Today's Perspective

February 22, 2010

Many of us remember the rhyme from our childhood, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Most of us knew better. Words can be deeply hurtful. Words too often do violence.

Violence comes in outright name calling. I have a niece who has Down’s Syndrome. I cringe when I hear young people refer to someone in a pejorative way as “retarded.” The expression, “That’s so gay,” can only be interpreted as a put down of those whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual. All the time we hear people being called “idiot” or “stupid.” We even still hear ethnic and racial slurs being used that evoke stereotypes, though thankfully not as often as was the case in years past.

These are but a few of the more obvious examples of the kinds of words that do violence to others. All of us would readily condemn their use. But there is also violence of a more subtle nature in our everyday language. We regularly use words and phrases that have violent connotations, though we typically are not conscious of that fact. These are words or expressions that have become so embedded in our language that we rarely give a second thought to their usage.

Color symbolism in our language generally falls in this category. There may have been a time in history when black sheep had special value, but today that phrase is used to impugn the value of the nonconformist. (Personally, I think nonconformity is a valuable skill that we all need to develop.) But when we juxtapose black sheep with a white knight on a white horse, are we not elevating the value of whiteness and disparaging blackness? What does this do for the psyche of little children?

Sometimes the terms are less subtle. We regularly declare war—on drugs, on our competition, on terrorism. We like military terminology. We are forever doing “battle”—with weight, or habits, or co-workers. We confide that one person is “gunning” for another, or at best, “lying in wait.” We “soldier on” and try to “obliterate.” Our words “ricochet.” We hear that a “target” has been put on someone’s back; sometimes they get “shot down.” We even take “shots in the dark.”

These days, people are described as “going ballistic,” or worse, “going nuclear” or “having a meltdown.”

Like athletes, we “slam” someone to the ground, or give someone a good “slap on the back” (or some other part of the anatomy). Words often register as a “slap in the face.”

We can always count on others to take action when “push comes to shove.” If they do well, we say they “hit the bull’s-eye.” If they managed to be funny in the process, we say they are a “blast.” If not, we lament that they “exploded,” or “imploded,” as the case may be.

Some of us spend much of our lives “fighting” for our rights or “arguing” our case. We do a lot of “breaking.” We break the issue open, or break into the new job, or break in the car. Couples break up, and in the process break one another’s hearts.

Sometimes, though, we are meaning to be nice. We describe an event as a “smashing success” or we say that someone is a “knock-out” or we observe that our conversation partner “hit the nail on the head.”

At first glance, these expressions may seem harmless enough. But upon further reflection, they point to a characteristic of our culture that deserves attention. Words have power, and it seems likely that the repetitive use of such terms as these not only reflects the intrinsically violent nature of our world, but helps sustain that violence. Furthermore, using such terms in a casual manner may well have the effect of inoculating us against the real violence that the words represent.

As we seek to be nonviolent and to participate in creating a less violent world, we might be well advised to heed our grandmothers’ admonition to “watch our tongue.” Perhaps we could start by challenging one another to compile further lists of “loaded” terms?