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Disambiguation post: On Language Dickery
Jun. 1st, 2010 12:58 amA bit of an atypical post for us-- it's another in our very infrequent series of general disambiguation posts, that we want to keep around partly to have something to point people at, so we don't have to explain the same thing over and over.
(This is also not in response to anything recent in this journal. But it has been on our mind lately because of things we've been reading elsewhere. And a lot of this stuff is probably known/obvious already to those who read our DW, but we wanted to have it for future reference.)
We very rarely try to lay down any kind of rules at all in this journal-- we tend to assume in most cases that, as within our own system, having a good set of ethics and common sense works just as well, and sometimes better, for preventing blowups and drama than elaborate sets of strict all-or-nothing rules. But this is a topic we've been wanting to write something about lately, and since we're going to try to complete a late BADD (Blogging Against Disablism Day) post, we wanted to set this one out. Applying in particular to comments on the post, since it may be linked from other places and read by more people than our posts usually are, but it really applies to everything we write here.
That rule is, basically: No language dickery. This doesn't mean that we don't think that some words are demeaning and prejudiced and should never be used. The stuff we call "language dickery" has more to do with a certain way of thinking about and using language in general and assuming that everyone shares this way of thinking about and using it. Amanda of Ballastexistenz touches on some similar stuff in this post, The Fireworks Are Interesting, but I'll just quote the most directly relevant part for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
And we've become very aware recently that we use a lot of words, because they happen to be the closest shorthand to make our thoughts understandable to the largest number of people, that are apparently associated with some abstract, wordy, labyrinthine ideologies. Or commonly used by people who subscribe to those ideologies and think that you can't really understand the world if you can't juggle a lot of them in your head. And where use of those words is considered, by both people who agree with those ideologies and those who disagree with them, to mean that you "belong to" those ideologies in a way we've never really been able to belong to any at all. We can be around and agree with some of the principles inherent in some of these big sprawling academic ideologies, when they're stripped down to their most basic elements, but our brain certainly doesn't handle them well.
Because of that, choosing terminology can become a minefield. There are people who will see one or two words or phrases used in a certain way in your writing, ignore everything else, and decide that they mean you are With some ideology they're vehemently against, in a way we are never really With any ideology at all. And start ranting about how what they assume you must mean by a certain word, is something utterly bad and horrible, and presumably you must be too (or just tragically misguided), since using That Word inevitably means you're With that ideology, or at least what they perceive it to be.
Just, no. We do NOT necessarily come with these giant tangled philosophies attached just because we used a few words or word-sets in common with them.
And if people don't see the difference between this kind of thing and asking people to not use words we consider hateful/slurs/etc, we'll try to explain: there is a difference between asking people to, say, not use ableist or homophobic or transphobic language-- such as "That's so retarded/gay!" or "S/he's not a REAL man/woman!"-- and demanding that everyone structure their words in a particular contorted way to discuss a certain issue. With the attendant assumption that words form the basis of everyone's thought and that by analyzing someone's words you can trace the entire chain of a thought process in their head. This does not work with us. At all. Most often with us, it's the ideas that come first and then we have to go scrambling around to find bits of language to fit to them, and sometimes consciously decide to use certain words over others because they seem to be relatively more widely used and understood.
If you are a person who is strongly inclined to forming/choosing among/tinkering with various sorts of ideology, don't assume that everyone's brain works just like yours. Don't assume that every single person in the world picks and chooses from elaborate ideology sets and language sets and writes everything from a deep-rooted belief in every last principle of them. Or is even necessarily aware that a word they have reached for is supposed to have a huge list of principles attached to it in the first place.
For some of us, words are several levels above the basic level where thoughts even start to come together to begin with. And trying to force ourselves to function in the same way as people for whom words are the baseline of thought is a short ticket to burnout, overload, and painful frustration. It's not that this makes us incapable of having a coherent worldview or an accurate understanding of how various parts of reality work. In fact, there are times when I think we perceive it more accurately than many people who insist on running through long ideology-mazes with thick and rigid walls in order to arrive at any conclusion about anything, or adopting any ethical principle. But be that as it may, people who can navigate their way through ideologies and line up and use all their words and concepts in the right way are, on the whole, more valued not only by general society, but by the vast majority of cultures and subcultures out there, including otherwise marginalized ones.
And no matter how much we may impress others as being someone who is "good with words"-- and we've been told that at times-- the simple fact is that very few people ever see the invisible cost, the invisible effort, in what we produce. We've actually been able to make it more understandable to some people with the analogy of a duck-- to someone who sees only the water's surface, we appear to be smoothly gliding across it. Underneath the water, the part that's important to us, we're paddling like hell. So don't assume, either, that because someone appears to you to be "good with words" on the whole, it's an effortless thing for them, or that the words they put down are perfect reflections of how those ideas popped into being in their mind. And trying to drag us into arguments about whether one word or concept we used necessarily entails some other thing in someone else's ideology is a fast way to drag us into a state where we can be easily manipulated and confused.
(This is also not in response to anything recent in this journal. But it has been on our mind lately because of things we've been reading elsewhere. And a lot of this stuff is probably known/obvious already to those who read our DW, but we wanted to have it for future reference.)
We very rarely try to lay down any kind of rules at all in this journal-- we tend to assume in most cases that, as within our own system, having a good set of ethics and common sense works just as well, and sometimes better, for preventing blowups and drama than elaborate sets of strict all-or-nothing rules. But this is a topic we've been wanting to write something about lately, and since we're going to try to complete a late BADD (Blogging Against Disablism Day) post, we wanted to set this one out. Applying in particular to comments on the post, since it may be linked from other places and read by more people than our posts usually are, but it really applies to everything we write here.
That rule is, basically: No language dickery. This doesn't mean that we don't think that some words are demeaning and prejudiced and should never be used. The stuff we call "language dickery" has more to do with a certain way of thinking about and using language in general and assuming that everyone shares this way of thinking about and using it. Amanda of Ballastexistenz touches on some similar stuff in this post, The Fireworks Are Interesting, but I'll just quote the most directly relevant part for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
"Just because I happen to use the nearest available set of translation tools does not mean I have, in picking up those tools, agreed to the entire worldview of the people who built the tools. [...] I use these tools because the alternative is silence, not because I have picked up an entire set of beliefs about the world with every phrase I use."
And we've become very aware recently that we use a lot of words, because they happen to be the closest shorthand to make our thoughts understandable to the largest number of people, that are apparently associated with some abstract, wordy, labyrinthine ideologies. Or commonly used by people who subscribe to those ideologies and think that you can't really understand the world if you can't juggle a lot of them in your head. And where use of those words is considered, by both people who agree with those ideologies and those who disagree with them, to mean that you "belong to" those ideologies in a way we've never really been able to belong to any at all. We can be around and agree with some of the principles inherent in some of these big sprawling academic ideologies, when they're stripped down to their most basic elements, but our brain certainly doesn't handle them well.
Because of that, choosing terminology can become a minefield. There are people who will see one or two words or phrases used in a certain way in your writing, ignore everything else, and decide that they mean you are With some ideology they're vehemently against, in a way we are never really With any ideology at all. And start ranting about how what they assume you must mean by a certain word, is something utterly bad and horrible, and presumably you must be too (or just tragically misguided), since using That Word inevitably means you're With that ideology, or at least what they perceive it to be.
Just, no. We do NOT necessarily come with these giant tangled philosophies attached just because we used a few words or word-sets in common with them.
And if people don't see the difference between this kind of thing and asking people to not use words we consider hateful/slurs/etc, we'll try to explain: there is a difference between asking people to, say, not use ableist or homophobic or transphobic language-- such as "That's so retarded/gay!" or "S/he's not a REAL man/woman!"-- and demanding that everyone structure their words in a particular contorted way to discuss a certain issue. With the attendant assumption that words form the basis of everyone's thought and that by analyzing someone's words you can trace the entire chain of a thought process in their head. This does not work with us. At all. Most often with us, it's the ideas that come first and then we have to go scrambling around to find bits of language to fit to them, and sometimes consciously decide to use certain words over others because they seem to be relatively more widely used and understood.
If you are a person who is strongly inclined to forming/choosing among/tinkering with various sorts of ideology, don't assume that everyone's brain works just like yours. Don't assume that every single person in the world picks and chooses from elaborate ideology sets and language sets and writes everything from a deep-rooted belief in every last principle of them. Or is even necessarily aware that a word they have reached for is supposed to have a huge list of principles attached to it in the first place.
For some of us, words are several levels above the basic level where thoughts even start to come together to begin with. And trying to force ourselves to function in the same way as people for whom words are the baseline of thought is a short ticket to burnout, overload, and painful frustration. It's not that this makes us incapable of having a coherent worldview or an accurate understanding of how various parts of reality work. In fact, there are times when I think we perceive it more accurately than many people who insist on running through long ideology-mazes with thick and rigid walls in order to arrive at any conclusion about anything, or adopting any ethical principle. But be that as it may, people who can navigate their way through ideologies and line up and use all their words and concepts in the right way are, on the whole, more valued not only by general society, but by the vast majority of cultures and subcultures out there, including otherwise marginalized ones.
And no matter how much we may impress others as being someone who is "good with words"-- and we've been told that at times-- the simple fact is that very few people ever see the invisible cost, the invisible effort, in what we produce. We've actually been able to make it more understandable to some people with the analogy of a duck-- to someone who sees only the water's surface, we appear to be smoothly gliding across it. Underneath the water, the part that's important to us, we're paddling like hell. So don't assume, either, that because someone appears to you to be "good with words" on the whole, it's an effortless thing for them, or that the words they put down are perfect reflections of how those ideas popped into being in their mind. And trying to drag us into arguments about whether one word or concept we used necessarily entails some other thing in someone else's ideology is a fast way to drag us into a state where we can be easily manipulated and confused.