Mind: What’s in a word?

You might have gotten used by now to the routine of my favorite reviews to articles and/or researches featured in the elitist magazine in Jordan; VIVA. I never get bored of reading what these great researchers and writers have to say, especially that all the topics are highly relevant to our society and daily life.

This month is featuring a spectacular article titled: “What’s in a Word?”

Ziad Abu-Rish thoroughly discusses the implications of some words and the way they affect those who say that and those to whom they are said. Needless to say; we are talking about negative words or ones that carry such a deep meaning.

Many people and regular writers will be hesitant to open such a topic for discussion and one can only predict that such controversial issue would stir some reactions from the whole community at large. Yet; the article professionally shows that people interviewed shared a common actor amongst them and that is their open mindedness and honesty.

Diving into the topic; Ziad points out that Amman and probably the region in general had gone through a remarkable transformation and the most apparent change is the increased use of English language in our daily slang. With this introduction of English in our spoken language; it is inevitable that some derogatory words would find their way in and creep in on us and before we know it, we are hearing it every where and maybe sometimes using them ourselves whether consciously or subconsciously.

Take a deep breath!

Words we are talking about are “bitch”, “retard”, “gay” and their parallel Arabic ones that I will leave to your imagination to come up with. The article shows how some of the interviewees interpret these words and in which contexts they heard or used them, the interviewees also mention how and where they picked them up. It seems that media plays a major role in spreading such words.

Ziad also points out that the origin of these words might not be of negative nature at all, however; the societal use of them to refer to people who are classified under a certain negative stature gave them their bad reputation and they became more commonly and widely used to refer to people while they might not apply to them literally. For example; the word “bitch” means the female of a dog or a lewd or immoral woman, but this is the literal meaning of the word. When someone uses this word to refer to a woman; not necessarily they mean it in its original meaning as the most common meaning of the word is to refer to a woman who is mean, non-cooperative and maybe evil or cruel. I guess we can all agree that the meanings are completely different.

But what happens if some stranger heard you refer to someone else as bitch or retard or gay, wouldn’t they assume the original negative meaning by default?

Some of the interviewees stated that they refrain from using these words or any other negative words of the same nature in front of others, maybe out of fear of being misunderstood or fear of offending someone in the room who might have a problem with these words. On this particular point; Ziad says: “if the use of these terms is truly nothing more than an insult to the person they are directed at, why not use them in front of a stranger who might be labeled such terms by other people?”

In other words; would you use the word “retard” referring to someone who does not agree with what you are saying or he is slow in getting what you are discussing, would you say the word in front of someone who is mentally or physically disabled that happens to be in the room at that time? If you will not say the word only because the disabled person might have been labeled by society as a “retard” and you don’t want to offend them, why would you not say the word when your objective of using the word was to insult someone else? i.e. you are using the word in its negative context anyway, so why use it at times and refrain at others?

The must-read long article discusses more significant ideas about this issue and concludes with an expert opinion provided by Dr. Monique Wong, a PhD linguist where she says: “What is offensive may change over time. The words “bitch”, “retard” and “gay” had perfectly innocent and respectable meanings long before they come to be used in derogatory ways.

“When people use these terms to insult others, they are referring to the negative connotations of these terms. The words are obviously insulting to the groups they refer to, namely women, mentally [and physically] challenged individuals and homosexuals. The use of the terms to insult others reflects the person’s negative views of these groups. To say that the insults are only directed at the persons being insulted is a fallacy. And regardless of whether Arabic or English is used, the effect is the same.”

So I will end up this post by asking the same question that the author does in his article; just as language can be a part of the problem, it also can be a part of the solution, so what will you think and do the next time you hear a person use ‘bitch’, ‘retard’ or ‘gay’ or one of their Arabic equivalents?

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