Word Building. World Building.
As a person who identifies as a writer, I feel how words shape culture and community. The power words have can’t be underestimated. And being a woman in a world that feels unsafe, and a world where violence is not an irrational worry, I want to be part of making it home for me and others.
A few years ago I decided to take up a personal challenge: using non-violent language. It was an adoption sparked by two unrelated experiences 1) babysitting for a family who was doing the same based on Quaker belief systems and 2) a job interview within a hospital system. Both the family and the hospital did not speak violent words. You took a photograph. You didn’t have a photo shoot. I had never considered these words or meanings so fully. It was compelling. To speak non-violently was to examine closely the words I spoke and wrote. So it became my New Year’s resolution.
I was not wholly successful that first year. And it isn’t so surprising why, if you think about our words and particularly idiomatic language. English is extremely bent towards violence and making victims.* Consider: take a stab at (to try), shoot! (shit!), a knockout (beautiful). I think our acceptance of and use of language like this makes us increasingly okay with hearing of violence being done, gun ownership, and crime. So I modulated, took circuitous and new routes towards making a point, and I cussed more (aka: shit.). Let me emphasize this: I cussed a lot more. It required a lot of creativity, even being a creative person. But the one word I could not find a ready replacement for was in formatting words on the page. “The bullet point” stumped me up again and again.
This formatting phrase was significant because at the time I was writing and formatting hundreds of resumes a year. I easily typed and recommended thousands of said structure. I had a lot of creative adaptations that simply didn’t translate the same way:
“stylized indentations”
“formatting illustrations”
“restructured lists.”
That was the one point (see what I did there?) that I couldn’t quite land without using the gun-related term. A pretty good track record for about two years.
Now, I use the terms, shot, shoot, and photo shoot regularly in my workplace, the paths of least resistance. But in 2022, I hope to rededicate myself to not. There are easy substitutes: image, photo op, or session. It’s just a matter of attention and care. Because the words we think, speak, and write are building the world we work, play, and live in. And I for one want to enjoy it more and fear it less.
(Side note, I take up rather than give up annually. There are so many ways we can benefit ourselves and others by folding in new practices than pruning them out severely, as culture asks us to through the declarative and unhelpful “New Year, New You!” Again. Words impacting us in profound, unexamined ways.)
*I only speak English, so it’s possible other languages are similar. But I simply don’t know. I do know in America we do have a gun violence problem. Crime is likened to disease and spreads like it. I won’t argue a causal relationship since I am not a linguist or an epidemiologist, but perhaps we are predisposing ourselves word-by-word to the illness that is harming each other.
