My own belief is that words are alive, even as the creations of our imagination take on life, becoming part of our personal and cultural consciousness. We literally create and shape our world with language, while language in turn shapes and defines us. There are times when we learn a new word and are paralysed with the intensity of revelation. This new discovery provides the key to a central puzzle we did not even know existed until that moment, and suddenly a new picture, a new understanding, a new avenue for exploration, opens up before us, where previously there was only darkness. We grab hold of language and climb to the peak of awareness, gradually allowing outdated labels to fall behind us as we climb ever higher.
And for me, with words come also prejudice. From early childhood I have experienced an unreasonable but persistent fear reaction on encountering people with poor language skills. I hear a certain flatness to inflection, tone and vocabulary and I automatically tighten with anxiety. I find myself expecting abuse. I feel adrift in unfamiliar, uncomfortable seas. And it turns out that my prejudice has a basis. According to a talk I was privileged to hear the other day by Professor Pamela Snow of La Trobe University, speech pathologists are beginning to concentrate research, less on our ability to master the structure of language, and more on our social cognition, popularly known as emotional intelligence. It turns out that our ability to label emotions is, perhaps unsurprisingly, vitally important to our ability to understand, respond to and regulate them. Language is one of the essential keys to the development of empathy. And that wonderfully protective part of our brain that responds to threat will, when faced with something it doesn't understand, assume hostility and worry about evidence later.
If that isn't enough, children entering a language-rich environment are far more likely to hear statements of empathy and encouragement, while children in language-poor environments are far more used to hearing simple (sometimes aggressive) commands and directions. The brain's assumption of hostility in the face of what it doesn't understand is, sadly, all too often validated. Low language can thus lead to low emotional intelligence, which in turn may lead to "acting out" in an aggressive, often physical fashion. Such behaviour is typically responded to with behavioural interventions such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), interventions entirely reliant on, you guessed it, language. According to Professor Snow, 50-60% of young male offenders have significant language impairments that cannot be accounted for by such factors as IQ, socio-economic status or differing neuro-abilities.
We are our words. They both limit and illumine our experience. And they are intricately woven into our belief systems. After a childhood of persistent teasing based on my own difference, I have spent a lifetime trying to overcome my own prejudice: my own irrational belief that language is a moral choice. When you speak, I make unconscious and inappropriate assumptions, not about your educational, cultural or familial background, but about your moral choices as a human being. Please be patient while I attempt to work on my own emotional intelligence and empathy, and in the process, my own moral choices.
Picture courtesy Pixabay