Nonsense Sounds Profound Because We Fill in Meaning

September 21, 2022

Vague, emotional, or grandiose language often sounds wise precisely because it lacks specific content. Listeners project their own meaning onto the empty vessel, and the result feels like deep agreement.

"Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they 'belong' with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations." J.A.C. Brown

J.A.C. Brown's observation, cited in Gula's Nonsense, explains the machinery. Propaganda and nonsense work not because audiences are stupid but because audiences are active meaning-makers. When a speaker offers glittering generalities "freedom," "innovation," "justice," "the future" each listener fills those abstractions with their own specific desires and experiences. The vaguer the language, the broader the consensus it can manufacture. Slogans, platitudes, and sanctimonious claptrap succeed because they let everyone hear what they already believe.

Gula catalogs the toolkit: the bandwagon effect, repetition, confidence, oversimplification, stereotyping, and transfer (associating an idea with something already admired). Sam Leith, in Words Like Loaded Pistols, notes that rhetoric is "made, as often as not, of half-truths and fine-sounding meaninglessness, of false oppositions and abstract nouns and shaky inferences." The structure of the sentence can do persuasive work independent of its content. Linked pairs, groups of three, repeated phrases these patterns trigger a feeling of profundity that has nothing to do with truth.

The defense is not cynicism but specificity. When a claim sounds deep, ask: what would this look like concretely? What would it mean if it were false? If you cannot answer either question, you are probably looking at well-packaged nonsense. The Rulebook for Arguments puts it simply: "Build on substance, not overtone. Offer actual reasons; don't just play on the overtones of words."

Takeaway: When a statement sounds profound but you cannot pin down exactly what it claims, treat that feeling of profundity as a warning sign you may be filling in meaning that was never there.