Easy Tiger - Language
The lure of language
It’s the weekend! Who’s up for some productive downtime? Here are some snackable chewy bits to mull over while you kick it down a gear. Easy Tiger – don’t push it… or do, by clicking the image below!
This week, I have been thinking about etymology. In particular the relevance of words to privilege, and privilege relative to driving change. There is only a one letter difference between world and word; the two are linguistically related. People who use words to change the world often wave their arms around when speaking so it fits that the missing ‘ell’ is actually an old European measure equating to the length between one’s elbow and the wrist.
Words can raise us up or lock us out of different worlds. Are you up for measuring your implicit bias when it comes to how word defining your world? 1
How intentional are you about the language you use? Is there a language that gives you identity and belonging? A native language? Music? Dance? It’s NAIDOC week, and a good time to think about the role of language in healing.. or hurting.
Wokese (the language of wokeness): a tool of the credentialed elite? The privilege of discussing privilege. The hype of the (hypo)critical. While words are only one letter removed from worlds, they also cut like swords with a long history of slicing and dicing. But then again, language is based on difference. In the WP this week G. Daniela Galarza highlighted the anglo-centric condescension of describing food as ‘exotic’ or ‘ethnic’. Australian photographer Bill Henderson warns that cancel culture might erase our ability to create meaningful art. Are the slurs of our ‘woke’ social norms inclusive or exclusive?
Can you name your pragmatic particles? Ikr! Meh. Tbh I LOL Irl. Find out what the hell ‘fingered speech’ is doing to our language!
Seth Godin wrote the Million-Dollar Words dictionary to illustrate that some words, while lingo-istic and seemingly elite, are precious and necessary to move our ideas and social norms forward. I interviewed Seth for our Trailblazers series a few weeks ago on the word failure of ‘global warming’ to spark a movement, compared to ‘climate cancer’. Words can also be used to save worlds, too.
Some people have a way with words, some people are away with words. Our linguistic heritage so often reveals the power structures inherent in our culture. This beautiful podcast by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett talk discussing slang, new words, old sayings, word origins, regional dialects, family expressions, literature, and more.
This episode introduces us to endlings. A word that we are likely to hear more about in the coming years. It means "the last surviving member of a species."
Enjoy your incredible mind, and take it Easy Tiger.
Project Implicit is led by Dr. Bethany Teachman (University of Virginia) and Dr. Matt Nock (Harvard University). Founded in 1998 by three scientists, the project’s mission is to educate people about bias and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the internet.