{"id":19767,"date":"2013-04-08T08:37:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T13:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19767"},"modified":"2013-04-08T08:37:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T13:37:46","slug":"words-as-weapons-words-as-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/08\/words-as-weapons-words-as-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Words as weapons, words as tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The agreed meaning of words is critical to communication. Redefinition of meaning can be a useful political tool to shift an argument or to <a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/language_as_an_assault_weapon_jim_goad\/print#axzz2PsQMPHCA\" target=\"_blank\">delegitimize an opponent<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A huge quotient of the seemingly endless cultural and ideological wars hinges on how terms are defined. Those who claim authority to declare what words mean are able to shape public thinking like a sculptor molds clay. Although facts \u2014 which are what news organizations are supposed to peddle \u2014 seem immutable, words are forever in flux. Both \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Classical_liberal\" target=\"_blank\">liberal<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Progressive_Era\" target=\"_blank\">progressive<\/a>\u201d now mean almost the opposite of what they did a century ago. Such semantic squabbling also leads to absurdities such as how the phrase \u201ccolored person\u201d was deemed hateful and replaced with the far more sensitive \u201cperson of color.\u201d Terms such as \u201cracist\u201d are almost never applied to nonwhites, and if you dare tell a militant feminist that she\u2019s \u201csexist,\u201d she may scratch out your eyeballs. And don\u2019t even dare to ask for a quantifiable and consistent definition of \u201cSemite\u201d lest you be deemed \u201canti-Semitic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s worse, many of these politically charged terms never seem to achieve stasis. Over the past generation there\u2019s been a ballooning expansion of terms such as \u201cracism,\u201d \u201csexism,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacy,\u201d and, the granddaddy (sorry \u2014 Earth Mother) that supposedly spawns them all, \u201chatred.\u201d Yet if you dare to ask anyone for a concrete definition of such terms, they\u2019ll consider you automatically guilty of all the cultural sins these derogatory terms are intended to describe. As US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously explained, although \u201cobscenity\u201d may not be readily defined, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_know_it_when_I_see_it\" target=\"_blank\">you\u2019re supposed to know it when you see it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And if you persist in claiming that neither do you know it or see it, these words will be used as hammers to pound you into submission. In the sort of foam-flecked hyperbolic insanity that seems to suggest a culture either ready to implode or finally yield to ideological totalitarianism, you will be accused of ranting, slamming, bashing, and scaremongering merely for asking questions \u2014 even if you ask them in a timid and sincere voice without a wisp of malice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The agreed meaning of words is critical to communication. Redefinition of meaning can be a useful political tool to shift an argument or to delegitimize an opponent: A huge quotient of the seemingly endless cultural and ideological wars hinges on how terms are defined. Those who claim authority to declare what words mean are able [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53],"tags":[86,400,213,101],"class_list":["post-19767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-criticism","tag-language","tag-newspapers","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-58P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19768,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19767\/revisions\/19768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}