The power of language is sometimes doubted, particularly in our own time, when the power of the image is a more frequent study of debate. It sometimes seems as if words and images are vying for the upper hand. The first stage of the technological revolution that took place in the final years of the 20th century and made computers, cell phones, and the Internet as integral to the lives of ordinary people as televisions, telephones, and the electricity grid had been for some decades before, took the written and the spoken word as its starting point. The wonder was that messages and documents could be flashed across the continent or between continents. The wonders of the second stage of that revolution seem to have more to do with the capture and transmission of images through digital photography and camera cell phones. Furthermore, we are often told that human beings are becoming increasingly visual creatures. Continually bombarded with images, we are becoming more and more used to responding to them and more and more reliant on taking in information in graphic form. Some people even suggest that communication via language is under threat from our dependence on our eyes and on moving pictures on screens.This is nothing new. The power of iconic images has been known about from very early times, and pictures have been used to inform the people at least since the days when Bible stories were depicted in the stained glass of church windows. We have been told since newspapers began printing photographs that "One [or a] picture is worth a thousand words." Nobody would deny the potency of a well-taken or luckily captured photograph, but, with a thousand words at their disposal, writers worth their salt ought to be able to move or stir people as deeply as photographers can and, at the same time, outdo the photographers in the amount of descriptive and explanatory material they can provide. It is important to insist that, even in a visual-friendly age, words are not a dying medium and do retain their potency. It is not a waste of time to learn how to use a thousand words, or many fewer, to describe a situation or make a case as effectively as a photograph can.Ethical ConsiderationsAnother old media adage tells us that "The camera cannot [or does not] lie." While we may have become more dependent on having information presented to us in pictorial form, we have also become more sophisticated in our assessment of the images presented to us. We know that images can be manipulated; indeed, the computer software that goes with digital cameras enables us to do a certain amount of image manipulation for ourselves. It is possible to remove intrusive or inappropriate elements from the scene that we photographed in order to produce a more pleasing final image.What the layperson with a digital camera can do today, the professionally skilled photographer has been able to do more or less since the camera was invented. A photograph of fairies dancing beside a brook in an English wood, taken in 1917, was declared to be genuine by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the astutest of all detectives. What many people suspected at the time has since been conclusively established: The picture was a clever fake. The camera can lie. Embarrassing incidents and persons can be airbrushed out of visual historical evidence, just as we can now enhance our digital photographs to make ourselves appear more skillful photographers than we really are.When the camera learned to lie, it was, however, simply imitating its human operators who had perfected this ignoble art in words over the centuries. Words can represent the truth or distort it; they can provide an accurate account of situations or a false or biased one. It is in that sense that our present discussions are entering an area where questions of truth and falsehood, personal honesty and integrity, and their opposites are very relevant issues.Power over the ReaderIt was said in the previous chapter that words "sit firmly on the page" and that it is up to the writer to set the reader's imagination to work so that those words begin to "speak." But when we talk about setting the reader's imagination to work, are we not really implying that the writer has power over the reader and manipulates the reader's imagination or the reader himself or herself? Indeed we are. Words have power. Some of the power that they possess can, in fact, be illustrated by examining the different impressions conveyed by the two phrases that have just been used to describe this very process: "setting the reader's imagination to work" and "manipulating the reader."If we say that we are "setting somebody's imagination to work," we surely suggest that the process we are initiating is essentially benign. To set children's imagination to work, for example, is a task for a teacher, a parent, or a book. Few people would argue that this was anything other than a legitimate and beneficial activity. An active imagination is, up to a point, a vital component of childhood; an active imagination, again up to a point and perhaps a slightly different point, is an asset to an adult as well.But if we use the word manipulating in place of the phrase "setting the imagination to work," we convey a very different impression. If we talk about teachers, books, or parents "manipulating" the minds of children, we are unlikely to be thinking about a process that can safely be called benign. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) informs us that manipulate can mean "to manage or utilize skillfully," on the one hand, and "to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means esp. to one's own advantage," on the other. It is difficult to keep that latter sense out of our minds entirely, even when the word is being used in the former sense. Whenever the word is used in connection with another person, or with another person's mental activity, the nonbenign connotations seem to make their presence especially strongly felt.So when does setting the imagination to work become manipulation, and when does manipulation move from being skillful management to being artful, insidious, self-interested control? On which side of this rather subtle divide does the writer's activity fall?Most writers, naturally enough, will assume that their intentions are innocent or honorable. If faced with this particular choice, they would probably opt for the phrase "setting the imagination to work." It describes accurately and truthfully what writers set out to do. Writers should, however, be aware that their activities could be described differently, that people can put "spin"—to use the modern political jargon—on almost any human action to make it appear more or less benign or admirable. Writers should also be honest enough to admit that they are among the people who use spin. Even if they do not actively spin for a particular party or cause, a lot of what they do manipulates their readers—at least in the first of the two senses cited from Merriam-Webster's dictionary. When we talk about "putting tone into words," we are essentially talking about influencing our readers in order to ensure that they receive the information we have to offer them in the correct spirit. We want them to understand the spirit of our message as well as the simple message.In addition to the practical and aesthetic choices that writers have to make when they are creating or revising their work, there is sometimes an ethical choice or an ethical question confronting them. Do I attempt to influence the reader, or do I simply present the facts and leave the reader to make up his or her own mind? Have I presented the truth as it is—or at least as I see it—or have I, deliberately or accidentally, biased my account?Telling the TruthMost of us will have been raised to tell the truth and, when we write for other people, our aim is generally to tell them the truth—at least the truth as we see it. But how do we do this?We return here to an issue that has concerned us at various points in this book: How much of ourselves do we put into our written work? As has been said before, it is virtually impossible to eliminate the personal element from style, nor in most instances should we wish to do so. But if we wish to tell the plain, unvarnished, and objective truth, can we afford to let any subjective elements in at all? Ought we not to aim at the kind of passive, unemotional recording famously evoked by the Anglo-American novelist Christopher Isherwood at the opening of his book Goodbye to Berlin (1939)?I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day all of this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed. Unfortunately, as we know, even the camera can lie. Furthermore, a human being usually has to choose which direction to point the camera in. It is probably impossible to perceive or record anything purely objectively, but at the same time there is a great deal that we can do to achieve at least relative objectivity. One of the main points to be discussed in this chapter will be how to keep what we write as objective as possible, how to write in a way that does not, either deliberately or inadvertently, prejudge the issue. This tricky and contentious subject will be dealt with later in the chapter.It is not part of the purpose of this book to try to give moral lessons to writers. It is, however, very much part of its purpose to remind its readers of the power and potentialities of language and of the fact that writing, like most human activities, does not take place in a moral vacuum. You will be able to examine your own motives and will also know, depending on the kind of work you are doing, how much attention you have to pay to ethical considerations. In fiction, almost anything goes. If you are writing to inform, guide, or instruct others, however, then the onus is on you to be aware of your responsibilities toward both your readers and your subject matter.Before we proceed any further with this discussion, however, there are other issues to be dealt with. Chief among them is the question of formality and informality.
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