The Language of Resistance

As one of the organizers of the Women's March on Washington - Edmonton Solidarity Event, I was invited to speak on "The Language of Resistance" at the Sociology Undergraduate Students' Association Speakers Series on March 5, 2017. Here is a video of my talk, as well as my notes.

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I've been an activist for over a decade (synopsis of how I got involved with #WMWYEG).

How I've seen and heard language change.

With the rise of the "alt-right," language is more divisive, more vicious, and often misleading.

"Alt-right" is itself a misnomer, deceptive. "Alternative" can be seen as a good thing (alternative music or films).

What it really is: racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, hatred.

Has led to what we've seen in AB, threats against women who are politically active, either in office or who are prominent. An irony is that a motivation for me to get involved with #wmwyeg was because of women being threatened, to find myself the target of such threats in the days following the march.

We on the Left have shifted to greater inclusion. Used to talk about "gay" or "queer" community, now LGBTQ with more added.

Use of pronouns (asking what pronouns a person wants used, for eg.).

Making a conscious choice to have People of Colour involved (we wanted a short, but diverse program at #wmwyeg and we achieved that).

All About LOVE! The Language of resistance is the language of love.

Involuntary Anti-Semitism: Confronting Ignorance

I like to think that we live in a more enlightened age, where people are cognizant of speech that is offensive. Racial slurs, comments pertaining to sexual orientation in a derogatory manner, jokes about women (or men, for that matter) - these are all things that a modern, intelligent, education person should know are not acceptable.

You would think, right? Something happened to me today that made me wonder how prejudicial language could become normalized to the point where the person speaking the language has no clue that he or she is being offensive.

I was shopping with a friend of mine for an item in a store that was having a "buy one, get one half off" kind of sale. At first, he was going to get something, and then I was going to get another item with the discount. My friend changed his mind and decided to get two things for himself.

Our young, bubbly salesperson who up until that point was being very helpful, looked at me and said in her cartoon-ish voice, "Looks like you're getting jewed."

My friend and I were silent. Did I hear her correctly? She gave me another chance to clarify. "Yup, he jewed you." I still could not believe what I was hearing.

"Did she just say, 'jewed'?" I asked my friend, in a whisper. He nodded.

Let me explain that this young woman was very, how shall I put it? - unsophisticated. I had shopped in this store before, found her very friendly, albeit a bit chatty to a point of being somewhat too personal. I chalked it up to a personality thing combined with perhaps bad boundaries. In any case, she did nothing to put me off coming back to the store, which specializes in the particular item of which we were in search.

I had a sneaking suspicion that she honestly had no idea that the term she just used was offensive. She also had no idea that the customer she happened to say that too was Jewish. I have a degree in secondary education. This was what we would call a 'teachable moment.'

When it came time to pay, she noticed my friend had by now left the store, appearing to have stuck me with the bill. Actually, he has been suffering from a leg problem and needed to go somewhere to sit down, but I played along. Guess what she said? "Looks like he jewed you again."

"I have some friendly advice for you," I began. "Using the term 'jew' in that manner is offensive. I happen to be Jewish and I wanted to let you know this, because somewhere along the line you're going to say that to someone and they are going to get very upset."

She was immediately apologetic. "I am so sorry," she said. "To me, it is just a word used to mean what I was saying." She meant that my friend screwed me over. Usually, that particular epithet is also used to refer to someone who is cheap.

I compared her use of the word 'jew' to the way my classmates and I used to use the word 'gay' in elementary school, to refer to someone being stupid. At that point, I did not realize that the word also referred to a group of people and as such, using the word in that manner was insulting to them.

Apparently there are people still left in the world who also don't realize that using 'jew' as a verb is offensive. They don't understand that using the word in that manner is offensive to Jewish people (and should be offensive to everyone, for that matter). A close friend of mine used to use the word in that manner, until he met my brother and later me. He told me that we were the first Jewish people he had ever met, and suddenly 'jew' had a face and a name. It wasn't just some word any more to mean a cheap swindler or a method of haggling.

Back to the young woman in question. She kept going on and on that she did not mean anything bad by saying that, and that we're all the same people of flesh and blood and she actually is not prejudiced against anyone. And you know what? I believe her. I believe that she just seriously did not know that what she was saying was inappropriate. I shudder to think what could have happened if she happened to use those lines on someone other than me.

My friend later told me that he at first did not know if he was hearing her correctly, and was shocked. He was also concerned for how I was going to react. I told him how I handled the situation and he agreed that it was the appropriate thing to do.

I could have reacted in a number of different ways. I could have asked my friend to quietly put down our merchandise and leave the store, never to return. I could have lost my temper and thrown a fit. I could have ignored it and done absolutely nothing. I could have contacted the store's management when I returned home.

Of utmost importance to me was making sure the young woman knew her language was offensive, why it was offensive, and to hopefully ensure it never happens again. Everything happens for a reason, and I think that is why we ended up at this store and she just coincidentally happened to speak that way to a Jewish person (in case you are wondering, my coat was concealing my Star of David - there was no way she would have known I was Jewish).

When we are confronted with ignorance, we have a responsibility to speak up. In most cases, the other person is not a hardcore racist or anti-Semite. Just like this young woman, they are most likely just unaware. Usually, all we have to do is make a simple statement identifying someone's words or behaviour as not acceptable. If we remain silent, we're being just as ignorant as the offender.

Postscript: I purposely did not name the store, the shopping centre where it is located, or the items for which we were shopping. I honestly believe this woman meant no malice and I feel the situation has been resolved appropriately. So, if you ask, I am not going to tell.

Social Media and Language

The growth of the use of social media has changed the way some people speak and write. In some cases, new words have been entirely invented to reflect the use of a particular service, like Twitter. When I post to Twitter, I am "tweeting" and my post is a "tweet." Facebooking can refer to anything from updating one's status to adding friends.

Which leads to the next category of existing words that have been changed in meaning or usage. "Friend" can now be used as a verb ("I friended so-and-so on Facebook"). "Followers" may not mean there are creepy people following us around, but how many people are reading our tweets and blog posts.

Then there are abbreviations to add the illusion of laughter like the ubiquitous "LOL" and "ROTFL" (and countless variations) in addition to emoticons that are constructed by punctuation in the shape of a smiling or frowning face (again, with many variations to account for facial hair, glasses, and other emotions).

While some perhaps shudder at these inventions, one should not label such changes as disintegration necessarily. Change can be just that - reflections of the times. As society changes, so does its language. We don't speak Victorian English anymore, and there are numerous words that have changed meanings or connotations over time. For example, although it is technically correct, few people still use the term "gay" to mean "happy."

However, where there needs to be concern is related to the actual time and place of usage. It is appropriate to use these words when discussing and using social media (or other electronic forms of communication like texting and e-mail). If someone actually starts referring to making friends in real life as "friending" people, maybe he or she isn't really spending enough time away from the computer. As well, when people start saying things like "LOL" and "smiley face" during in-person (or telephone) speech, then there is potentially a problem when someone cannot express him or herself properly without the use of such enhancements.

Which begs the question of whether this is just laziness on the speaker's part or representative of an erosion of language. As someone with a wide social network both online and offline, I don't think such situations as described in the above paragraph are widespread yet. Verbal skills already vary from person to person based on culture (is English their first language?), level of education, and cognitive ability (which includes everything from general intelligence to whether or not a person has a developmental disability or brain damage).

How someone uses the language of social media will depend on how much time a person spends with social media and how important social media is to that person. Someone who is only a casual user of social media will of course not be speaking of tweets and friending the way someone who uses it for hours every day will. Also, younger people growing up in a culture of social media, who have not known a world without it (or at least were too young to remember) could potentially be more likely to do the verbal LOL-ing.

Another consideration apart from speech is written language. So far, I have not seen too many smilies or LOLs work their way into newspapers or magazines. I also don't think many teachers or professors would accept such things in a term paper. Unless, of course, the paper is about social media. :-) (Sorry, I could not resist.)

Still, we likely won't know how social media ultimately affects language on a long-term basis because it is so relatively new. Like MySpace (which is now mostly used by bands), Twitter and Facebook may eventually go out of vogue to be replaced by other services with their own vocabularies. In the meantime, I don't think the English language is suffering too much.