The language as a neutral medium and seek for a cultural ecology

Brilliant scholar Hamid Mowlana observes that most research in the field of International Communication regards language itself as a neutral tool of communication. It is possible, in this case, to compare a communication-modernization paradigm to the Marxist paradigm of class struggle and dependency. In the former, language carries predevelopment messages and information.[1] In the later, power, domination, exploitation, and influence are first and foremost economical and political phenomena.[2] Language and culture are usually a result rather than a primary cause. Language appears as an eternal medium.

Indeed, a paradigm of electronic-oriented industrial societies is linked to the motors of cultural domination, result of ownership of broadcasting facilities, the impact of international broadcasters or the flow of foreign wire services. But these are categories of economic or politic analysis, such as percentage of foreign content, capital and technology rather than categories of language or linguistic analysis. The concern about a possible “programmed earth” or visual alienation should also be understood and discussed in a scientific basis.

In thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, the power of language becomes transparent, as it follows:

“… it is not that we are bound be our language, but that we are in effect defined by our chains. Without the fetter of our language so to speak, there would be nothing and no one at all. Not prison or freedom, but limitation of the chaos or not being there.”[3]


Michel Foucault views discourses as domains within which power and authority are conferred on some and denied to others, as political analysts and theorists our approach to language must shift. Rather than regarding language and speech practices as denotation tools for discovering aspects of experience, we can regard them as representations in themselves of political relations.[4] It is particular of every society, that the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed, according to a certain number of procedures.

In a more broad sense, language could be considered as a reflection of the mind and culture. It is both a significant system in the creation and distribution of power and a pivotal medium in Global Communication.

The process of information and technological innovations, as it relates to communications between human beings and their environment and among the peoples and nations, is demanding new explanations. One way to conceptualize the world in an integrated perspective is to look at the word communication as a cultural ecology composed of international dimensions.

Culture, conceived as a symbolic interaction underlying world politics may help explain such phenomena as the growing multiplicity of nation-states, the rise of ethnicity, the diversity of national developmental goals and needs, the diffusion of technology by national and transnational actors and simultaneously entry of many nations into the industrial-technological age and the communication and information age. The current global landscape is where the cultural forces should come into play globally.

As International Relations expand into a multitude of diverse interests and structures, ranging from military to political, from economic to cultural spheres, the question of communication ecology and the environment in which a new structure is taking place occupies a prominent role.

[1] Hamid Mowlana. Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). p. 109
[2] Ibid.
[3] T.B. Strong Language and nihilism, 1984, p.82. in Hamid Mowlana. Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). p. 110
[4] M.J. Shapiro Language and Political Understanding, 1981, p.140. In Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). pp. 110-111