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About LTI, and its Italian equivalent, much has already been written, also by linguists. It is an obvious observation that where violence is inflicted on man, it is also inflicted on language.
Levi, Drowned, p. 97.
Fressen, to eat, a term applied only to animals in polite German (Levi, Drowned, p. 99.
Haftlinge, prisoners. When a young kapo referred to his charges as men rather than haflinge, he was corrected. (Levi, Drowned, p. 92.)
Schmutzstuck, schmuckstuck--a woman weakened to the point of death, the female equivalent of a Muselmann; literally "garbage" and "jewel", respectively. (Levi, Drowned,p. 99.)
Spritzen, abgespritzt--to kill or be killed by phenol injection.
If anyone hesitated (everyone hesitated because they did not understand and were terrorized) the blows fell, and it was obvious that they were a variant of the same language: use of the word to communicate thought, this necessary and sufficient mechanism for man to be man, had fallen into disuse. This was a signal: for those people we were no longer men.
Levi, Drowned, p. 91.
Such an inquiry would be illuminating, but ultimately ineffectual, since the debasement of language and the traducing of the psyche, dependent as it is upon the organ of speech, is a process observable in varying degrees in all western language. The case of the German language is only an example of more so...one notes in advanced capitalist societies that the command of nuanced and subtle language in public discourse has all but disappeared. The debasement of language, the stripping of its shading and moral intensity began in the West long before Hitler and continues after he is gone. It will help us to explain a kind of cauterization of conscience by the use of metaphor and euphemism; to understand that in official Nazi language the extermination of Jews was precisely that-- the disinfectant of lice, the burning of garbage, the incineration of trash, and hence language never had to say exactly what acts its words commanded: kill, burn, murder that old Jew, that middle-aged Jew, that child Jew.
Cohen, pp. 7-8.
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