Loaded Language
Every closed group builds a private vocabulary, words that end thought rather than start it, and that mark who is inside. Lifton called it loading the language, and it is the most portable of his criteria: it turns up in groups with no theology at all, in companies, in therapies, and online. When a word means something only to members, it is doing work.
Part of Cults
15 moments in this segment.
- - Banners at a march in The Hague. Followers of Sun Myung Moon demonstrating in The Hague on 19 February 1974, carrying banners including pro-Nixon slogans. Public marches were part of the movement's early profile in Europe.
- - Picket outside a Washington bookstore. Members of the Unification Church picketing a pornography shop on 14th Street NW in Washington, D.C., in August 1976, with placards reading 'Porno kills the soul'. Public morality campaigns were part of the movement's American profile in the 1970s.
- - Sannyasins dancing at the Orange Full Moon festival. Followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh dancing at an international festival in the Frans Otten Stadion in Amsterdam on 17 July 1981. The uniform red and orange clothing and the wooden mala worn at the neck identified membership on sight.
- - Mass wedding officiated by Sun Myung Moon. A collective blessing ceremony conducted by Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church in July 1982. Couples were matched by the founder, and the mass wedding became the movement's most recognisable public form.
- - Osho cassette sold at Rajneeshpuram. An audio cassette of the movement's discourses, of the kind sold at Rajneeshpuram in 1984, with its copyright notice. Recorded talks were sold to members and visitors alongside the printed books.
- - Sun Myung Moon speaks in Budapest. Sun Myung Moon addressing an audience in Budapest on 10 November 1995 during a world tour on the theme 'The True Family and I'. Tours of this kind carried the movement's teaching into eastern Europe after 1989.
- - 'Free personality testing' sign, San Francisco. A Scientology sign offering free personality testing on Howard Street in San Francisco, April 2006. The phrasing is the standard invitation used to bring passers-by into the testing routine.
- - Placard carrying a critics' web address, London. A protester in London on 15 March 2008 holding a sign for xenu.net, the address of Operation Clambake, a Norwegian-run archive of Scientology documents. The URL served as the campaign's shorthand and its distribution point.
- - Anti-psychiatry display inside a Clearwater building. A display about psychiatry inside the Coachman Building in Clearwater, Florida, photographed in 2008. Opposition to psychiatry is a doctrinal position of the church and the subject of its own permanent and touring exhibitions.
- - Scientology leaflet left on a bicycle. A Swedish-language Scientology flyer tucked into a bicycle in 2012. Leaflets are the most common form the organisation's printed language takes in public.
- - An auditing demonstration with an E-meter. A demonstration of Scientology auditing at the Auckland org in 2017: an auditor, a person being audited and a Mark 8 Ultra electropsychometer between them. The vocabulary of the session - auditor, preclear, E-meter - belongs entirely to the group.
- - E-meter reading at the Auckland church. An E-meter, the galvanometer used during Scientology auditing, in use at the Auckland church in January 2017. The device and the vocabulary built around it are specific to the group.
- - Stone sign at the entrance to Mount Carmel. A stone marker at the entrance to the site of the Mount Carmel Center near Waco, Texas, photographed in 2022.
- - Sign of the Washington Family Church. The sign at 1610 Columbia Road NW in Washington, D.C., giving the site's name as the Washington Family Church National Cathedral. What a movement calls its buildings is part of how it positions itself.
- - David Koresh's business card. A business card carrying the name Vernon Howell adopted, David Koresh, with a Pomona address, on display at a museum in Savannah, Georgia. The name joins the biblical King David to Koresh, the Hebrew form of Cyrus.
