[interiorchurch]

This would be sort of a death blow to much of postmodernism, no? "Reality is structured like a language and the free play of symbols reigns over all"-style thinking was very popular at one time, but this would rule against it.

[podgorniy]

No. Language stays a framework for modelling. Reality stays available to us only in form of models (pictures, sounds, ideas, measures, texts, videos, this text and what you imagine based in the text). The claim "Reality is structured like a language and the free play of symbols reigns over all" holds regardless of us thinking in symbols, words, pictures, concepts, cliches, emotions or _other models_. We have access only to symbols (not reality they represent) thus we "stuck" with this postmodernism discovery for observable future.

[kapodc]

Not completely. The Postmodernists do use language to shape people's thought by redefining words and eliminating wrongthink words. And they have been successful.

But they mainly influence people who are not thinking to begin with. Or, to put it more mildly, do not have time to think about every issue and therefore adopt the current mainstream propaganda.

So in the sense "Can we conjure up a fake reality that many people will believe?" they are right". In the sense that "language is reality or even thought they are of course wrong.