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Legislating Language and Truth

February 2, 2012, 12:01 am

The 1897 session of the Indiana General Assembly passed “A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth.” It asserted that (i) the ratio of the chord and arc of a 90-degree segment of a circle was 7/8; (ii) the ratio of said chord to the circle’s diameter (hence to the diagonal of a square inscribed in the circle) was 7/10; and (iii) the ratio of the diameter to the circumference was (5/4)/4. Pi must be equal to 3.2 for these things to be true. Yet the bill nearly made it through committee in the Senate, until one senator pointed out that it was ultra vires for the Assembly to define mathematical truth.

You have to watch out for loonies when you put lawmaking in the hands of ordinary folks. Yet what’s the alternative? Surely Churchill was right that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” (U.K. House of Commons, November 11, 1947). Other political systems all seem worse; yet when you assemble a few hundred ambitious people who managed to win elections and let them vote on proposed laws, you occasionally get silliness. Possibly about mathematical truth, or even linguistic truth.

The latter came up this past week when the French Senate passed a bill (already passed by the National Assembly in December) criminalizing a specific linguistic act: asserting that the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey during 1915 does not satisfy the definition of the word genocide.

This law (which President Sarkozy is widely expected to sign into law) makes it a crime to deny or “outrageously minimize” the number and motivation of the mass killings of Armenians. To assert the view “What happened in 1915 was not genocide” would be a prosecutable offense. The bill legislatively insists that a certain set of contingent historical events meet the criteria for use of the term genocide, and forbids asserting the opposite. If a document were found proving that all the killings of Armenians in 1915 were unintended side effects of a hyperspace bypass construction operation by extra-terrestrials, it would apparently be illegal for historians to discuss the document at a conference in France. This is legislative idiocy.

Turkey reacted with the fury that it usually displays when the 1915 events are mentioned: recall of the ambassador, barring entry to French military aircraft and ships, etc. The Turkish prime minister called the law “racist” (!), and the Turkish press went wild: Hurriyet accused Sarkozy (who favors the bill) of massacring democracy, and Sozcu called him Satan.

The latter two charges are ridiculous. First, democracy is working fine in France: When a duly elected legislature passes a silly law and it is signed into law by a properly elected president, it may be misguided, but it’s not undemocratic. It’s just Churchill’s “worst form of government” in action. (And it may not even come to anything: Two groups of legislators have petitioned to have the bill referred to the constitutional council.)

Second, Sarkozy clearly isn’t Satan. I’ve seen pictures of Satan. He has horns, and is quite tall, with an arrow-tipped tail. No similarity. So let’s nip that rumor in the bud right now. (Perhaps the French should pass a law criminalizing any repetition of it? Just kidding.)

I have not expressed any opinion about the history. Since Armenian-Turkish journalist and editor Hrant Dink was murdered in broad daylight for treating the topic, I’m not exactly eager to. And my ignorance of early 20th-century Anatolian history is profound, so perhaps it’s just as well. But Mark Liberman noted on Language Log that The New York Times, after decades of demurral, reportedly decided in 2004 that “genocide” was and is an appropriate word for the events in question. (And you don’t turn the Gray Lady around easily—The New York Times still requires clause-initial whom, for heaven’s sake).

Mass killings of Armenians in Turkey as the Ottoman Empire collapsed appear to be copiously documented. My reasons for calling the French legislation crazy do not lie in any disagreement about the documentation. And I don’t care for wacky historical contrarians—nobody despises Holocaust deniers more than I do. I just think that it would be a monumental blunder to enact a law stipulating a point of lexical denotation. Insisting that you have to count the events as meeting the definition of genocide is as silly as trying to legislate the area of a square inscribed in a circle of diameter n.

The right way to handle thought crimes (or mathematical contradictions) is the American way: We grit our teeth and let people utter their loony ideas. We don’t use the criminal law to define their lexical denotations as erroneous or to forbid their ideas from being uttered.

Sarkozy isn’t Satan, and the fanatical Turkish denialism about 1915 is not virtuous or even sensible; but passing a law stipulating anything about how the word genocide is to be applied would be a stupid legislative mistake.

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http://twitter.com/hjustinpace Justin Pace

If you think normal people make silly laws, you should see those made by abnormal people.

dank48

Who do you think runs for political office? Normal people, or people who think they know how to run other people’s lives better than the people themselves? As Gore Vidal pointed out in State of the Union in 1976, the definitions of “politician” and “psychopath” are disturbingly similar. This seems to me to be true everywhere, not just in France or here in Indiana.

Most laws are made by abnormal people. The wonder is not that the laws are crazy, but that they aren’t crazier.

salchaktoka

I find it remarkable that France, which not so long was shooting Parisian Algerians by the hundreds and dumping their corpses in the Seine and wreaked unimaginable havoc in its colonies, still refuses to make amends for its crimes and presumes to lecture us about human rights.
beedhamm

The main piece of support for your argument (something to the effect of it’s “legislative idiocy”) is stated here:

“The right way to handle thought crimes (or mathematical contradictions) is the American way: We grit our teeth and let people utter their loony ideas. We don’t use the criminal law to define their lexical denotations as erroneous or to forbid their ideas from being uttered.”
Now ask, what proof is there for this statement in the rest of your article? You’ve taken a serious, complex, nuanced situation and attempted to treat it in a lighthearted fashion, primarily by repeating something to the effect of it’s “a stupid legislative mistake.”

Perhaps a cognitive linguist, like Lakoff, would be better suited to comment on this issue?
Guest

The argument that Sarkozy isn’t Satan seems very solid, compelling even, but this business about handling looney thought crimes with gritted teeth…. I thought the American way was to give the perpetrators PhD’s and/or elect them to Congress
http://www.facebook.com/people/Գաբրիել-Խաչատրյան/100003349133364 Գաբրիել Խաչատրյան

Sound like you (the author) are one of the extremely uneducated (although have the opportunity to study whatever desired), wrongly self-confident Midwesterns that I’ve seen for years while studying there, that are no different from the uneducated (mainly cause they don’t have the choice to study), extremely ignorant immigrants whom I see every day now at the East Coast.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4918925 John Petrie

Geoffrey Pullum: “Governments have no business legislating word definitions, any more than they have legislating mathematical relationships. We also shouldn’t silence, censor, fine, imprison, threaten, or otherwise punish people for the words they say and write that harm no one, however wrong or insulting they are.”

You: “You must be an uneducated, ignorant, privileged, out-of-touch moron.”

Nice job. You made your case really well, except I thought your Concluding Statement could have used a few more baseless insults.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Գաբրիել-Խաչատրյան/100003349133364 Գաբրիել Խաչատրյան

Next time you quote someone be less creative. If you thought that the words uneducated and ignorant were meant as insults from me, you are mistaken.

But, I think, the thing is you are a Midwestern, and you being very narrow-minded (now, THAT’S an insult) made the rush assumption that I’m stereotyping all Midwesterns with that label.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4918925 John Petrie

“If you thought that the words uneducated and ignorant were meant as insults from me, you are mistaken.”

That is the single most pathetic backpedaling I have ever encountered on the internet. Of course they are insults, and if you didn’t mean them as such, then you don’t know what “ignorant” and “uneducated” mean or you don’t know what “insults” means.

I am not a Midwesterner, not that my state of birth has anything to do with this, and my comment had nothing to do with your (mis)use of the word “Midwesterner” because I have no idea what you are trying to imply by that word. I don’t see how the state someone is from has anything to do with Geoffrey Pullum’s post, the word “genocide”, the outlawing of certain language, or your first post. Maybe it means something completely different in your part of the world? My first comment addressed what Dr. Pullum said and your response to it, not any stereotyping. I don’t know how anyone could confuse my comment as an accusation of stereotyping, seeing as how it only mentioned two people. I also don’t know how you could think I was making “the rush assumption that [you're] stereotyping all Midwesterns” when I didn’t even mention that word.

beedhamm

When did we agree that the deniers of genocide use “words … that harm no one”?

I suspect that we have to be a bit more careful to make sure that when we write “no one” we don’t just mean “me and the people like me.”

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4918925 John Petrie

Of course words themselves harm no one, except emotionally and psychologically to the extent that the victim lets them. I guess you should be arrested and charged with a crime for harming my emotional state? Should I be arrested and charged with a crime for insulting you and the Armenian person above? How about if I said these things in the wrong locations:

The Holocaust never happened. Hitler was a great guy. No events in or around 1915 could be considered genocide, especially as concerns Armenians.

Those are all false statements and terribly offensive and ignorant, but no one was harmed by them. Yet according to German law and soon-to-be French law, I could be punished by law for typing them within their borders. That is absurd. If you disagree, I doubt either one of us will gain much by continuing this discussion.

Do you think it’s morally unjust right now, i.e., an attack that should be punishable or defensible by force, to deny that Armenians were the victims of genocide? Or is it only wrong after a government outlaws it? If it has always been harmful since 1915, then what action or recourse should victims of such denial have been taking all these years? Surely they are right to strike out in self-defense in response to such offenses. What compensation are they due? If it has always been morally wrong, then surely it is wrong everywhere,
not just France or Turkey or Armenia. Plenty of Armenians live in the U.S. What punishment should the New
York Times be subject to for refusing to acknowledge it as a genocide?
Surely if it’s wrong, period, regardless of law or geography, then I
should be put in jail or fined heavily (or retaliated against in
self-defense by all my victims) for typing it to prove a point.

Furthermore, surely there is not just one word in all of the French language
that the government should determine the definition of. What other words
fit the criterion of requiring definition by the government? What words
in the English language fit the bill?

Is denying that Armenians were the victims of genocide a punishable offense if any human sees or hears it? Or just Armenians? Should the severity of the punishment be proportional to the number of humans or specifically Armenians who are exposed to it? What about someone who copies and spreads a speech or writing with such denials? Should this person be commended for alerting the Armenians (or all humans) to such offenses, or should they be punished similarly to the original perpetrator for spreading such lies? The words themselves do harm, remember, so it can’t matter why that person was motivated to spread the offending speech or what context it was done in or what commentary the spreader appended to the genocide denial. (You can’t rob someone and say “Theft is wrong” to avoid punishment. If the words do harm, the offender must be punished, right?) If someone wrote it in a private, personal journal and it was discovered happenstance by a visitor, should that offense also become punishable? After all, the words themselves are harmful. What if no Armenians actually saw it? What if only a single half-Armenian saw it? Should the fine be reduced by half?

How about implicit denial? Is that an aggression against person or
property that should be punishable by force of law? For instance,
someone talks about Armenians or Turks in or around 1915 but simply
fails to mention the word “genocide”. What if they use all kinds of
other words, like massacre or slaughter or travesty or injustice, but
implicitly deny that it was genocide by avoiding this specific word?
Surely that must also be wrong, not just after Sarkozy signs the bill
but every day since the genocide ended (or even during it). What if
future books about genocide are published that do not mention anything
about Armenians? How about any current books about ethnic cleansing or genocide that might not mention the
Armenian genocide and thereby implicitly deny it? By your logic, such
books must necessarily be banned in France, and unless you’d say that
right and wrong depend only on the law, such books should be banned
everywhere, forever, in self-defense to prevent further harm being done
by the words on their pages. If anyone’s definition of right and wrong
depends on what laws politicians write and pass, then they can’t carry
on an intelligent conversation with me.

The reason Dr. Pullum did not offer a detailed or academic defense of his contention that this French law is the wrong way to deal with offensive speech is probably partly because none is needed. It is self-evident. One’s innate right to free speech is not bound by anyone’s sensibilities or any laws, and certainly not math or history. If you agree with such censorship and dismissal of free speech, then, well, I would certainly want nothing to do with authoritarians of your ilk. Denying someone of a part of their property and liberty for typing or saying something offensive or insulting would be a far worse crime than any the offender supposedly committed. The words themselves are not harmful, not in any way that falls under the purview of law. And to re-state Dr. Pullum’s point, it is simply self-evidently absurd to suggest that any government can or should define words and punish people for their misuse.
beedhamm

“Of course words themselves harm no one, except emotionally and psychologically to the extent that the victim lets them.”

Since you appear to unaware of fields such as cognitive psychology, you might want to check out concepts such as priming and framing. I doubt you’ll post such naive assertions after doing so. In the meantime, consider, if one has been harmed by words but is unaware of the harm, how is the victim [key word there, no?] to NOT let it harm?

In this theory what do you do with libel laws? Do those same laws not contradict your claim that “One’s innate right to free speech is not bound by anyone’s sensibilities or any laws”? Are the authors of libel laws “authoritarian”?

“Self-evident,” like common sense, does not travel well between different groups. That’s one of the reasons why we usually supply proof for our arguments. Doing so does not constitute “a detailed or academic defense”; it constitutes good argument (as does looking at the reasoning of one’s opposition).

There are many places where one can call people names and make claims without providing proof. I just don’t think the CHE is such a place.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Գաբրիել-Խաչատրյան/100003349133364 Գաբրիել Խաչատրյան

For your knowledge (since you need some): A word is the most powerful weapon existing on this planet (that is the same as religion, propaganda, etc.). So you agreeing with the thought “We also shouldn’t silence, censor, fine, imprison, threaten, or otherwise punish people for the words they say and write that harm no one, however wrong or insulting they are.” (by the way, see how it’s done? I mean the quotation) is another indicator of your low level education.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4918925 John Petrie

Just to clarify, you’re basically saying that it is ignorant (uneducated, stupid, wrong, unenlightened) to object to the idea that a government should define certain speech as harmful and punish users of such speech in proportion to the harm their words cause? Maybe you don’t realize how ridiculous that sounds to the English-speaking world. I didn’t think there was anyone outside of totalitarian governments who thought that way anymore. It is clear that nothing can be gained from interacting with such a sorry excuse for a human. Have a good life, and I hope you find your authoritarian police state someday.

jffoster

to Գաբրիել Խաչատրյան,

1st, since your original comment seemed directed to Professor Pullum, I believe you will find that he is not a “Midwestern”. I believe Dr. Pullum is British born and bred, though having spent a great deal of time in the United States..

Second, I suggest that you get hold of a copy of the Constitution of the United States and read the first and 14th Ammendments. The relevant part of the first reads thus:

“Congress shall make no law …abridging freedom of speech, or of the press….”.

Such a law as Germany apparently has enacted and France is about to enact could not possibly be enacted in the United States or any state or territory thereof, because government is prohibited from doing so by the above ammendment to our Constitution. The government of the French Republic is of course not bound by the American Constitution and is free to make a fool of itself in this matter if it wishes. The question Dr. Pullum raised, and which Mr. Petrie, and most others here but you seem to have grasped, is not whether the Armenian suffering and deaths of 1915 due directly or indirectly to actions of the Sublime Porte were genocide or not, but rather that of whether government ought to in effect outlaw any debate or spoken or written deliberation of the matter.

beedhamm

“The government of the French Republic is of course not bound by the American Constitution and is free to make a fool of itself in this matter if it wishes.”

Are you really suggesting that when countries don’t follow the Constitution of the USA they make fools of themselves? Is it not possible that a country might have values that differ from those of the USA and therefore end up with different laws? Some think that that other constitutional treasure, the “Right to bear arms,” requires limits. Could the right to free speech not also require limits (given the changes to society since the crafting of the constitution)? Are libel laws not one such limit?

“The question Dr. Pullum raised, … [is] that of whether government ought to in effect outlaw any debate or spoken or written deliberation of the matter.”

That’s hardly an original contribution. The discussion was well established. My question would be what does Dr. Pullum’s article contribute to the discussion “of whether government ought to in effect outlaw any debate or spoken or written deliberation of the matter”? I think if you go back and look you’ll find precious little.

jffoster

Re your first question, no I am not suggesting that, though I get the definite feeling that you wish that I were so you could use it as springboard for your own hobby horse. No, the United States government is protected by the Constitution from making a fool of itself in this matter, in the off chance it should want to. The government of the French Republic is apparently not so protected by its constitution and is therefore free to make a fool of itself. And saying that the events in Armenia were not genocide is not libel.

As to your second, no, “the discussion” was not “well-established” because our Armenian friend apparently misunderstood it and was getting into a pas de deux with Mr. Petrie that showed no sign of ending. What has you bugged is that nobody picked up the thread you tried to start above, and I don’t intend to pick it up here.
beedhamm

Okay, so you wrote one thing while meaning another. No problem. It happens all the time. But what is your proof for suggesting that the French government is making “a fool of itself”? You can call it a “hobby horse” or any other name you want, but all I’ve been asking for is the support for Dr. Pullum’s argument. Since when is that a bad thing?

“And saying that the events in Armenia were not genocide is not libel.”
I have no idea how that sentence is a response to anything I’ve written. I suggested libel laws as an example of a limit on a constitutional right. You quoted the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law …abridging freedom of speech, or of the press….”), but libel laws demonstrate that there are limits to the right. Now that you mention it though, one might make an analogy between … meh, skip it. We’re not there yet.

When I wrote “The discussion was well established,” I was obviously referring to the discussion of the law in France. It has been discussed widely, so Dr. Pullum raising it again doesn`t constitute originality. And again, “what does Dr. Pullum’s article contribute to the discussion ‘of whether government ought to in effect outlaw any debate or spoken or written deliberation of the matter?’”

“What has you bugged is that nobody picked up the thread you tried to start above, and I don’t intend to pick it up here.”
I don’t know which thread you’re referring to, but I can assure you the only thing that “bugs” me regarding this article and the resulting commentary is, again, the sloppiness of the argument. I’m not going to bother speculating on why that “bugs” you so much.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4918925 John Petrie

Voltaire must be rolling over in his grave.

jffoster

I suggest, Mr. Petrie, that in this string of commentaries, Voltaire has been trumped by the other participant in the anticipation of the arrival of the Reparashians.

http://twitter.com/HemmensBen Ben Hemmens

I think the history of different countries’ handling of freedom of speech is a bit more complex than a binary choice between the “right” American way and the “silly” European way.

Particularly, having lived in Germany, and living in Austria, I have come round to agreeing that the laws on reviving national socialism (I’m too lazy to look up the official translation: Wiederbetätigung is the usual expression here) are justified and serve a useful purpose. They are justified, though, as a kind of emergency measure, albeit, sadly, a long-lived one. At various times, Nazi and Neonazi opinions have been a real threat to the stability of these countries as democratic states (not just to the peace of one neighbourhood in one city); the rejection of them has a foundational character for the currently existing republics that is hard to understand from outside. I don’t think it’s about despising holocaust deniers (many of whom are misguided teenagers, who need helping more than despising), but about limiting their influence.

Section 31 of the Irish broadcasting authority act was a piece of censorship legislation that I tend to see as also probably justified; again, it involved groups which posed a quite serious threat to the overall stability of the state.

It’s hard to see any such justification in the French law on the Armenian genocide. In addition to the criticism given in the post, it seems a bit like one country passing a law as a kind of admonishment to another country about what it should be doing; and that is silly.

And though I’m no expert on the history of the USA, I do suspect that, 1st Amendment notwithstanding, they have found ways to restrict freedom of speech when it seems to be really important. For example, I’ve heard of people wanting to give creationism equal time to evolution in biology lessons, but I haven’t heard of any schools where evolution is not taught at all; I presume it is a mandatory part of the curriculum, even if it is taught without much enthusiasm here and there. I’d also take a wild guess that a certain orthodoxy is also required in history classes on the topic of the Civil War. Maybe I’m wrong and teachers are free to teach any old nonsense they want, but I’d be surprised.

As for criticism of a strong interpretation of the 1st Amendment itself, “Citizens United” (if I understood it correctly, “corporations are people” comes pretty close to the gist of the decision) is just one example that suggests that defining the freedom of speech in a very simple and absolute way also has its drawbacks.

If we could leave the “freedom-lovin’ USA vs. Nanny States of Europe” paradigm aside for a bit, I think there’d be a discussion to be had about what the freedom of speech is that democratic states should attempt to guarantee and what restrictions might be justified under what conditions in order to preserve the basic freedom. If we consulted experts in the relevant fields, I expect we’d find that this discussion already exists and is not much impeded by the Atlantic.
http://twitter.com/HemmensBen Ben Hemmens

I see the genocide law has been struck down by the constitutional court. Not a surprise.