The Language of Domination

The cost of impartiality in an age of explicit power.

[Text in Portuguese here]

Disclaimer: the following text is not a political, social, or much less a geo-economic analysis of the negotiation between the American president and the president of the European Commission. My concern here is a dark future that awaits us when we swap the meaning of the word "imposition" for "negotiation," among others.

Language is a living being. Just like customs, words change in form and meaning. This process is not fast, and it can take centuries to happen. A common example is the word meat: in Middle English, it was mete, and it meant "meal" or "food," and it took a few centuries to become meat, thus referring to the flesh of animals.

However, since April 2025, less than three months ago, we have seen the term "imposition" being referred to as "negotiation." It is not the first time this has happened, but since this is currently a political event with significant repercussions, I fear that from 2025 onwards, the term "imposition" will begin to be replaced by "negotiation," something close to an individualized euphemism, or what Bourdieu called symbolic violence.

From this point on, I need to call a spade a spade, but first, I must warn that my concern is initially linguistic and semiotic, and subsequently political. Therefore, I will try to keep the text in these initial terms.

Since April 2025, the elected president of the United States has begun to announce economic tariffs on his trading partners. Among other countries, the European Union would be taxed at 30%, meaning that European products entering the United States would become 30% more expensive, which in practice means they would not enter. This would cause unemployment and bankruptcy for many European companies whose main client is that country.

On 07/27/2025, a negotiation is held between the representatives of the involved parties: Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen. But before we move forward with the analysis, it is important to understand what a negotiation is, or what is expected of one.

The negotiation

The video we have access to is the recording of a public conversation with the press before the start of the closed-door negotiation. Anyone who has not seen it can watch it here.

This dialogue was called a "negotiation," but I disagree about the correct use of this word (and even the word "dialogue"), and that is why we must define what a negotiation is, and what is expected of one.

A negotiation is not a mere battle of wills. It is a complex process that includes many factors. Initially, it must start from a mutual desire to reach an agreement.

If one of the parties has no intention of yielding or collaborating, there is no negotiation in practice. The focus should be on interests, not on wants. If someone wants 10% of something, one must know the reason for that amount in order to find solutions that meet both parties' needs. Both parties should feel satisfied. The good outcome of a negotiation is a draw, not a victory.

For this, the data must be clear and objective, with audited and impartial sources. Invented, suggested, or dubious data cannot be considered, as it gives an advantage to one of the parties.

Finally, a negotiation must have a Plan B, an alternative in case an initial agreement is not reached. In business jargon, this is known as BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). The idea here is that if the negotiation is not possible, there must be alternatives that make its realization possible.

Anyone who has seen the video must have noticed that very little of this was present. But besides the negotiation itself, we must think about those who conduct it: the negotiators.

The negotiators

The success of a balanced and successful negotiation depends heavily on the skills of the negotiators. To that end, both must not only have effective and respectful communication but also know how to listen to the other side.

It is necessary to understand body language and other subtexts to also understand the things that are not being said. Both must have the ability to manage their own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of others.

Negotiators are trained in various techniques, such as Rapport, through which they create an empathetic connection using techniques like mirroring, attentiveness, reciprocity, narratives, and face management. Finally, they must be flexible and creative, meaning they must know how to adapt quickly and explore innovative solutions that may not have been apparent at the beginning.

Once again, we see how unbalanced this "negotiation" was. Here, I will be more detailed because I need this to support my hypothesis. Let's see how this dialogue does not align with the principles we have established so far:

The American president's communication is dominant and unilateral. He begins the dialogue with an ambiguous compliment and immediately establishes a framework of adversaries, not partners. He speaks for much longer than the other party, controls the flow of the conversation, changes the subject when he wants, and uses communication not to understand the other side, but to demonstrate his position of power. He resorts to monologues with digressions on unrelated topics. By doing this, he shows who is in command of the agenda and the time, and forces the other party to wait passively for their turn to speak.

In turn, the president of the European Commission uses contained and reactive communication. She tries, unsuccessfully, to frame the discussion more collaboratively and diplomatically. She tries to praise the other party as a strong negotiator, which is a common tactic to appease a dominant counterpart. She brings to the table an attempt at collaboration based on the size of the markets, which the other party ignores in his insistent narrative of "injustice."

On the emotional intelligence side, he uses his emotions as a tool of intimidation. When he says he is not in a good mood, he creates uncertainty and puts the president in a defensive position. When he receives the compliment of being fair, he rejects it with a laugh, showing that power is more important than fairness.

The EU leader, in turn, demonstrates resilience and emotional regulation. She uses her emotional intelligence to survive the meeting without causing a diplomatic incident. Her interests take a backseat. When the other party brings up the "injustice" narrative, she tries to change it to "rebalancing," so that she accepts his idea, but in a less accusatory way.

There is no trust-building from him during the process. There isn't even an attempt to build a common interest; on the contrary, he starts from a foundation of complaint and distrust. He actively undermines attempts to build trust with the narrative that this relationship is very unfair to the U.S. The very location of the meeting, at his golf resort, is already a symbol of his dominance. He does not come to them. He plays on home turf. The leader of the European Commission agreeing to negotiate in that location, and not in a neutral space, is an act of submission.

The leader of the European Commission tries to build this relationship, once again without success. The attempts at praise or camaraderie are received as self-aggrandizement and are turned back to reinforce his power.

Finally, the American president demonstrates total inflexibility. His positions are rigid and his terms are non-negotiable. When asked if the tariffs could be lower, he immediately said no. If there would be more time, also no.

The EU president, in turn, is put in a position where she cannot be flexible or creative. Her role is to accept a bad scenario to avoid a worse one. Her choice is reduced to accepting the inevitable.

On the political or economic side, I have nothing to add. If the European Union wants to be a colony of the United States, so be it. They have been working towards that for many years. What really worries me is the symbolic violence that the word "negotiation" is suffering.

Imposition

What I have tried to demonstrate so far is that what we witnessed has very little of a negotiation. It is much more like an imposition, in which one of the parties imposes its will on the other.

The three main factors that lead me to call it an imposition are: (1) that the deadline is final and non-negotiable, (2) the alternative to the agreement is an economic punishment, and (3) that the basic terms of the proposal (like the 15% tariffs), are not open to negotiation.

We saw in the video that there was no mutuality, relationship building, or flexibility from the one who held the power. There was no search for a mutual solution, but rather the assertion of dominance, the control of a narrative, and the affirmation of the expected outcome. On the dominated side, the negotiator's skills were merely defensive, in order to mitigate damage, maintain diplomatic dignity, and find a language that would make acceptance more palatable for the European Union. In short, the "negotiation" is: either these terms are accepted, or something much worse will come.

Although dictionaries do not show "imposition" as an antonym for "negotiation," this is what we have in practice: a unilateral action, a power imbalance, the absence of a real choice, the use of coercion or threat, a lack of consensus or dialogue, and an acceptance out of necessity, not will.

It's like an employer who decides that his employees will work on weekends. That is an imposition. If he calls the employees' representative to "negotiate" on terms like either you accept or you're fired, it continues to be an imposition.

The language of the media

The USA president celebrates this "negotiation" as "the greatest deal ever", and the media reproduce this statement and the term negotiation. I was only able to find one outlet, a podcast, that used the term "imposition."

For those not familiar with communications, the logic of the media operates in a different way than ours. I will focus here only on the mainstream, traditional press, like television networks or major news portals, since online outlets are often focused on a specific profile or opinion collective.

Within traditional media, we usually have news, analysis, and opinion.

The news, or reports, are normally sold by News Agencies, such as Reuters (UK), Associated Press (USA), or Agence France-Presse (FR). These agencies are a kind of news wholesaler, maintaining a vast global network of reporters and photographers, and they sell this content through a subscription system to large outlets, like newspapers and TV stations. For this reason, this content needs to be as neutral and impartial as possible. Each of the outlets that buys this news will then adapt the story to focus on its audience, adjusting the language, images, data, and, eventually, consolidating other information.

Then come the analysts, who start from this neutrality, but connect dots, make comparisons, and often step out of their role as analysts and, with bias, step into a role of personal opinion.

Finally, opinion articles, or editorials, are the places where there is the most freedom of opinion. In these, the author expresses a clear point of view, which can be personal or represent the will of their employer.

These are not tied to neutrality or analysis, and therefore can use whatever language they want. That is why it is in these that we can find terms like submission, humiliation, or imposition. These outlets end up preferring the term "negotiation" because they consider it more neutral.

They partially are, in the sense that if the negotiators inform that a negotiation will be broadcast, that is what must be reported, even if it is not one. It is not a matter of euphemism, but of following the rules imposed on them.

But when outlets use a more neutral, or diplomatic, term like negotiation, instead of a technically correct term, like imposition, this is a problem because they are obscuring reality, biasing it.

Symbolic Violence

The discussions on journalistic ethics are widely debated, and it is not I who will resolve them here.

But, for the purpose of conclusion, I see 4 possible decision-making paths that lead the mainstream media to distort reality: (1) the principle of neutrality and objectivity, which values reporting the facts in the most neutral and objective way possible; (2) the use of official or diplomatic language, as I said just above, they report exactly what was announced, the way it was announced; (3) simplicity and clarity for the general public, a basic law of information that is intended to be disseminated as widely as possible; and (4) avoiding accusations of partiality.

Although these are my working hypotheses, and I broadly disagree with all of them.

If the very concept of neutrality is broad enough to be seen in different ways, so is partiality.

In this analysis alone, neutrality has already performed in 4 different senses: the absence of a value judgment, the use of a common aseptic vocabulary, the separation between fact and opinion, and a false balance.

A more courageous journalism that is faithful to the facts, that is, a journalism that is more journalistic, could describe the situation this way:

> "In a meeting that had the appearance of a trade negotiation, the U.S. president effectively imposed terms on the European Union, using the threat of tariffs as the main tool of coercion and refusing to discuss key points of the proposal."

The decision-making process to make this call is rather courageous, as it disregards the initial information by declaring it false (had the appearance of), it is not simple, as it already comes with commentary, and it shows itself to be quite susceptible to accusations of partiality.

As we saw earlier, calling the event a "negotiation" is a bias. It's not an intentional bias in the sense of "we want to deceive the public to favor one side." It could even be. But it happens as a structural bias of modern journalism, born from a fear of being accused of partiality.

Many of these outlets are not partial, but they like to maintain that aura. It must be good for business.

There is a difference between neutrality of language and fidelity to the facts. The media, as we have seen, prioritize the former at the expense of the latter.

What was seen were two people meeting to discuss a trade agreement, which is normally seen as a negotiation. Understanding that this was not a negotiation requires the construction of an argument, an analysis, and a conclusion.

This makes the news more complex and difficult to engage a larger number of people.

In this way, when we choose not to use the correct technical terms, imposition instead of negotiation, we are falling into a bias of false neutrality. In this sense, a situation is presented in a visibly balanced way, even when the facts overwhelmingly support one side.

When this happens, what the media does is legitimize a power narrative, shape public perception, and end up abdicating their social function by showing a formal description instead of the real event. This weakens us as people and as a society.

To finish, I will stick to the second point: shaping public perception.

Pierre Bourdieu's Symbolic Violence can help us to see this danger. When the media calls "imposition" a "negotiation," they impose a category of perception through which the world must be seen. The nature of power is, in this way, suppressed.

The impression is given that the power relationship is balanced, and the economic coercion materializes into something benign: "the greatest deal ever made." The repeated use of the term "negotiation" normalizes the event and its outcome, and legitimizes the dominant order. The domination of the U.S. over the E.U. is no longer an act of force, but rather legitimized as the natural result of a fair diplomatic process.

Finally, the public, by consuming this language quickly and uncritically, ends up internalizing the worldview that is offered to them.

This is the crucial point. As the public is unaware of the nature of this domination, it accepts the narrative that it was a negotiation, becomes an involuntary accomplice to a power structure that allowed the imposition, and in the end, its perception has been effectively shaped, thus completing the symbolic violence, since the domination becomes invisible and accepted.

This is my concern with the exchange of meanings to which we have been exposed in recent times. We are calling fugitives 'exiles,' mass layoffs 'reorganization,' forced expulsion, 'humanitarian evacuation,' and imposition 'negotiation.'

By accepting these changes, we close our eyes to reality. In return, we accept the Labubus that shield us from adult life.

My concern ends with a list of words whose meanings are being twisted: fugitives as 'exiles,' layoffs as 'reorganization,' and imposition as 'negotiation.' What examples have you seen? Share the euphemisms of power you've noticed in the comments below.