Quote:
Originally posted by Gorgo,
My ex-wife started working in retail about the time they started calling employees "Associates." They were low-paid employees. Names don't change relationships. |
That term, "associate," is still impersonal.
Maybe it's just me, but years back when I started referring to people I did not know well as "brother" I saw a more companionable reaction from them.
Names do hold meaning - and they do effect relationships. Small changes add up.
Consider the reaction you'd get if you referred to what another was eating as "pig flesh" rather than "pork"... Words/names don't change relationships? I'd argue that that person eating the pig flesh would be taken aback by that, and snapped into reality for just a moment. (Again, I'd refer anyone to Peter Singer's Animal Liberation - the words we use for animals work to seperate us from their suffering and the reality of the way we abuse them.)
And what of calling the woman you are married to "my love" rather than "susie"?
If you don't believe names make a difference, try the shock tactic method of changing the way you refer to someone at random. Refer to your father as dad if you call him father, or vice versa. If you call someone sir or ma'am, try something very personal, like brother or sister. I can almost guarantee a shock to their systems. Language, again, is a very human thing and it strikes a cord in us deep below the surface.
Why is poetry so moving? Why do we look for colorful uses of words? Why do words, in general, fascinate so many people?
I'm not saying that all words are created equal, and all can have an enormous effect - but that's my point. Some words ARE more or less powerful - even revolutionary - than others.
Of course we can't live on words alone, but words are, for us human beings, pretty powerful. What's the difference between red and crimson? Seems like a silly, petty difference, but pick the colorful words out of a poem and replace them with their blander alternatives.
I don't want to run in circles - my mind wanders and I tend to reiterate and reiterate for no good reason. So I did a search for "The Power of Language" and luckily got this:
http://www.mtoomey.com/poweroflanguage.html
Check it out for yourselves, and see what I mean.