Trump vs. Truth: the Whorfian Hypothesis Revisited

Image of protest against the 1918 Sedition Act during World War I. That act was repealed in 1920.

Many concerning things have happened in the United States over the past month, but the one I'd like to write about today is an effort to win arguments by redefining terms. In a recent article titled "In Trump's Washington, Words Become Weaponized," the New York Times presents a variety of examples in which the White House's recent Executive Orders use terms in ways that are unusual, or in some cases literally opposite from the term's plain-language meaning. Here are some notable instances (if you're up on all the news, you can skip to the part after the bullets, but I do like to document my sources):

• The term "DEI" (for diversity, equity, and inclusion) was used as a pejorative in President Trump's press conference after a January 30 airplane crash, in which he said that "we need to have our smartest people" as air traffic controllers, and implied that the person in that role at the time of the crash was not. Empirical studies have shown that more diverse groups actually produce better overall results in workplace settings. And with regard to the FAA, the first Trump administration had a policy to encourage hiring people with disabilities under the same performance standards as other air traffic controllers -- a policy that remained unchanged during the Biden administration. There is, of course, no evidence that hiring policies of any kind played a role in the airplane/helicopter collision, which is still under investigation. The initial January 20 E.O. on DEI was clearly connected to a review of hiring practices in the Federal government, but it has taken on broader dimensions. As implemented by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, the anti-DEI effort has involved an attempt (probably illegal) to de-fund thousands of Federal training or support programs designed to improve opportunities for people in demographic groups that have historically had fewer resources -- a much broader array of initiatives than just those connected to organizations' hiring practices. And some Federal agencies have interpreted the term "DEI" to include programs focused on women or on socioeconomic status, rather than just race or gender. (Interestingly, the term "rural" was ruled to be OK because it reflected desirable "geographic diversity"). Other reports, such as this one from Senator Ted Cruz's office, have suggested that addressing problems like "trauma" or "access" also should be prohibited in any Federally funded activity. 
• The January 29 E.O. on "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" forbids schools from "imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation's children." These ideologies are defined as any viewpoint "that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations." The same order then mandates "an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America's founding and foundational principles; a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history; the concept that commitment to America's aspirations is beneficial and justified; and the concept that celebration of America's greatness and history is proper." This argument is already problematic on its merits: Am I no longer allowed to feel pride in my German-American immigrant forbears, because that requires a view of myself as a member of a group rather than as an individual? What about those relatives on my Dad's side who arrived on the Mayflower -- surely the Descendants of the Founders of Ancient Windsor, of which Dad was a member, counts as a "preferred or disfavored group" in American society? I doubt the framers of this order would have a problem with group memberships of that type. But beyond that, the very meaning of the term indoctrination is "teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs without questioning them." The order against indoctrination, then, actually seems to require a form of indoctrination.
• Although the President issued a February 6 E.O. titled "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias," that order mainly addresses the interpretation of laws preventing discrimination on the basis of gender (laws that were affirmed by the current, conservative Supreme Court in 2020), as well as making hate crime laws inapplicable to Christian groups that attack transgender people. The goal seems to be allowing Christian groups to violate laws that apply to everyone else, simply by making an argument that their actions are grounded in their theology. Meanwhile, the government has actively de-funded support to numerous Christian service organizations offering help to poor people and immigrants, as part of DOGE's deconstruction of the USAID agency. Those public-religious partnerships were actively encouraged by the George W. Bush administration, which worked to make Federal grant opportunities more available to Christian groups.
• The January 28 E.O. on "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation" defines "mutilation" to include "the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; [and] the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, to align an individual's physical experience with an identity that differs from his or her sex." Whatever you might think of gender-affirming surgeries that are also covered by this policy, the use of FDA-approved medications seems like a real stretch for the word mutilation. That is defined as "an injury that causes disfigurement or causes the loss of a limb or other important body part" (from the Latin mutilare, to cut or lop off). Later in the same order, mental health treatment is still supported for transgender adolescents, but it is framed as a treatment for "identity confusion." Many people in that group would say that what they actually experience is discrimination or violence, and that their mental health symptoms are related to these aversive life experiences. Other orders similarly use disparaging language about transgender individuals, for example an order to the military that says people with a transgender identity "cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service," and an order about sports participation that says excluding trans girls and women from women's sports teams is a matter of "dignity and truth." The January 20 E.O. on gender (framed as "defending women from gender ideology"), which mandated the removal of gender information from Federal forms, actually defines gender ideology as "an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity." How can you forbid "an ever-shifting concept"? Wasn't the author of this document taught by their high school English teacher that a valid argument depends on first defining your terms?
• In the administration's latest mis-use of language, Elon Musk declared that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is "maximally transparent," and that "I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization." Contrary to this claim, the DOGE website is just a reposting of Elon Musk's tweets about his efforts to streamline government, with no supporting evidence or documentation. Some posts simply show the removal of information from government web pages, with the label "fixed," and a loss of information is thereby labeled "transparent." News agencies also have fact-checked Musk's accomplishments to discover that some of these were false (e.g., condoms sent to Hamas were for the city in Africa, not the Palestinian terror organization of the same name); some expenses listed on the website were purchases of services (e.g., Politico subscriptions for agency staff) rather than grants to support an organization's mission; and other programs were not actually supported by the agency that they were attributed to. The form of "transparency" offered here is not an actual accounting of activities, but a truth-challenged brag sheet created for PR purposes.
• In the context of all the above, it is ironic that one of the very first Executive Orders issued by President Trump on January 20th was titled "Restoring Freedom of Speech." The entirety of that order is a grievance that "the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring American's speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve." There may in fact be some merit to that claim. However, it seems quite ironic in the context of so many other orders that are very clearly designed to "suppress speech that the [new] Federal Government does not approve."

What are we to make of all this hubbub about words? President Trump seems to be a believer in psychology’s Whorfian hypothesis – that what a person can speak in language defines what is true for them. Some early examples of the theory were proven false, such as the idea that Inuit people have over 100 words for snow (Benjamin Whorf made this up). But other research argues in favor of the theory, and I have pointed out ways in which intuitive aspects of language do in fact shape our perceptions of the world. President Trump is putting maximal effort into defining terms in the early days of his second presidency, such as brute-force tactics being used to compel the Associated Press to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the new name "Gulf of America." The President's own public statements are most often made on his personally owned social media platform Truth Social (the White House then redistributes them), where they are called "truths." One can't help but be reminded of the Soviet-era newspaper Pravda (also meaning "truth"), which served as a straightforward public-relations outlet of the government. If there is a common theme across all these areas of executive action, it is an attempt to control people's thoughts by restricting their speech. This approach makes many people concerned about censorship because of its similarity to the tactics of past authoritarian regimes. Despite the administration's expressly stated goal of protecting speech, they are in fact limiting it in various settings and in numerous ways.

How can we cope with these attempts to redefine language using the machinery of government? Many of my colleagues in academia seem to think that perhaps they can discover a secret list of "what we are allowed to say now." We will all have to play this game to the extent that we need to keep working with the Federal government. But ultimately, I think it is a fool's errand. Try to use the correct terminology, and you will inevitably make a mistake, or use government-approved terms that inadvertently offend another constituency you need on your side, or else simply find that the rules have changed again so that your new terminology is pulled out from under you. It seems to be better to focus on ideas and evidence, to define your own terms rather than letting someone else choose your words for you. 

There are other strategies to help you keep your thoughts in order in the face of radical redefinitions of language. Subtle resistance to the status quo is one of these. Some map programs are getting around the "Gulf of America" issue by providing both old and new names for the same body of water (one in parentheses), or different labels depending on where in the world someone logs in. One of the New York Times articles references the long-standing practice of Chicago tour guides in referring to that city's highest building, which was built by the Sears Corporation but eventually held under new ownership and a different name. "That building is the Sears Tower," the guides would say, "and in Chicago, Sears is spelled W-I-L-L-I-S." Similarly, here in Denver, we all call our football stadium "Mile High," regardless of what corporate interest owns the branding rights in any given year. (Its current actual name is "Empower Field at Mile High," but really who cares?)

A second strategy is to get your terminology from someone other than the government. One of the reasons we rely on government to begin with is that we expect it to make decisions through careful deliberation. (Another reason, of course, is that it has power to force you to do some things, which is part of why people are concerned right now. But it's important to remember that thinking isn't one of the things any government can control). If government has failed to provide due diligence in its selection of terms, other institutions that rely on deliberative processes can step in. Right now, many decisions about the Trump administration's policies are being evaluated by the courts, which use a careful combination of Narrative and Intuitive thinking strategies to arrive at judgments of truth. Another set of institutions with independent rules for establishing truth is the scientific community, which promotes careful decision-making through a process of peer review.

A third strategy for correcting misleading language is suggested by recent events in which Vice President J.D. Vance was challenged by Pope Francis. Vance said in a Fox News interview that "there's this old-school - and I think it's a very Christian concept - that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world." Vance later clarified that he was referring to a Catholic idea called ordo amoris, from St. Augustine's City of God. Vance himself is Catholic, and this was a serious enough bit of revisionism that Pope Francis wrote a letter to U.S. Catholic bishops correcting Vance's theology. The Pope wrote that "Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups ... . The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating ... on the true love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception." It's worth pointing out here also that on matters of Scriptural interpretation, Catholics like Vance do not have the option of saying "the Pope and I see things differently" (that would make them Lutherans!). Instead, the Catholic church relies on a body of knowledge called the magisterium that codifies their understanding of church teachings over time. In some cases this involves the Pope speaking in a way that is understood to be literally infallible. My point here is that religious traditions offer another way of establishing truth, one based on tradition and authority. That is not a method we often hold in high regard in contemporary empirically-minded discourse. Yet it provides another form of correction for government redefinition of language, as also seen in Bishop Mariann Budde's rebuke of President Trump from the pulpit of the National Cathedral the day after his inauguration.

In the final analysis, history suggests that Orwellian thought control is not a viable long-term strategy for governance. It should also be noted that we've had this discussion several times before in the course of U.S. history. In the image at the top of the page, we see protests over an attempt to constrain free speech in wartime that lasted only a few years. An earlier Sedition Act in 1789 met the same fate, and everyone originally convicted under that law was pardoned by President Jefferson. The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the basic right of free speech on numerous occasions and in various contexts. Eventually, all prior attempts to control speech and thought have fallen apart, and the course of history has generally trended upward. Language is powerful, but it is less powerful than reality; I can say all day long that there's no wall in front of me, yet I will still hit my head on it if I run straight ahead. Although we do indeed seem to be in a rough patch for the very idea of truth, we also can be confident that truth will win out in the end.