CAN WORDS REALLY IMPACT THE WAY WE THINK, OR IS THE EFFECT MINIMAL?

I was watching a young tradesman on my neighbour’s roof recently. In one hand he had the electric screwdriver he’d used to unscrew a section of aluminum roofing. He was precariously close to the edge, and I could tell by his careful movements and the occasional slight wobble, that he knew it. Was he safe in his workplace? It didn’t take much to imagine disaster if he was suddenly startled and fell backwards. Would he have been able to remain calm and steady if he’d disturbed a sleeping rat or possum inside the roof cavity? Or a Magpie decided to swoop aggressively.

There is a lot of talk these days about the need for workplaces to be safe spaces for everyone. But if being safe can mean not being subjected to sexist or offensive jokes, should the same word apply to someone at work who risks becoming a paraplegic or dying?

Any fair-minded person would agree that no one should have to put up with harassment at work, whether of the sexual or bullying kind. That’s easy to say, but agreeing on what constitutes harassment is where opinions can differ and arguments become heated.

Does it matter if the word ‘safe’ now covers a very broad range of situations? Is it possible that the words we use could eventually influence the way we think?

What about the word ‘love’? Does it matter if my mobile phone company sends me a birthday greeting claiming to love me more than cake? Or a Valentine’s Day message referring to me as their long-term lover. Long-term lover? We’d never even been on a date! As I write this, I should be wondering whether the reader will believe a phone company would make such an intimate claim but I know most people receive similar messages, if not often as blatant as my Valentine email. Opening up my internet banking one Friday, I’m greeted with, ‘Happy Friday, Jane’. What if it’s not? What if I’m checking to see if I have enough in the bank to pay for psychological help with my depression and suicidal thoughts? Or just to pay for this week’s groceries. Or to fly interstate to visit a dying friend or relative. This trend of businesses using the language of caring and friendship in their interactions with customers demeans the concept of friendship. And I think that matters. If I reach out to a friend in need of emotional support it bears little resemblance to my state of mind when I contact some company, whether for information or to make a complaint, and it makes me cross when I’m thanked for ‘reaching out’. My annoyance is trivial; the long-term effect of businesses using the same language as friends and lovers might not be.

I understand that language isn’t static, words change their meaning over time and if a word is generally misused in the same way for long enough, its meaning eventually changes to the current usage. I accept it was ever thus, although I’m concerned that ‘literally’ doesn’t necessarily mean literally anymore. It worries me because I can’t think of a viable alternative. To my mind, if your heart literally sinks you should call for an ambulance, though truth be told, you should probably just ring for a hearse.

What about the word ‘trauma’ that’s so popular these days? What if the very use of the word is amplifying the distress felt? If a person, usually a woman, is told often enough by society that even a minor sexual assault is traumatising, maybe it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is that really so unlikely? There’s plenty of evidence of how effective placebos can be. Nocebo, the opposite of placebo, is less well known but it can affect people’s health outcomes negatively in the same way that placebos can create positive outcomes. What if culturally generated expectations have a similar effect? If I put this on social media, would my queries be misunderstood by some as suggesting victims of sexual assault exaggerate their distress? Might I even be accused of attempting to mitigate the guilt of perpetrators? I don’t believe I’m doing either.

The word ‘toxic’ has really taken hold, with so much talk of toxic masculinity, toxic friendships, toxic workplaces, and toxic families. It’s an easy catch-all that doesn’t distinguish between relationships that have the potential to result in serious injury or death, and ones that might cause damage to our self-esteem. Ideally, friends would never undermine or be mean to us, and they, in turn, could always count on us for support and encouragement. But those relationships are rare, most are messier, complicated by the complexity of our individual psychology. People can be nasty, vindictive manipulative, selfish and demanding. The list of negative traits that make some people difficult to be around is long, but who of us could claim to have none of them? Referring to people as toxic is redolent of a ‘them and us’ divide, suggesting they are somehow very different from the rest of us.

These days the word ‘respect’ is used as if it’s a birthright rather than something earned. The rights of others should always be respected and I believe I have the right to be treated fairly but it’s up to others to decide whether or not to respect me personally. To put it simply, you don’t have to respect people to respect their right to be treated decently. Same word, different implication. My slightly knee-jerk reaction to the blurring of the meanings might be better understood, by my generation at least, if I use the phrase ‘a respectable woman’.  As a young woman in the late 70’s, I railed against the concept of respectability. Despite occasionally being warned by others of the consequences to one’s reputation of ‘putting out’ on a first date, I refused to let anything other than desire influence how soon I had sex with someone new. I also intensely disliked it when a man, or men, apologized for their use of swear words upon noticing me nearby. My ‘delicate female ears’ didn’t need protecting; I could swear with the best of them.

The word ‘impact’ makes me think of something that hits hard, like a meteorite hitting the surface of the Earth or the Moon, creating a crater as clear evidence. Surely you wouldn’t say that the Moon’s gravitational pull impacts the Earth’s tides? It seems these days you would.

I believe the words we use can affect our thinking in the long term but the effect is subtle, unlike the word ‘impact’.