The Disproportionate Power of Individual Words

I am an eternal student of literature, and my upcoming career involves manipulating words into an influence. I believe in and admire the power of words, especially when they are strung together in an intentional, masterful way. But I also recognize that it presupposes the idea that people have to be receptive towards those words. It goes back to the interpretation of literature and the beauty in how everyone can interpret it differently. Words, like art, are useless unless people give them power, and words have no power over you unless you give them power. It’s entirely your choice. 

To clarify, I’m referring to individual words rather than rhetoric, or the manipulation of sentence construction. Rhetorical strategies are powerful when employed correctly, but an individual word with no context except for the hate behind it is entirely different. Society has chosen to place power over such words as racial slurs and sexual epithets—the power to hurt people, and so malicious people will continue to use it in order to garner a reaction.  

Societal norms and taboos in relation to words are very real, and it’s some people’s jobs to use those and manipulate them into something an audience will be reactive towards (advertisement agencies, script writers, etc.). But as to blindly following those societal rules… it is an entirely individual choice. I’ll admit, I myself jump and wince when I hear someone use the n word, for example. Saying it’s not a pleasant word is an understatement, and it obviously shouldn’t be used with hateful intent. But I can’t help but wonder if society placing such power behind the word and putting it in the spotlight is a good thing. If we don’t want people to use it, why are we exposing our vulnerability to its power?

We teach children to be offended by these words, disguising it as an attempt to release the emotions within a child instead of allowing them to bottle up their emotions, but why don’t we teach them to ignore these words instead? We teach them to brace themselves against a punch, but teach them to buckle under the assault of a single word. 

And it’s not just racial slurs, sexual epithets, or curse words. A similar reaction occurs when hearing the biological terms for genitalia. It’s uncomfortable to hear the words “vagina” or “penis,” and while they certainly shouldn’t be used vulgarly or crudely, the extent of discomfort is somewhat ridiculous. It affects our children as well. Children should know and be comfortable discussing their genitalia so they’ll know how to communicate sexual assault should it occur, and they shouldn’t feel like they have to dance around the taboos of social pomposity.

Since I’m talking about the disproportionate power we as a society place on individual words, I have to mention hypocrisy as well. Among the many hypocrisies of today (seriously, was the world always this hypocritical?), people are assuming the same definition of some words while changing their connotations based on the context. In general, words should have one connotative meaning lest it becomes hypocritical upon usage. 

For example, “selfish” remains defined as concerned exclusively with oneself, but today’s society has given the word a positive connotation when discussing self care, but a negative one when discussing suicide. If this has gotten darker than you expected, I apologize. But recently, there was a big social phenomenon that preached that being selfish isn’t always a bad thing, because sometimes you have to put yourself first. It threw me for a loop, because the word “selfish” always had an extremely bad connotation in my mind, and now it has a neutral, if not positive, connotation. But when someone says that suicide is a selfish thing to do, they go up in arms. I may be straying into a more controversial area here, but suicide literally happens when a person’s pain is too unbearable, they can’t think of anybody or anything but that. I recognize that some people commit suicide because they genuinely believe the people in their life will be better without them, but that is rarely the primary reason. The majority of suicides are committed for selfish reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s blameworthy. Something I would think those who believe in the selfishness of self care could understand. 

Needless to say, I’m not entirely down with modern society’s treatment of individual words, which I’ll admit is a weird thing to be riled up about. And yet, I haven’t exhausted the topic. A blog is coming soon about words that I’m nitpicky about. Notably not words that I let have disproportionate power over me or hopefully that I’m hypocritical about, but more of a lighthearted yet thoughtfully nitpicky.