Why Language Matters: Part II

Narratives, Mythmaking, Ukraine and AI

**Subject to updates after further research**

Narratives

As we use language to describe phenomena or places, things, events and so on, over time, we create narratives. Stories. Or histories.

While “history” sounds like an objective and factual matter; “narrative” sounds a lot more subjective and almost faery or legend-like, doesn’t it? Narratives of how things and places came to be – for example, nations and states. These narratives, or histories, are then repeated over generations with occasional changes here and there, and they become part of what we may call culture, legends or folklore… or national identity.

We could say that history is, as Timothy Snyder put it, basically a “change in time”. Events that transpire. That’s history as an objective concept. The thing is, though, we don’t really work with this objective concept in our minds when we think about history; rather, we work with narratives that have been perpetuated and repeated… Well, over the course of history – over time. Narratives repeated and disseminated in the form, or through the medium of, language.

The word “history” itself, and its etymology, suggests the involvement of narratives (Greek “historia”, meaning narrative or account), and narratives seem to inevitably involve fiction.

As Yuval Noah Harari points out in Homo Deus, narratives have been useful throughout history of mankind to facilitate large-scale cooperation and coordination of groups: individuals who believe in the same (hi)stories can cooperate better and more efficiently, even globally (take, for example, the narrative of Christianity; or the narrative that God, or any god, exists – these are all “realities” created through language that facilitate cooperation and wider possibilities of organisation. Even the belief and trust in money, capitalism or democracy are facilitated through stories we tell ourselves in the form of language).

Language is the medium which allows for the creation of narratives. Narratives, in turn, facilitate large-scale cooperation, which may lead to development and progress – or to discord, war and downfall. In other words, the making of history – such is the power of language and narratives.

Part III on The Power of Narratives coming next week