Words are free. It costs nothing to add or subtract a word from your vocabulary. The more words you have, the greater the opportunity to clarify, to specify, to tease out meaning from your discourse, whether spoken or written.
Still, words can be costly. Words are metaphors for reality and how that metaphor is understood is not universal. Take the difference between the vocabularies of men and women. They use the same words but ascribe different meanings. Or the difference between the understanding that exists between those who are members of a different cultural group. Does biker slang mean the same as the words you use to speak with your children?
Do you use a different vocabulary for friends than what you use with colleagues at work? Sure you do. And, even then, there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the words you use in a formal presentation compared with the words you use during the ordinary interplay of a workday.
Words have power. In the Constitution, a slave was considered to be three-fifths of a non-slave. To those who believe in abortion, the developing baby is a fetus that is defined as no more than a group of cells. To those who are against abortion, the developing baby is a human in process.
The U.S. Constitution has had a renaissance of attention lately. I’m not sure where they are on the Constitution hit parade, but the second and the 14th have been high on the charts, each with its cadre of interpreters unraveling what each believes the meaning to be. Interpretation is by word.
The latest debate has been over the first amendment which covers “free speech.” As we all know, any freedom is limited by the expression of that freedom for others in the society.
This particular brouhaha revolved around a disgruntled 14-year-old who, after being denied membership on two varsity athletic teams, expressed her anger off campus by dropping what is now known as “f-bombs” on social media about the school.
As a result, the student was removed from her junior varsity placements for a year.
Her father sued.
The Supreme court, in an 8-1 decision said that off campus speech is outside the control of the school. Now, there are many avenues of concern resulting from this, notably the problems that face teachers and administrators trying to make school a safe place. The problem of bullying, so much in the news today, is exacerbated by the commonality of social media. Postings on social media enter the school, no matter where a posting is made.
Each of the news outlets, whether print or electronic, had their own spin on the decision and what it left unsaid, what problems were left unanswered.
After having read several summaries of this decision, I noted that, while the father of the girl was suing for his daughter’s rights, and while the school saw the social media posting as defamatory, no one questioned the crude, foul-mouthed words that this young woman used to express her disappointment. If my children had used this language in a public forum, there would have been immediate consequences, none of which would have been less than that originally meted out by the school. That behavior, and I know that I am most probably in a minority within today’s more libertarian parenting, would not have been acceptable to my husband or me. We taught them to answer disappointment in different ways. The “soap-in-the-mouth” words she used offend me. They offend my sensibility about how we prepare our children to handle disappointment, something that life hands out prodigiously. But now we allow bratty, vulgar behaviors to be “ordinary.”
The young woman in question, now in college, excused her words by saying that she was only 14 when she posted the words. Perhaps someone should have given her a dictionary. Her reaction would have profited from a wider vocabulary.
If she had been an adult who was denied a promotion at her place of employment, similarly sounding off on social media, she would have been canned.
When we consider the knee-jerk reaction that so many have to disappointment, whether in politics or in athletics or the marketplace, reactions that are crude and often violent, we should reassess the effect of words.
Freedom of speech is one thing; the choice of words is another.
The Supreme Court has affirmed that she had the right to say these words, to write them online.
Someone should have said something about the words.
