Language And Reason In History Essay

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Discuss the role Language and Reason in History.

Every country relies on history to have knowledge of their foundations; culture, religion, ancestry, heritage, and most importantly battles that brought about independence to the country, ‘without it it’s like a person without memory’. On the other hand, history does not only give knowledge of the past but helps to understand the present and the ability to predict the future. The foundations on how history is built, distinguish between historical evidences – primary and secondary sources. Language and reason play a significant role in history. The role of language in history is important as history is written and is presented to people through language. Reason with a certain reasoning historian
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They get to have their stories told, they get to decide what goes to the public and what doesn’t. Imagine, if Germany had won the Second World War, our view of the holocaust would totally be different wouldn’t it? Maybe the general populace may not even have been told of their existence. On the other hand, Stalin attempted to remove people from history (altering photos, deleting records of existence), people with power have the strength feed us with whatever they want. In addition, language can also make the interpretation of history unclear. Writing about the Russian revolution is controversial. Many terms such as revolutsia, demokratsia, respublik, sotsialism etc. were imported words and although they were used extensively in propaganda, they were not understood perfectly by uneducated Russians who changed the meaning within their own minds, thus terms like democracy changed slightly in meaning when used by uneducated people, ditto for Marxist terms like bourgeois or proletariat. Language manipulates a person’s reasoning when they are taught history; it also manipulates in order to control a population, via propaganda. Language in history is the different means of words when translated from one language to another, which caused doctrinal differences on interpretation of the bible and an ultimately a split between the Catholic and Orthadox

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