Language as the Ultimate Weapon

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After reading the article written by Jem Berkes who emphasizes the importance and influence of the language in society's lives, we can answer an interesting question that will allow us to understand better the reading of 1984 and how it is helpful for the course. The question we are about to answer is the following: Why is the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel by George Orwell relevant to a student taking the Programming Language course?

Since the beginning of the times, language has been an important tool used by humans to communicate, creating different ways to transmit ideas, etc. this has allowed them to evolve. Creating a language is not as easy as it may look like. A language has a structure, symbols, syntax, semantics, and some other things which are proper from a language and people who understand them can understand that language. This happens too with programming languages, each programming language has its own symbols, structure, and syntax which allow people to understand it. 

But what happens when there are many languages with different symbols, syntax, and structure? Here is when it is desirable to create some standards for programming languages. These standards will allow people to understand the code and be able to solve the problem with the language they use the most. 

But, why do they say that a language is the ultimate weapon? It is the ultimate weapon for humanity because, with the correct usage of a language, many problems can be solved, in politics, with language a conflict between countries can be stopped. Let's take a look at the novel 1984 if we remember the government had control of the language and communications, but we can see the importance of a language in a society if the government had no control of it people will live in a different and better way. 

That's why many people fight for the language freedom, cause people can fight for their rights, for injustice, and many other things with it, that's why language is the ultimate weapon.

References: 

- Berkes Jem (2000). Language as the ‘Ultimate Weapon’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Available on: http://webcem01.cem.itesm.mx:8005/s201813/tc2006/language_ultimate_weapon.html

- Orwell George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Available on: https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf


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