Being Bruno

Language

The importance of language has been thrust upon me lately, well actually over the past several years. The root of words, where they came from, what they meant, what they are believed to mean now, what they are currently accepted as meaning. It as if I am watching the tower of babel be reconstructed.

In politically correct (a term and belief system I hate) circles language has taken on the form of mine fields to be carefully wandered through, but, I believe, serve mostly as barriers to the goals hoped for. That is unless the goal is to fall through the looking glass and spend eternity being led by the March hare in a game of absurdities in language translation.

We as a culture have taken on a relativist position on language, setting the bar of definition on some bizarre sliding scale determined by,, well by who knows what. Popular culture sets what words mean and the education system, for the most part, in its desire to be relevant and prove it’s “cool” is accepting the terms of the lowest common denominator of
language use, and promoting these definitions as valid. And, well language isn’t the only place we have taken these liberties, these liberties without responsibilities run rampant throughout culture. But today I want to focus on language, one of the means by which we communicate with other human beings. The particular area is one of the language of offense and “correctness”.

Offensive language has taken on a new vastness of meaning of late. This is one of those looking glass moments, where truly offensive language is used and considered to mean nothing more than an accepted slang descriptive, an exclamation, the “reclaiming” of a previous derogatory term as one of pride, etc,,, what ever we want it to mean by whom ever we are communicating with. I have heard this is valuable because it takes away the “taboo” of the word and renders it harmless, unable to cause offense. However the reality is that this is a fluid situation, it all depends on who, or what group is using that particular word, and in what context, or situation, etc. The rendering harmless of the offensive word or phrase is false, the word is still able to cause hurt or pain if used by the wrong person, in the wrong situation, in the wrong sentence. The word has not changed universally and so becomes a weapon of division. If one group uses the previously offensive word and claims it as “affection” (a gentle feeling of fondness or liking) but takes “offense” (1. A breach of rule or law… 2 annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one’s standards or principals..2 an attack) when someone outside the accepted group uses it, then an Us vs. Them situation is set up and defended without logic. This is one of those minefield moments, It becomes impossible to openly communicate in a valuable fashion when the parties are on different playing fields were language and language usage is concerned. The changing of the meaning of words becomes a way of hampering progress, of setting up mazes, of taking power over an opponent. This is especially true when the words that are taboo for one party to use, are observably used by the other party in affectionate or positive terms.

Political correctness has set a new standard of taboo (a social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or association with a particular person, place, or thing) on language. While I am all for “inclusive” (not excluding any section of society or any party involved in something) language (inclusive language,,,,deliberately non sexist, esp. Avoiding the use of masculine pronouns to cover both men and women) I feel we have fallen through the looking glass again. There is some strange feeling that rewriting history (yes there was a time when in university when you could hear herstory used to replace history) to include parties who we do not know were involved in something, or to eliminate facts that we think, in our superiority, might bring offense or might disturb the hearer of such history. Words such as “history” and “human” are being removed from texts because of the gender similarity of parts of the word. Human is being replaced by “person” or “person-hood” (look it up). Now I can accept person when used as a neutral in descriptives such as ‘salesperson’ ‘chairperson’ etc, but when used in stead of human, I do think we are getting quite queer, and way off the mark of meaning. When we start rabidly changing poetry, history, literature to create some genderless gelatinous mess, we begin to expose the mad tea party we willingly have gotten involved in. A world were up is down, nothing means anything and everything means nothing, and all history and language is cut loose from any point of reference. We expose our feelings of superiority, and drag ourselves down to the muck of meaninglessness when we refuse to teach and learn.

Perhaps I am an old codger, but queer does not describe my sexuality, I refuse to eat or watch anything that is “the shit” and I am a person in some situations but strive to be human in all.
Peace