On Words

I am in no wise anything even remotely like a linguist. I like words; both my parents were teachers; my first books were Milne’s Pooh stories and children’s poetry, Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass, and Sewell’s Black Beauty. Words are music; words are magic; words can be used to create some of the powerful spells both within ourselves and in the world around us. Neurolinguistic programming is a kind of witchcraft using words whose theories makes a kind of sense to me. Words can be used to support, encourage, grow, and guide. Words can also be used to silence, to harm, to control.

Words are tools, and how we choose to use them matters both in our personal and professional lives.

My personal idiosyncracy is to not use the F word because I believe it inherently contains a “power over” dynamic used far too often to hurt. In my mind, for instance, the basic “F — you” broken down, means “I am bigger, better, smarter, and stronger than you and to prove it I’m going to use my genitals to punish you for thinking you’re better than me”.

(sex as punishment is another thing I won’t truck with, btw. that idea reads to me as rape and on my moral compass that’s one of the biggest NOPEs there is, whether literal or figurative.)

I have been told over the years, starting with a 6th grade teacher, that it’s best not to think so deeply about the words I choose to use. This may be a philosophy that works for some people. For me, it feels silencing.

I like words. I like to use words that have meaning to me and in order to do that, I have to think about them. Words — especially now when so much of my life is lived on line instead of in meat space — are the clothes I choose to wear, the earrings I use to decorate, the shoes I wear for comfort and completion. The words I use are how I fit in, and stand out.

I can’t control how others speak, nor do I want to. No one has the right to tell others how to express themselves. There are exceptions of course: hate speech should always be called out even if it’s just two people sharing ideas over a glass of wine in someone’s kitchen; shared private spaces such as a lunch room in an office building may have rules about what language is ok to use within its space and what isn’t; and other private spaces may choose to be no holds barred as far as language usage is concerned. That’s all fine as far as I’m concerned and that’s all up to individuals to participate in or or not as they feel comfortable.

TL;DR: I do not feel comfortable being told not to think too deeply about the language I use, and I especially don’t feel comfortable using the F word, so I don’t.