It's Not Words, It's The Thing

I am someone who likes dictionaries and the definition of words.  I don't mean that I derive intrinsic pleasure from the definition of words, I just like everyone to know what they are talking about.  A great example of why this matters is a conversation (which led to the end of any conversation ever again) about socialism.

A man stopped at a traffic light had a bumper sticker that said, "Stop Obama's Socialism" and the writer thought it ironic that he approved of the socialism of traffic lights.  My position was that the dictionary definition of "socialism" is what socialism meant.  I also pointed out that government produced traffic lights aren't socialism and the guy wasn't suggesting it was, and that the take over of companies such as General Motors actually was socialism.  He became very angry, said that the meaning of words change, and that I was deliberately playing games to upset people.  He was upset because I objected to him making up a new definition of socialism that was not used by anyone else in the scenario.

The meanings of words do change, and that seems a shame to me, but inevitable.  It is inevitable because people don't know what the word does mean and a mistaken version is used to such an extent that it becomes the common meaning.  However, I am in favor of sticking with the dictionary definition(s) as much as possible, pretty much until the dictionary changes itself, so that people can talk about the same subject, something sadly lacking in modern discourse.

However, the things that words are describing don't change, even when the words change.  The Chinese and English words for "dog" are entirely different and yet have the exact same meaning.  It's the words that change, not the thing.

What brought me to thinking about this is the path of words used to describe a thing that people can use as being an insult.  The specific thing that raised this idea in me recently is the effort people are making to get people to stop using the word, "retard" as those who are/have/with (fill in blank) are insulted by its use as a slur.  Here's the thing, no matter what the word is, it still means people with substantially lower intelligence than other people.  When criticizing someone's intelligence, equating them with a label for those with lower intelligence is naturally going to occur.

While working in social work I became very familiar with the process of trying to remove stigma and insult from labeling words by using new ones.  While I was working the accepted nomenclature for someone with permanently lower intelligence than others changed three times, from mentally retarded, to developmentally disabled, to developmentally delayed.  You may notice that that all the words used suggest that this lower intelligence is temporary, something to overcome, rather than the permanent situation it actually is.  in this case the meanings of "retarded" and "delayed" have been changed. 

If you go back further the terms, 'feeble minded", "moron" and "idiot" were also used.  You may be surprised that the original meaning for the word, "moron" meant someone "deficient in judgment or sense."  The word, "idiot" came from a word for "layman, an ignorant or uneducated person."  I fail to see how these terms were more offensive than "developmentally disabled"

All of these terms mean the same thing, and at the beginning none of these words were intended as a slight or insult.  Today, if you call someone a "moron" or an "idiot" they will be automatically insulted.  There has been a long series of words, created with good intention to label some people as having substantially lower intelligence than the general public, which have become insults.  They have become insults because people are insulted when you say they are not intelligent, and I don't know how to fix that, or even if we should.

You may be interested in what term I used when working in social work.  I always found that the technical terms for a person with lower intelligence that was most useful and precise were words such as, "Buck" or "Raynelle," you know, the names of people.  Sometimes I used the words "clients" because I was essentially working for them.

There have been similar changes in terms for race, from negro, to negre, to nigger, to colored, to black, to African-American (which doesn't include the non-black Americans from Africa) and hopefully (in my opinion) back to black again.  All of these mean basically the same thing but have changed because each word meant a black person, and the almost universal opinion (among non-blacks) were that black people were inferior*.  The reason why I am hopeful for the return of the use of "black" is that it is simple, descriptive, and is completely equivalent to "white" and the reversal of the direction of terms seems to mean that being black is no longer generally thought of as being insulting.

I must admit to being entirely baffled by the whole hispanic, latino, Mexican, central American thing.  It can't really be a racial thing because those in central and southern America are made up of every race this side of Asia.  It can't even be a language thing because you can have English as your primary language and still be latino.

Words can hurt, but they hurt because of their meaning.  Changing the word for the meaning does essentially no good.  If we want to reduce insults to people the path is through changing how we view the meanings.  There is nothing inherently wrong with calling someone "retarded" or "negro" if we don't feel there is something wrong with being "retarded" or "negro."  If after half an hour with someone you still think of them as "developmentally delayed" or "African-American" rather than "Bill" or "Nancy" then the problem isn't the word, the problem is you.