31. On the Psychology of the Phrase

It was certainly a great task for anyone who wanted to undertake an exhaustive description of the power of the catchphrase. For there will be few things in the world that are as suggestive as the catchphrase, and whose effects are so mysterious. The main thing is that the catchword is on everyone's lips, that everyone pronounces it meaningfully without thinking anything about it, and that everyone listens to it just as meaningfully, again without thinking the slightest thing about it. Both the speaker and the listener must be convinced that something meaningful is meant. At the same time, anyone who attempts to inquire into the meaning of the catchword must be considered foolish. For such a person would destroy the effect of the catchword. He must destroy it. For the catchword naturally has a meaning. Simply because every word has a meaning in the mouth of the person who first uses it in a certain context. But the effect is not based on this meaning. It is based on something that has nothing to do with the meaning.

A sensible politician uses a word. It has its good sense and its full justification within the context of the version he gives. Now it happens that for a certain time we encounter this word in every political omission in the country to which the politician belongs. When the first sensible politician used it, it had the effect of a spark, because the meaning of the other statements illuminated it. But the countless others who use it do not think of this meaning at all. Bismarck makes a remarkable speech. A speech that is a political act. In this speech he says: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” These words have a meaning within his speech. But they continue to have an effect as a catchphrase. You can now hear them in countless speeches. But you can also put a price on a reasonable interpretation of the words in these countless speeches. Nevertheless, most of these speeches will owe their effect to the fact that the speaker has used the words.

You can safely say that a word must first lose its meaning if it is to become a catchphrase. For the great multitude loves nothing so much as words; and for nothing is it so little to be had as for understanding the meaning of words. People's linguistic tools are animated by a tremendous urge to be active; the tools of thought are the most powerful organs an organism possesses. People want to say a lot and think very little. That is why there should be as many buzzwords and phrases as possible that have a rigid effect without having anything to think about.

If you know how to observe people's facial expressions, you will often see the following: Two people are talking. They try to communicate in a meaningful way. This goes on for a while. Suddenly, one of them becomes bored with communicating. He comes up with a catchphrase with which he can bring the conversation to an end. Both their faces express the satisfaction they feel at not having to talk about the matter any more. The catchphrase, which has no meaning, brings a long, perhaps not at all pointless conversation to an end.

A distant similarity to the tendency to use buzzwords is the addiction to using quotes to support assertions. In most cases, the quotes will lose all meaning in the context in which they are used because they are torn from their original context.

We come across quotes everywhere. On flags, on monuments, above entrance gates of houses, in genealogical books, in editorials, on pipe bowls, walking sticks and so on. Each time we see such a quotation, we are prompted to forget the meaning it originally had.

But I don't want to say anything against catchphrases and the use of quotations. For the wittiest turns of phrase in speeches are sometimes achieved by using a quotation in a way that contradicts its original meaning. However, a collection of observations on how catchwords work would be instructive. Writing this chapter of folk psychology would kill two birds with one stone. For one would also have written a good part of another chapter of the theory of the soul, which is called: "The thoughtlessness of the crowd". How the crowd tries to avoid thinking is best seen in the use of the catchphrase.

There are journalists who base their entire existence on this characteristic of the crowd. They write - let's say every week - an article containing some word that is suitable to be repeated for eight days. Then, for eight days, readers have a means of talking about something without occupying their thoughts. For a week, they bring up the latest quote from journalist X. at every opportunity. Some journalists can only achieve great success because they have the art of coining words which, in addition to their meaning, also have something through which they have a suggestive effect; through which they have an effect when they discard their meaning. The psychologist of the phrase will have to investigate what this "something" is that remains when the meaning has been distilled out of a word, and which then has the magic power to elevate the meaningless word to a power that rules over people.

An important contribution to herd psychology will be this psychology of the phrase.