argia.eus
INPRIMATU
From word to seam
Aitziber Jiménez de Aberasturi Martínez de Luna 2021eko otsailaren 26a
Ilustrazioa: Elia Bedoni
Ilustrazioa: Elia Bedoni

It is a threat that has come silently and has shaped as it has convinced everyone who has crossed the road. What has come into everyone’s mouth and what Basque society has respected without taking into account what it brings with it. It came for the first time in the form of running, spinning and jogging, and we consider it normal. The trend continued in the form of influencer when we started talking about follower, crush and outfit. Since then it has taken hundreds of forms, but by the time we realized, once again, it has escaped us. Today we head to the Bilbao Exhibition Center and, among other events, organized the Humanity at Music “rooted in the roots to strengthen culture”. Of course, the Basque country has been the first to suffer, because once English has begun to take its place, now it seems that we will have to be careful that it will not soon begin to speak of Basque.

Instead, the problem goes further, and that trend looks even more dangerous. It is clear that our main communication tool has begun to dominate, but this point could be even more worrying if we add that language is the main tool to build the vision of the world of people. It's a subject that goes from language to language, jumping from simple words to values.

"Language and concepts dominate concrete perceptions and motivations, and in recent times of anglicism, have domesticated competitiveness, urgency and short-term benefits"

As the last example of bombardment, what we have traditionally called ‘evaluation’ is now called feedback, in the sense of ‘more pompous’. The pitching and speech words are becoming more and more frequent, as if we did not have our own words. The concept of timing has spread rapidly so that we do not forget that we have to be faster and faster. Design thinking has also been presented to the threat and clarifies step by step the approach to the problems to be more productive and create “innovative solutions as soon as possible”.

The latest trend has come loaded with concepts and values, which have existed for a long time but which shape increasingly reinforced structures. We have received a few pompous words, but let us not say. Because we don't just talk about words and phrases, but we also talk about words and phrases, and we build social schemes through language in our cognitive processes. In other words, language and concepts construct the reality of the environment with interpretations, norms and values. Concrete perceptions and motivations predominate and, in recent times of anglicism, have domesticated competitiveness, urgency and short-term benefits. On the contrary, this process is known. Now, the idea of rapid entrepreneurship is spreading along these lines, with the goal of a near future, but they are just another form of socio-historical structures that have been developing for years, maintaining the same logics but increasingly stronger, more and more predators. More and more uniform, more and more crushing. And, among other things, language has been the first language that has been damaged in its favour. Not necessarily, because language is largely the creator of these logics.

Now we can ask ourselves how we got here. How we have exalted the use of English, what we have rejected and what realities we are building with concepts that we normalize orally. And it's that many people find the English words attractive, they say that the cool is in their mouth, maybe the trendy, but we can also ask them if it's not just agony and complex. If we are not blindly inclined to these new forms of capitalism and colonialism.