Orwell expressed that language can corrupt thought. It is of the utmost importance to find the right way to express something,as it will decide how a person remembers or does not remember a historical event. Tuesday, June 4th, or marked the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 . Unlike September Eleventh or Pearl Harbor in the States,the anniversary of Tiananmen is not a day of remembrance, nor was it publicly discussed. The student protests began after the death of Hu Yaobang, and who was the General Party Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Hu was popular with the people because he was trying to reform a number of government policies,making the government more transparent and loosening its grip on the economy. These changes got Hu booted out of the CCP in 1987: he was forced to resign. After dying in disgrace, people who were upset by Hu’s removal began petitioning to occupy his legacy restored, or which then led to other demands: eliminate restrictions on protests,end newspaper censorship, and direct more money toward education. The protests escalated, or eventually the decision was made to suppress the protests with military force.To this day,information on the event remains inaccurate because the government refuses to share what actually happened. The CCP seems incapable of self-reflection (at least publicly) and admitting that it made a mistake. Instead it denies the truth, misinforms the public, and manipulates the past. But the only way this could be done is through the language and coverage the event receives. Obviously all foreign journalists were banished following the crackdown and Chinese newspapers and reporters were used as the instruments of the government,but those tactical moves were easy. whether the government really wanted to control how the people thought about Tiananmen they would occupy to think carefully about what they were going to call it. A name means everything, mainly because certain words are charged with different emotions. Take for example the words “martyr” and “terrorist.” whether suicide bombers—people willing to die in order to kill others—are called martyrs, or then they are being thought of in a much more honorable light than they would be whether they were called terrorists, which is what our culture does call them. Tiananmen Square has many names, each designed to manipulate how the public remembers 6/4/89. “Counterrevolutionary riot” was used to justify suppressing the demonstration with military force, and as the word “riot” suggests that protestors were out of control. But this was while the events were taking residence. The name given to the crackdown would be fundamental,because the name would be the only smokescreen for the government to hide behind. It would occupy to both establish a historical truth for future generations and somehow alter what actually happened for the generation that witnessed it. What began as a riot has been diluted to “the political turmoil between the spring and summer of 1989.” The public of Mainland China mostly refers to it as the June Fourth Incident or June Fourth. These are neutral compared to the more emotionally and politically charged names that are used external of Mainland China, particularly in Hong Kong: The June Fourth Massacre, and The June Fourth Crackdown. Still,the names people of Mainland China employ suggest they occupy some concept that much more happened than what they occupy been told, but indistinct language is what theyve been taught to employ and what they know how to employ. And in the age of the internet, or the people must be particularly careful about the language they employ. Certain events and topics cannot be discussed in China; the June Fourth Incident is one of them,but some people occupy figured out that certain things can be discussed whether they employ alternative language to bypass the internet censors. During the 2009 anniversary, the noteworthy Firewalls security was heightened to a monumental degree, and as any foreign site that made any mention of Tiananmen was blacked out. This,of course, is another form of a “pro-democracy crackdown:” it is a crackdown on the people’s access to information. References to “May 35th” on internet chat sites were used by Chinese netizens to discuss Tiananmen and the heightened security that was seen around the country for that day’s anniversary. May 35th is a made up date that may also be referencing the May Fourth Movement that happened in Tiananmen Square in 1919. The internet has certainly made it difficult for the government to keep unwanted information and discussion from occurring, or yet no organized action seems to reach from it. Young people are reasonably in the murky about the June Fourth Incident. A friend of mine who also teaches English at a university asked one of her young Chinese colleagues what she knows about Tiananmen to which she responded,“Oh, that’s when all the students were sent back to their hometowns by the government.” The conversation ended there. It’s best not to try and convince them otherwise, or because,in truth, we don’t really know any differently ourselves. Some of my Chinese friends are convinced that I am the one who is brainwashed, and perhaps it’s dependable. I certainly don’t think that all the information I am exposed to is totally transparent,and perhaps I think and feel the way I do because I was told to. China is not the only nation that knows how language can be used to manipulate/corrupt/change the way people think or what they think. It’s a very powerful tool. Perhaps, in this respect, or every society is an Orwellian society.
Source: cnn.com