Against Duckspeak On The Sri Lankan Muslims
Izeth Hussain
My primary purpose in this article is to point out that the main instrument of most of our Governments since Independence in dealing with our ethnic problems has been duckspeak. It is a neologism coined by George Orwell in his Swiftian satire on totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty Four. This is what he writes about it: “Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ‘to quack like a duck’. Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions that were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment”.
I feel the term should have much wider currency than it has had up to now. The reason why it has had scant, or rather no currency at all, is that Orwell was writing about the future in which totalitarian bosses make the people’s speech inane like the quacking of ducks. But that inanity has been a notable characteristic of the speech of politicians all over the world. Sometimes the speeches of politicians are deliberately inane, the purpose being to fool the people. Sometimes the politicians themselves are unaware that they are no more meaningful than the quacking of ducks. Both varieties of duckspeak flourish mightily in Sri Lanka at election time. Let the symbol of the Sinhalese people be the Lion – I am rather fond of the old flag. But the symbol of Sri Lankan democracy should be the duck.
Before making my comments on duckspeak on the Muslim ethnic problem I must make an important qualification. Duckspeak is a fairly normal human propensity, not something that is confined to politicians. All of us are guilty of it to varying degrees. It is something that we share with our politicians because there is no absolute divide between the people and the politicians. But there is a divide, though not an absolute one, in that the politician is far more devoted to the pursuit of prestige, money, and power, than the average member of the public. Consequently there have to be important differences in the way the two groups use duckspeak. It is with the people for the most part a lapse, while with politicians it is an art form that can be used with much finesse and sophistication. It has been the main instrument in dealing with the Muslim ethnic problem.
