The way I see it, words, in and of themselves, aren't very important.
For instance, imagine that there exists a universe where, for whatever reason, "salad" refers to a timekeeping instrument, and "clock" refers to a mixture of fruits/vegetables served cold as a meal. Everyone has agreed on this, and so when one person mentions to his friend that he needs to get some new batteries for the salad in his bathroom, the friend understands perfectly.
Such a universe would be virtually identical to our own. Sure, some puns, rhymes, and the like, which work on the sounds of a word itself, would be different, but society would function the same as it does here. What's important outside of poetry is not words, but ideas. Words are simply tools that we use to convey meaning to one another, so that we can communicate effectively.
If you want evidence of this that isn't as hypothetical, look no further than the phenomenon of the Euphemistic Treadmill. Euphemisms generally come in two subtly different categories: those intended to obfuscate an unsavory truth, and those used to discuss an idea when other words for it are considered too vulgar. Examples of the former are "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "terminate" in place of "torture" and "kill", respectively. When these work as intended, people don't know what you mean. Examples of the latter are "no longer with us" and "mentally handicapped" in place of "dead" and "retarded". Everyone still knows what you're talking about. The difference between the two is that the former is used when a concept is considered unsavory, while the latter is used when a word is considered unsavory.
The former is clearly not a good thing, and is generally only used by people who know what they're doing is wrong, or at least unpopular, and want to hide the truth; I think most people can agree on this. However, people tend to think of the latter as harmless at worst, and noble at best, being polite and trying not to hurt anyone's feelings. While people using the latter tend to have more noble goals, they are still wrong-headed, for a reason that brings us back to the Euphemism Treadmill.
When we look back at writings from the past, to a lot of people they can seem much cruder than those of today. For example, less than a century ago "moron" and "idiot" were used as medical terms to refer to what we would today call "mentally handicapped". Hundreds of years ago, the word "cunt" was used in medical literature as well, as the scientific term for the female genitalia. It can be easy for people today to look at these examples and wonder at how such educated people could use such crude and offensive language. However, the thing to remember is that, at the time, these words weren't considered offensive. "Crudeness" is not an inherent property of certain arrangements of phonemes or glyphs; it is a description of cultural attitudes towards them.
This is the Euphemism Treadmill in action; euphemisms have a short shelf-life. The reason for this is simple: people don't really object to these words per se, but to the meanings behind them. This is why "idiot"/"moron" became "retarded", which became "mentally handicapped". The word "retarded" originated as a euphemism, implying that these people were just slower. In recent news, however, it has become "The R Word", with some treating it as a slur. And in our lifetimes, we can expect to see the same thing happen to "mentally handicapped", and then the same thing will happen to whatever euphemism we construct to replace it. This is because, fundamentally, "idiot", "moron", and "retarded" are just symbols which represent ideas, but are not themselves ideas. And the idea that they represent, that of someone with substandard intellectual capabilities, is what we find unsavory. For this reason, once everyone knows what it means, it is going to carry a negative connotation, and be used as an insult, because the idea, not the word, carries a negative connotation.
This is not the only example of the Euphemism Treadmill; there are several more listed on Wikipedia. However, this post is not about the Euphemism Treadmill; I was merely using it as evidence that words themselves aren't very important. And I think that, on some level, we all know this. However, I Have Noticed A Pattern of people, often very smart people, fighting over words instead of the concepts that they represent.
For one example, there is a big debate that often crops up over the word "nigger" and it's cousin "nigga". People will ask "Is it okay for a black person to call another black person 'nigga', considering how that word was used in the past?". People will insist that no one should use the word, because the word itself is dirty. But is this really the case?
When a black person says to another black person "What's up, my nigga?", the message he is communicating is one of camaraderie. When a Klansman says "Niggers are inferior.", the message he is communicating is one of hatred and oppression. There was controversy in 2010 over "Negro" being an option on the census. "Negro" (with a long 'e' sound, comes from the Spanish word negro, with a short 'e' sound, simply meaning "black" (the color). The Census Bureau explained that there are still people who identify as negroes, and they should be included in the census. However, people thought that this word was fundamentally too insensitive to include, even though it had once been a neutral descriptor of race.
If a preacher says on the pulpit that "All faggots deserve to burn in hell!", is that really any worse than if he'd said "All homosexual individuals deserve to burn in hell!"? When Laci Green used the word "tranny" in a positive way, not knowing its negative connotations and communicating a very supportive message, did she deserve death threats for using the wrong word, regardless of what her message was?
I've seen this a lot recently. "Don't say X; say Y!", when X and Y are synonymous. I can't tell you how many times I've seen an article or list of some sorts telling people what words they can and cannot use. They'll say not to call anyone dumb, lest you offend mute people. You can't call anyone crazy (or loony, or batshit, or mad, or nuts), or else you're offending the mentally ill. Likewise for "stupid" (or numbskull, or dimwit) and the mentally handicapped. "That's weak" is offensive to… I don't know, wimps? Also, "lame" is offensive to people who can't walk, and "gypsy" is racist, regardless of context or meaning, end of discussion. These will then go on to list insults you're allowed to use, like "unintelligent", which tend to be much tamer, and often aren't even insults, but simple descriptors. You also can't call anyone "overweight" because that implies there is a correct weight (even though, objectively, there is a correct weight range for each person). You can't call anyone morbidly obese because that implies illness (even though the term refers to people who are so fat that they could die).
I'm sorry, but who the fuck are you, and what gives you the right to get so OCD over what words I can and cannot use, you stupid, retarded, batshit crazy, hysterical, dimwitted, loony cretin‽
This isn't the only place words get a bad rap. Consider the following scenario:
Alice and Bob go on a picnic, and they start chatting with each other. They look at the beauty of nature around them or whatever, and eventually get to the topic of religion. Alice tells Bob her beliefs, and Bob starts describing his. He tells Alice that he doesn't really belong to any organized religion, but he still believes in a god, and that this god created the Universe, but he doesn't think this god necessarily cares about or gets involved in this universe anymore. "Oh," Alice says, "so you're a deist.". Bob shakes his head and says "I don't believe in labels.".
This brings us to the topic of self-identification. Bob is a deist; he fits the definition to a T. He's just also someone who doesn't like labels, whatever the word for that is.
For another example, take a look at this video. If you aren't able to or don't want to watch it (or if I forgot to add the link, seeing as I'm not composing this in Blogger), I'll sum it up below:
The video concerns the difference between "bisexuality" and "pansexuality". The vlogger making the video asked several people what the difference between the two was, and got wildly differing definitions. By the end of the video, he concludes that the two words mean essentially the same thing, and that a good rule of thumb is to just ask someone which one they identify as, and call them that.
It's become a common refrain nowadays that if you respect someone, you'll call them what they want to be called. I disagree with this "common wisdom". My stated policy is that I will call people what they are, and any resemblance to what they want to be called is purely incidental.
You see, labels aren't something that can be believed or disbelieved; they are merely tools that we use to convey meaning. When Bob describes his religious beliefs, he's saying he's a deist, because that's what a deist is. Bob fits the definition of a deist, and is therefore a deist, "deist" simply acting as a symbol for the idea of someone who believes in a vaguely-defined, non-interventionist creator god.
The video above is a great example of what, for the purposes of this post, I will call "exclusive synonyms". "I'm not X; I'm Y!" when X and Y mean the same thing. Bisexual or pansexual, black or negro or colored or African-American, liberal or progressive, and so on. Exclusive synonyms inevitably arise from self-identification. You end up with definitions like "a P is a person who fits criteria A, B, and C, and calls themselves a P" and "a Q is a person who fits criteria A, B, and C and calls themselves a Q". The problem with this scheme is that it adds complexity to a language without communicating any additional information (aside from any inferences that can be made from the individual's word choice); the extra parts of the definitions are circular, referring back to the word itself instead of any actual idea or concept. And as words are tools for communicating ideas, and these extra details in the definition are useless to that end, they have no reason to be there.
The image below is another example.
This person expresses outrage that a mother would tell her son that boys can't be lesbians. For reference, here's the definition of "lesbian":
- 4. an inhabitant of Lesbos.
- 5. (usually lowercase) . a female homosexual.
noun
I know almost nothing about the boy in question, but I can say for certain that, unless he happens to live on the Greek island of Lesbos (AKA Mytilene), he's not a lesbian. This is because to say someone is a lesbian is exactly the same thing as saying said person is a female homosexual. Because this boy is male, he is not female. Because he is not female, he is not a female homosexual. Because he is not a female homosexual, he is not a lesbian. By definition. Quod erat demonstrandum.
The problem is this person doesn't believe in definitions. He believes that if you call yourself an X, you are an X.
Make no mistake; this is an incredibly dangerous mindset. If all that's necessary to be an X is to say that you are one, the effects on language are very deleterious. In the short term, if anything you say about yourself automatically becomes true, this allows people to rationalize deception. To use a somewhat humorous example, someone who is 50 years old and has lived in Texas their whole life could tell you they were a Canadian teenager.
In the long term, if this anti-definitions "identifying" craze catches on, the outlook for the communicative power of words is even grimmer. Definitions are important, because they allow different people to agree on what a word means; because words are symbols for ideas, this is what enables us to transfer ideas from one mind to another.
Imagine if words were decoupled from their meanings. If I said to you "I am a homosexual!", you would have no new information about me than that I had chosen to call myself a homosexual. It may be the case that I am only attracted to the opposite sex (I am); you have no way of knowing. In fact, without definitions, there's no need to distinguish between what is and isn't a word. I could just as easily call myself a thurble, and you would gain exactly the same amount of information about me.
This is not just harmful to the pursuit of getting to know about others. There are people who believe that it is deeply offensive to say something like "Vampires don't exist.", or "Unicorns only exist in stories." because some people "identify" as vampires or unicorns, and that means that they are
vampires and unicorns. They may not lack reflections, or burn in sunlight, or turn into a bat, or have hooves or a horn, but if they think they're vampires or unicorns, then that's what they are.
Then there's the issue of gender. There is an actual tumblr blog that insisted that if a straight man is only attracted to someone with a vagina, he is not just heterosexual, but also a "vaginophile". This is patently ludicrous; saying a straight man is attracted to people with vaginas is practically tautological.
The sneakiness here lies in the concept of "gender". Instead of the more blatant examples above, where, for example, someone's species is whatever they say it is, this avoids ridicule bynot saying your sex is whatever you say it is, because that would be an absurd statement that would be laughed out of the open marketplace of ideas. The trick is to take the preexisting word "gender", which was a synonym for "sex" (and is still listed as such in many dictionaries), and insist that it is an entirely different concept. Because this new concept doesn't have a definition, they can fill that blank by insisting that your gender is whatever you think or say it is. Now all that's left is to say that sex is nowhere near as important as gender, and start appropriating sex-related words. The process is more gradual and less direct than above, but the end result is the same; words like "male", "female", "man", "woman", "boy", "girl", "he/him/his", and "she/her/hers" cease referring to what's true in reality and start referring to what's true in your mind.
Some people will insist that "gender" is a very real concept, and refers to someone's role in society. These are usually the same people who rail against "traditional gender roles" and will insist that if a woman wants to do what men usually do, she's no less of a woman, and vice versa. These are largely the same people who will scold you for raising your eyebrow at someone who has a vagina, wears dresses and makeup, and does girly things, but "identifies" as a man. So we're back to "As long as you say you're an X, you're an X.". In fact, under this paradigm, there's no reason to just have male and female as "genders" and not, say, "pleen" or "narpleen". In fact many are quick to denounce the "gender binary".
While it has been done more sneakily, this is ultimately the same as the examples listed above, stripping words of their meanings. In fact, its success likely acted as a catalyst for people to try to undefine other words.
Another example of people fighting over words rather than their meanings is in the practice of inventing new words. For example, many people insist on using "womyn/wimmin/womon" or "persyn" instead of "woman/women" or "person", because they contain the word "men" and "son" (masculine words) respectively, and they think this implies that women are a deviation from the norm.
First of all, this betrays a tremendous ignorance of the etymologies of the words. The former comes from the Old English "wīfmon/wīfman". "Man" was the a general term referring to all of humanity (a construction we still see today with "man" and "mankind"). Therefore, "wīfman" simply meant "woman-human"; ironically, those insisting on removing the "man" from "woman" are essentially saying women are not human.
For those of you wondering, an adult male human was "wereman". This is where the term "werewolf" comes from: "man-wolf". (So, strictly speaking speaking, the female version of a werewolf would be a wifwolf, like the female version of an android is a gynoid and the male version of a mermaid is a merman.)
"Person" comes from Latin while "son" is Germanic, so I'm not even going to bother with that one.
Even if they were correct, they wouldn't have a case. In Esperanto, the word for a woman is virino, derived from viro (the word for a man) and the feminine suffix "-in-". Some people have insisted that this is sexist, and want to "reform" the language so that viro is redefined to mean "human", and invent an entirely new masculine suffix "-iĉ-", such that "man" would be viriĉo. Obviously, this would cause a great deal of confusion, as attempts to rewrite a language inevitably do, and nothing is communicatively gained. It doesn't matter what the words for "man" and "woman" are, as long as everyone agrees on what they are and what they mean.
We also see this trend in the emergence of the word "cis/cis*/cisgendered/cissexual". Foe the uninitiated, "cis" just means "non-trans". While "not transgendered" had been serving us perfectly for centuries, some people felt it necessary to invent an entirely new word, because they feel that the term "non-trans" implies that trans people are a deviation from the norm. (Yes, in this case the addition of a prefix implies that the derived term is the norm, as opposed to the previous example, where the addition of a prefix implied that the root term was the norm. Don't try to make sense of postmodernism; it's built on feelings, not sense.)
The problem with inventing new words for things that already have words for them, or redefining words that already mean something, is that it unnecessarily either introduces confusion or lengthens conversations. If I say to you "That man is very tharcular!", you will be confused. If I say "That man is very tharcular, by which I mean his height is significantly above average!", I have just expressed in fifteen words what I could've done in five by using the already-existing word "tall".
Plenty of people insist that there's nothing wrong with redefining words, or making up pronouns, or whatever, because "languages evolve". It is true that languages evolve, but this is an observation of reality and does not justify anyone's attempts to rewrite their language how they see fit. That would be like murdering someone, and saying "Your honor, he was going to die eventually!". Linguistic evolution is a natural process that takes place gradually over centuries, and across a whole population. It is different both in kind and in degree from what they are advocating.
So next time you find yourself in an argument, ask yourself whether you're arguing about ideas or about words. If its the latter, knock it off. And if you see someone trying to undefine or redefine a word, or trying to invent a new word for something that already has a word, tell them to knock that shit off before they're urdled op xir cheeth bontar.
This is Nulono, a newly hatched Chinese wallaby, signing off.
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