: it constantly convinces you that those who hold a different viewpoint don't exist. 

Propaganda can't change the minds of oppositional thinkers, but it can convince them that they are alone with their views, that there are very few people who think like them. Therefore, the protest currently unfolding in Russia is a protest of individuals, carefully concealed semiotic guerrillas. 

— Tell us more about them—that’s your term, isn’t it?

— Actually, I simply developed the term "semiotic guerrilla warfare," coined in the late 1960s by Umberto Eco, author of "The Name of the Rose." He was a semiotician, meaning he studied signs and forms of communication. In his lecture on semiotic guerrilla warfare, he discussed what protests of the future would look like when "strong groups" control every information signal coming from the authorities—which, in fact, is what we're seeing now—and sending any alternative signals would become impossible. The only thing that would be possible would be to manipulate the signals received from the authorities, somehow replacing them on the ground.

This, according to Eco, is how a "semiotic guerrilla war" will be waged. This is where "semiotic guerrillas" come from—people who, unlike ordinary guerrillas, don't blow up trains but instead replace signs. Their task in modern Russia is to ensure that the majority of people oppose war. Imagine Maria Ivanovna. She enters a building entrance, and there's a sign that says, "No to war." She leaves the entrance, and there's another sign on the door: "The computer technician won't come," and next to it, in smaller letters, "He was taken to war." She walks to the bus stop, and there are the letters "ХВ," thinking they mean "Christ is risen." She gets closer, and there's a sign that says, "Stop fighting." And thus, she realizes that many people around her share this same sentiment. In other words, semiotic guerrilla warfare is the substitution of signs in personal space, with the goal of causing the authorities to lose their hegemony over shaping reality. Another good thing about it is that it’s very difficult to get to the bottom of it: was it done this way on purpose or was it an accident?

In an authoritarian society, where communication between government officials and citizens is disrupted, there is no interaction, and instead there is constant pressure from the strong on the weak and calls for silence, the only form of protest that emerges is the so-called "weapons of the weak": figs in the pocket, laughter, rumors, jokes...

— Will you tell me a joke?

Well, if we're talking about Newspeak, I really like the joke: "The milk didn't run away: it performed a coagulation and transfer operation."