LANGUAGE / WORDS / WEAPONS / MEDIUM
There Are Many Weapons in the World, Words are One of Them
Language is not simply a medium of describing reality; it is interwoven with actions and feelings 🗣
Words are like weapons; they damage like bullets; some are like poison, slowly affecting the mind and activating lethal semantics. They can be used to hurt, offend, threaten, discriminate, demonize, and carry social consequences.
Focusing on aggressive words can construct hostile conceptualizations of reality. Direct and indirect verbal aggression bludgeons with far-reaching emotional and cerebral consequences. I know from familial personal experience where Jewish citizens were first stigmatized, threatened verbally, then mistreated and murdered.
Words are actions and are to be handled accordingly. If I call someone an idiot, for instance, I act in a harmful, insulting way.
The use of inappropriate words brings me to address some behavior on social media. I’m not a Pollyanna who can’t handle criticism. Anyone in my line of writing — sharing an opinion, especially on sensitive topics — invites opposing points of view. But civil disagreement or debate isn’t the same as an angry rant. It’s a shame that fewer people seem to know the difference, and this deprivation of awareness seriously affects the quality of civic life.
Language is not simply a medium of describing reality; it is interwoven with actions and feelings
Some people cavalierly toss out slurs and abusive speech, not intending to cause physical harm to anyone but to bind themselves into a group-think mentality as they try to reinforce their superiority through slanderous language. Such contentious behavior isn’t a good thing — far from it, and it’s dangerous because it desensitizes people to the harm created by loose lips. It is recumbent upon us to dispel the illusion that we can freely teach and learn the language, irrespective of the social and historical baggage our spoken categories come with.
And there’s a price to pay for insensitive and one way of looking at issues. When people speak their hatred, they show their innermost selves, even under the guise of invisibility that social media fosters. Words do matter, and those meanings represent authentic attitudes and beliefs.
We should select them well.
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