In many countries of the world, politics and language come hand in hand, where language is used as a political tool to maximise the control of a new ruling class over the mindset of citizens. Language plays a key role in nation-building, in the unification of states, and in stimulating momentum and partisan spirit during revolutions. In short language equals power.

Republican France keen on shaking off the shackles of its Royalist past and on establishing control over all of France set about in a war against regional languages, while asserting Parisian French as the new language of the Republic. But far from being a consequence of the revolution, it was a necessary attempt to consolidate one’s power by conquering tongues as well as land. A common language is a powerful tool necessary to disseminate information and control the masses. Language used effectively can arouse emotions; it has been used to get men to enlist for battle as well as to get them to lay down their arms.

To the Revolutionaries like Robespierre and Dante, to ensure that citizens were not simply obeying yet another ruler, they also encouraged them to change speech, to tutoyer or switch over to using Tu (You) instead of the more formal version Vous. The idea behind this plan of linguistic egalitarianism was that each citizen was equal to one another and that there were no longer any class divisions. Adoption of revolutionary terminology was necessary to control one’s thought-process, as language itself is the result of a thought-process. Therefore language that has already been pre-selected and given the stamp of approval by the state would require no thought-process on the part of the ordinary citizen, leading to acceptance and thus mind control.

Equally, nations desperately seeking to stroke a vainglorious national ego often attempt to reinvent their ‘official’ language by deliberately rooting out ‘foreign’ words and influences, while resurrecting ancient ones, whose modern day interpretation remains a contested mystery. Often this arduous task is simultaneous with nation-building and the evolution of a national identification promoted by a ruling political class under whose control the state lies. Exploiting historical-political catastrophes, these soon become the basis for ejecting so-called ‘foreign’ linguistic influences from that language.

The new independent Greece of 1829 took language by developing a program of reforms in a bid to unify the new Greek nation. Greek revolutionaries under the banner “Elefteria o Thanatos” (Liberty or Death) sought to rid itself of its Turkish linguistic influences. As if driving a wedge between its Ottoman past and its present, these patriotic purists sought to eject from memory Turkish Ottoman influences that have shaped their character in some way during their past.

Turkish words that were used by Greeks in everyday speech for centuries were suddenly replaced by Classical Greek words, in a campaign of nation building with a selective historical memory. Encouraged by enthusiastic English scholars of classical Greece who lived their lives in their books, Greek nationalists found the justification they needed to attempt to wipe out and forget a significant part of their history and character.With the removal of Turkicisms from the Greek language, who would guess that Greece was ever an Ottoman dominion?

History again repeated itself almost a hundred years later, when language reform in Republican Turkey meticulously sought and eradicated words of Arabic and Persian origin in an attempt to westernise their new Eurasian culture. Although linguists will always tell you the Arabic alphabet was ill-suited to Turkish, which does bears some truth, the campaign to eradicate centuries old words of Persian and Arabic origin with those old Turkish origin often bordered on folly.

As in Greece, reformers freshly plucked out words from ancient Futhark megaliths of Mongolia belonging to the Kokturk Khanate and re-introduced them albeit with a different meaning in 20th century Turkey. What began as an attempt by some to simplify Turkish was soon hijacked by over-excited Pan Turkists who amid resurrected mythological symbols of greywolves and Mount Otuken, even found a new term to replace the universally accepted “Allah” (God) with the ancient Kokturk term Tanri. There were few exceptions as Memleket became il, which derives from Old Turkish “Tabgac ili” (Chinese polity), millet became ulus (Old Turkic for nation), and Persians endings such as –hane (Persian origin) became – lik (Turkic origin).

As usual such decisions regarding language were shaped by politicians, but when those in power are replaced it gets complicated. In the case of Turkey, this is reflected by the fact that Ottoman terms of Persian origin seemed to return in dictionaries published during Adnan Menderes’ Presidency in the 1950s. But when the Republican People’s Party returned after Menderes was executed in Izmir, European words of pure Turkish beside French words were reinstated in what seemed like a tug of war.

Even today, politics and language are intrinsically linked, where the ruling politicians of the day also control the content of the dictionary and what is deemed acceptable speech. Nationalists favour words of Turkic origin, Communists prefer revolutionary terms, and modernisors opt for European words, while religious classes resurrect lost Ottoman terms of Arabic and Persian origin. The difference can be astounding, when you hear one man talk of “Cemiyet-i Türki”, the other “Türk Toplumu” and the last of “Türk Komradları,”

Meanwhile in modern day France, a battle for language purification is going to extremes, where the Académie française, which regulates the French language has found a new enemy – Anglophones. With its exclusive membership, the Academy which has no legal status has encouraged the ban of “Email,” has pushed that “bulldozer” become bouldozaire and has even suggested that English pop songs regardless of their popularity among French people are given limited frequency on radio emissions.

Seen by language reformers as a struggle to save the language of the ‘glorious nation,’ their desperate attempts to force people to change their linguistic ways both borders on totalitarianism and insanity. Of course language purification used in the correct way can be useful in simplifying language to increase its access to people and can help eradicate illiteracy, but in many cases manipulation by ruling governments, for whom scoring ideological goals is more important, has forced those seeking control over the dictionary and grammar books into a tug of war. Language control left in the hands of the politicians is dangerous and soon becomes a political tool used to consolidate power and control the mindsets of citizens. In short, language should be safeguarded from politicians and left out of state control. As English novelist Angela Carter once remarked, “Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation."