Oregon Humanities Spring/Summer 2007

Cover of Oregon Humanities Spring/Summer 2007
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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Marianne Keddington-Lang
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The Eagle Has Landed!

From Pig Latin to Navajo codes, secret languages hide real meanings in plain sight.

By Edwin Battistella

Am-scray, Uster-bay."

Most kids can tell you what that means in Pig Latin, a secret language used by children of all ages. It's been used by cultural icons from the Three Stooges and the Froot Loops' toucan to Ginger Rogers, who sang in Pig Latin in Busby Berkeley's The Gold Diggers of 1933. Pig Latin is just one of many secret languages we use for play. There is Ubby Dubby (also known as Pig Greek), which forms secret messages by adding ub before the vowel of each syllable. The Ubby Dubby version of "Scram, Buster," would be "Scr-ub-am, B-ub-ust-ub-er." There are the secret languages called Elephant ("Scr-elef-am, B-elef-ust-elef-er") and Gibberish ("S-idig-cram, B-idig-ust-idig-er"). And for big kids, there is comedian Victor Borge's inflationary English, which translates "Anyone going to the movies?" into "Anytwo going three the movies?"

Secret languages are games, like hopscotch or chess. For children such games are ways of learning about language--about vowels, consonants, syllables, and rules (should it be "Am-scray" or "Cram-say"?). The gamelike aspect of secret languages also helps to develop the sense of wonder, familiarity, and control of language that people draw on as they become storytellers, poets, and writers. The fun is not in the concealment--ou-yay ould-shay ot-nat eally-ray e-bay onfused-cay y-bay is-thay--but in the pleasure of uncovering the message. We have a fascination for discovering hidden messages and solving word puzzles that lasts into adulthood. From crossword puzzles (what is the British spelling of jail?), to anagrams (unscramble WHONAY), to rebuses, which sound out messages with symbols (like Nc U a *), we enjoy making meaning from linguistic clues.

The enjoyment of language secrets is part of our common humanity. But language allows many kinds of secrets. We can create puzzles that fascinate. We can create novel words for our social identities or professional roles. We can use passwords and codes to protect information from intruders. We can create multilayered verbal art in poetry, prose, and even advertising. And we can use deceptive wording and phrasing to hide meanings from others in politics and public life.

Because we constantly reinvent language as we grow into it, the opportunity for new words is always present. Pig Latin may give way to adolescent slang, which creates semi-secrets from adults. When young people hook up or pimp their skateboards, there is something obvious and something not obvious in their usage. Words like butter, bounce, or tight do not exactly hide their meanings, but shade them in such a way that outsiders often cannot understand the connotations.

Technology also creates new forms of secret language, most recently the language of text messaging. Since text messages are limited by the technology of the cell phone and the thumb, they rely on rebus-like abbreviations. Some abbreviations, like thnx and c u 2moro, are quite transparent. Others are more obscure, such as gtg or lol, for "got to go" and "laughing out loud." Such abbreviations allow teens to send messages that may be hard for parents to comprehend easily, such as gtg pir wnt 2 hk up f2f l8r? ("Got to go. Parent in room. Want to hook up face-to-face later?").

As we enter specialized work, we also create linguistic secrets driven by the need for efficiency--our professional jargons. The ten-codes made famous by television police shows came in the days when it was important to limit the amount of speech on the radio. For a time, the expression 10-4 was as common as its English equivalent, okay, and if you've ever watched Dragnet you've probably come across 10-23 ("arrived at location"), 10-80 ("pursuit in progress"), and 10-90 ("bank alarm"). But today the ten-codes are being phased out because they vary from place to place and because of improvements in commu-nications technology that allow everyday language to be more easily used.

The code names used by the U.S. Secret Service to refer to presidents, their families, and other government officials are another example of secret jargon. Short and phonetically distinct, the code names provide a buffer against eavesdropping, and they avoid the familiarity and possible confusion of using real names. Can you guess who the Secret Service referred to as Lancer? Rawhide? Eagle? Tumbler? How about Volunteer, Searchlight, Timberwolf, Pass Key, and Dasher? (See the box on page 18 for answers.)

Presidential code names blend secrecy, efficiency, and even playfulness. The secret language of computer passwords often does this as well. As individuals we use passwords to protect our personal information, and the passwords for your e-mail, bank, and PayPal accounts shouldn't be words that can be easily guessed by anyone who learns your alma mater or your cat's name. Good passwords are long enough and unique enough that they can't be quickly found by word generators. One approach is to use a mnemonic of letters and words that is both random and personally meaningful, such as I1VWIT18, which abbreviates the longer sentence, "I 1st voted when I turned 18." Or you can take the first sentence of a favorite novel. "It was a dark and stormy night," for example, gives the password IWADASN.

Governments and business also use secret writing--cryptography--to protect information. Ciphers are messages in which each letter or number is replaced with another letter or number. One of the earliest--and easiest--ciphers is the Caesar Cipher. Supposedly used by Julius Caesar, this involves replacing each letter with the third letter following it in the alphabet. If you encipher the sentence "Creating is the essence of life" using the Caesar Cipher, you get the enciphered version: Fuhdwqj lv wkh hvvhqfh ri olih.

Secret messages using the Caesar Cipher are fairly easy to crack when you take into consideration the statistical nature of English. Knowing that e is the most common English letter provides a valuable clue. The most frequent letter in the cipher Fuhdwqj lv wkh hvvhqfh ri olih is h. If a cryptanalyst assumed that h equals e, then he or she might go on to try the hypothesis that i equals f, j equals g and so forth.

To devise more secure ciphers, modern cryptographers developed machines to make and track sets of random substitutions and letter displacements that obscure statistical patterns. This allowed for more complex ciphers. Automation also enabled faster enciphering and deciphering. The German Enigma machine, for example, used a set of wires and three rotors to generate 263 substitutions--17,576 different possibilities--yet it was still broken by British code breakers. American cryptographers in World War II took encryption a step further with Native American code talkers, who sent military messages in Navajo, a language of the Southwest. Marine code talkers were able to transmit tactical military messages using Navajo words like besh-lo (iron fish) for submarine and dah-he-tih-hi (hummingbird) for fighter plane. Since the Axis powers had no Navajo speakers, Navajo messages provided a level of security that could not be deciphered by statistical methods.

Today, cryptographers use powerful computational methods to create and analyze ciphers. But despite a serious purpose in protecting national security, there is still an aspect of play to ciphers, even at the Central Intelligence Agency. The Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, uses encryption as public art. Created in 1990 by artist James Sanborn and using systems designed by the head of the CIA's Cryptographic Center, Kryptos presents a number of puzzles in its art, about three-quarters of which have been solved so far. The Director of Central Intelligence holds the full solution, presumably in a secure location.

Secret messages are also a central feature of the popular novel The Da Vinci Code, which offered a variety of puzzles, ciphers, and anagrams to its heroes and readers ("O, Draconian devil!" is an anagram "Leonardo da Vinci"). Even Peter Smith, the British justice who ruled on the book's plagiarism lawsuit, could not resist adding a secret message in his 2006 ruling, which the press dubbed "the Smithy Code."

Whether used for national security or entertainment, ciphers and codes are secret messages that are obviously secret. However, ordinary language can also contain subtler secrets that guide our perceptions. Linguist Roman Jakobson once explained the language engineering of the 1950s political slogan "I like Ike" by pointing out how the partial repetition of the sounds "ay" and "kuh" created a pleasant impression. The slogan, he said, used poetic techniques to suggest the "image of the loving subject enveloped by the beloved object." The study of poetry, with its emphasis on meaning and rhythm, can make us more sensitive to the patterns in such slogans and in the hidden imagery of business and product names. The name of online shopping giant Amazon, for example, invokes the naturalism of a rain forest, the strength of Wonder Woman, and the vastness of the Amazon River. The name Google is a play on the word googol, a mathematical term meaning 10100; it alludes to the vastness of information available on the Internet. When Philip Morris International took over Kraft Foods, it took the opportunity to rename itself the high-sounding Altria. How about the drug names Claritin, Allegra, Flomax, Levitra, Rogaine, Nuprin, Zoloft, and Wellbutrin? These product names offer hidden persuasion and a found poetry of their own: clearing allergy relief, flowing maximally, levitating, hair regaining, new aspirin, aloft, well-being.

There is flexibility in naming because you have the chance to coin something new. In ordinary sentences, we are limited by the definitions of words. But even so, there are multiple ways of expressing an idea by using synonyms or near-synonyms that have different connotations. Our words let us take a position, choosing "Native American" instead of "Indian," for example, or "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." The shaping of messages is most apparent in political sloganeering--politicians of all ideologies choose words that reflect the values of their supporters. Every election we hear about "death taxes" and "corporate welfare." Candidates ply us with talk about "free trade" and "fair trade," about "life" and "choice," and about "marriage" and "civil unions." Iraq War policymakers signal their views when they choose among terms like "insurgency," "sectarian conflict," or "civil war."

While some word choices allow us to frame our meanings, other choices allow us to conceal them. If you say something controversial, I might respond by agreeing or disagreeing. I might also simply say "Right" or "Okay." Maybe it means I agree. Maybe it just means that I understand what you are saying. My word choice lets me hedge my opinion.

We can also hide unpleasant facts by choosing complex language to lessen the severity of a message. If a business is losing money, its CEO may talk about the company experiencing "negative growth" in revenues and sales. And if it addresses the problem by laying people off, that may be referred to as "rightsizing" the workforce. Years ago, nuclear industry press officers referred to leaks in waste storage tanks as "suspected leaks" and "confirmed leaks." There were never any "new" leaks. They were hidden in plain sight by the use of the adjectives "suspected" and "confirmed."

There are code breakers of such language, of course. Long ago, George Orwell warned of the way that deceptive language "falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details." In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," he deciphered the language of Soviet totalitarianism, writing that when "Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets[,] this is called pacification." Such language, Orwell emphasized, allowed things to be named without being pictured.

With Orwell's warnings in mind, the National Council of Teachers of English awards a Doublespeak Award each year. The award is presented for the most egregious use of "language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered." Past winners have included a Middle Eastern leader who commented, "It is precisely because we have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood"; an Air Force press officer for saying, "You always write it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing! It's air support!"; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for describing the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion as "an anomaly." Presidents Rawhide, Timberwolf, Eagle, and Tumbler have also been recipients of this dubious award.

You don't need to be an English teacher to recognize deceptive language. We can all be decoders of doublespeak, approaching ordinary language in the same way that we approach anagrams and ciphers. When oil companies refer to Alaskan beaches as "environmentally stabilized," we should ask whether that is different from "clean." When the U.S. Department of Agriculture talks about families with "low food security," we should ask why they don't use the word "hunger." When auto dealers talk about "pre-owned vehicles" we should wonder if there is a special meaning intended or whether it's just a fancy term for "used cars."

And when we think about language games, puzzles, jargon, and codes, we should appreciate how they help us to become more sophisticated decoders of the everyday messages of advertising, bureaucracy, and government.

Presidential Code Names

Lancer is John F. Kennedy; Rawhide is Ronald Reagan; Eagle is Bill Clinton; Tumbler is George W. Bush; Volunteer is Lyndon Johnson; Searchlight is Richard Nixon; Timberwolf is George H. Bush; Pass Key is Gerald Ford; Dasher is Jimmy Carter.

Published in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2007 Oregon Council for the Humanities