Words can wound

Source: photo taken by the author.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Anyone scarred by life long enough knows how false this children’s chant can be. Words can be used to illuminate, to enlighten, to describe beauty … and also to criticize, to satirize, and to expose injustice. Any of these uses is legitimate. But words can also be used as weapons. Words can wound. And as with any potential weapon, words must be handled with care.

It is telling that when George Orwell ends his classic essay “Politics and the English Language” with a list of rules for clear and honest language, the sixth and final rule is: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.” Orwell was a master prose writer; he understood the power of language, in both its use and misuse.

One area where an inexperienced writer might inadvertently fall into using hurtful language is satire. Just always keep in mind that the ultimate purpose of satire is to identify a problem in society and to propose some sort of change to make the world a better place. Your satiric target should be a person (or institution) of influence. Making fun of the helpless is not satire, it’s cruelty.

As a young newspaper reporter, immature and pretentious, I once wrote a column about Al Campanis, the baseball executive who got into trouble in the 1980s for making televised comments that reinforced racial stereotypes. In my criticism of Campanis, I compared his type of talk to “blue-collar bar room banter.” No doubt, at the time, I was pleased with myself for this glib line with its alliteration. Soon afterward, though, the writer of a letter to the editor took me to task for my shortsightedness in equating blue-collar jobs with stereotypical views about race. That letter writer was absolutely correct, and I learned a valuable lesson.

As a writer, you must learn to cultivate the basic human trait of empathy. Oftentimes, I‘ve used a newspaper column (hyperlinked below) by former USA Today writer Theresa Howard in my classes to provoke discussion about this topic. Howard, the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, writes eloquently about the pain that thoughtless use of the word “retard” has caused her through the years. I find her column especially poignant because Theresa was a student newspaper colleague and friend of mine in college. Her column is well worth reading -- http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2007-07-04-opcom_N.htm.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.