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Quote by: samsara15  words are just words, and actions and feelings are what really counts. However, it is also true that words are charged with emotional power. |
Words are not just words.
The ability to communicate to humans we have never been in physical or temporal proximity to is why humans exist in the manner we do today. Words hold the power to influence, drive, and create action.
Words are the reason that one human's mistake doesn't need to be repeated by other humans and they are also why every subsequent human doesn't have to invent the wheel before they can invent the wheelbarrow.
Words are the reason that humans can come together and perform great feats of ingenuity, like sending a peopled space craft to orbit our planet. Words are also the reason that humans can band their resources to commit the most ferocious atrocities, like the Holocaust or the Heaven's Gate cult suicides.
How does a human get to the point where they are stacking up emaciated corpses of their neighbors, performing self castration, or flying a hijacked plane into a building? It all starts with words and the skillful presentation of those words.
The careful use of rhetorical strategy, word choice, and charismatic presentation defines the difference between driving masses of thousands into a frenzy of desired action and being unable to communicate to your spouse that soccer practice for little Timmy is cancelled.
Wherever you are, look around. There are words everywhere. Can you really argue that they are just collections of characters that have no effect on actions or feelings? Or that the word itself is some sort of container for emotion, like Tupperware? Words are power. Sticks and stones do break bones but words are what drive the masses to do the breaking.
That being said, each of us is free to communicate in whatever manner we desire. The use of the word
nigger is not illegal. It is simply ill advised and people opting to use it should be prepared to accept the consequences because, as I stated before, words drive action.
Effective speakers and communicators understand the power of words and they also understand that even misunderstandings of words have vast power. Communicators have to frequently account for the fact that many humans in their target audience do not even understand the meanings of the words they themselves commonly use in everyday speech.
Here is an instance from a few years back about an aide to a Washington DC mayor who used the term "niggardly," which means miserly and has no relation to the word
nigger. He resigned because the people he was speaking with did not know the word and believed it to be a racial slur. The topic they were discussing at the time was political funding.
Williams Aide Resigns in Language Dispute
Another great example of how we have actually modified our language to account for misunderstanding is found in the term "flammable." This is a word that is only in the dictionary because there was so much misuse and misunderstanding about the word "inflammable." Many people believe that inflammable means that the substance will not start on fire. The error makes sense since the prefix "in" typically negates the body of the word. The word inflammable, however, is based off of the root "inflame," which means to start on fire. And the suffix of "able" means just that. So inflammable is a substance that is able to be set on fire. In any event, 200 years after the word "inflammable" was coined, we subsequently added the term "flammable" to the dictionary because it was so widely misused that it actually created itself as a word. Inflammable and flammable mean the exact same thing.
In summation, words are powerful and many people that actively use a word may not even know what it means. I used the word "gypped" for years as a way to communicate that I had been ripped off. I stopped using it when I found out that its meaning is derived from being ripped off by Gypsies.
I will end with an anecdote. My first and only usage of the word "nigger" was at the age of nine. I heard it somewhere and knew it sounded bad but I didn't know what it meant. My younger sister was playing with my Pogo Ball in the garage and I called her a
nigger. I remember the word sticking in my mouth a bit because it was the first time I had ever said it. I also remember the look on my mom's face after I realized she was standing in the doorway of the garage. She slapped me across the cheek and told me using that word was slapping black people everywhere in the face. I have never found an applicable use for the word
nigger since then and the only reason I found a use that one time was because I didn't even know what the word meant.