Language as violence

Language constructing reality

Language is a mechanism of communication that was constructed for the purpose of providing a shared environment with mutually understood terms and ideas. Language used by white privileged people saying things like "the African American Community has irrefutable cultural issues that help, in part, foster pervasive antisocial behavior especially in young black men" is actually more dangerous than actual murdering of black people. Language is both shaped by society and a shaper of society. The words people use to communicate ideas reflect the ideas people have, but also provide framework for how people think about the world. In an advertisement campaign by Chipotle called Cultivating Thought, the restaurant printed literary works on their cups and bags. One of the authors whose work was displayed, Julia Alvarez, included a mini story she wrote about learning English after moving to America from the Dominican Republic. In the story, she talks about the words she misses in Spanish. She misses these words because the things she wants to explain cannot be explained in English because English doesn't have the words for those ideas. One of her quotes found among the series' bags reads, "I miss them, Miami. All those words I had to leave behind. Also, words that in English don't carry the same feeling." The same difficulty of finding meaning for a certain idea or feeling does not just apply across languages, however. Within one given language it can be difficult to express an idea or feeling because there may not be a word that fully encapsulates what the speaker wants to present. Society depends on the words they are given to express what is thought or felt and requires that the audience can make the correct inferences about the implications of each word choice. For example, imagine a person who is a first generation college graduate. Maybe they communicate to another person that they are very proud. What other words, ideas, phrases, comparisons, connections exist in relation to the word "proud"? The answer is an overwhelming amount. The speaker's statement requires that the audience make those connections and understand the implications of how being "proud" extends into other associations with the word that fully explain what the speaker meant.

Language as violence

In terms of violence, language can be used to convey violent ideas and feelings through what an audience can infer about the extent of the word or statement's meaning. Although "violence" is presumably physical, it can extend into the verbal realm of spoken and written communication in a way that produces a physical effect. Language can be constituted as a violent action because when it is used violently, it shares characteristics with other violent actions – it causes pain. Language can constitute violence in a number of ways but is generally executed as violence when it ( language) can be used to reinforce power over a marginalized group or individual in a way that hurts or harms that group **(cite The Reality of Linguistic Violence Against Women). Because of this, language can be destructive to a group or individual based on what feelings or attitudes that particular institution has attached to the words they use to carry out violence.

Institutional violence

Violent language can stem from sexist language or language that exhibits sexism because language that falls in these categories is used to minimize, discredit, or put down a group, most times meaning women. Minimizing and discrediting a group is achieved when the language encourages isolation, ostracism, or oppression to thoughts or actions; all of which are ways that force is inflicted (emotionally or psychologically) in order to limit a group's scope of power and restrictions are placed on opportunity or free will. Groups that have the power to use language this way are institutions. Institutions include any form of normalized social system. School, family, work, and religion are all examples of institutions. Institutional violence can be overt or covert and is implemented as a systematic ideology of the given institution. Text from Deane W. Curtin and Robert Litke's book titled Institutional Violence presents an example of institutional violence in the following quote: "If a firefighters public exam makes unjustified assumptions that only men can be firefighters, this is covert institutional violence (p. xii)". This example exemplifies how a normalized social system has the ability to suppress and marginalize a group of society.

Social institutions are criticized as being fueled by hegemonic masculinity, whereas social order, leadership and control is implemented through masculinity – ultimately through men. Meaning, then, has been distinguished based on the separation of man and woman, of masculinity and femininity. One group, the dominant group, consists of masculine power, thus creating a marginalized group. This marginalized group has been assigned meaning based on being the opposite of the dominant group, which is feminine and powerless.

Gender hierarchy

Hegemonic masculinity is thought to be dictated by the gender performance expectations both ingrained and perpetuated throughout society. Gender performance assumes that biological sex of a human is connected to particular behaviors, ideals, thoughts, and actions. A biological man is expected to perform based on his biological distinction in ways that present him in the way society has defined the male gender, specifically in terms of ideological violence. The linguistics of violence have become an integral factor in perpetuating male and female roles in society.

The linguistics of violence have perpetuated the roles of men and women by asserting that sex and gender are unanimous and are indicative of a gender hierarchy. The gender hierarchy that exists in society is patriarchal, whereas men are at the top of the hierarchy and remain at the top of the hierarchy when they exhibit masculine behavior. Masculine behavior is dictated by violent actions or ideologies and supports the notion that men need to be aggressors, hold leadership roles, and maintain the organization of society, while women, exhibiting femininity, are expected to be submissive and passive. An example of this in contemporary society can be seen in the many hero-based narratives of pop culture. Man is hero and woman is object being saved by hero's violent escapades. Violence is used to validate this hierarchy because violence is used to communicate men's role in the power dynamic whereas power is being exerted by men in a world that functions based on man's power to overcome. Women in this example exhibit the feminine qualities of submission, nonviolence and passivity; they need to be saved because they are not violent and cannot use power to save themselves. In Catherine Ashcraft's article, "Naming Knowledge: A Language for Reconstructing Domestic Violence and Systemic Gender Inequity," she states, "In fact, the capacity of the dominant society to limit or control the discursive options of subordinate groups is crucial for maintaining these inequalities (Hegde, 1996; Spender, 1985). This example demonstrates how violence is used in the gender hierarchy to establish a clear distinction between what is man/masculine and what is women/feminine, with men being violent and women being the opposite in order to maintain a specific distinction between the two.

Implications

Marginalized groups are challenged to maneuver through a dominant group's language system. Specifically, marginalized groups are subjected to a labeling pattern. Labeling, though initially sought as a way to put a word to an experience or persona, can lessen an experience's credibility and can incite painful reactions. Words such as "victim" or "survivor" are examples of how coined terms can bring attention and recognition to a situation or experience, whereas these terms have been adopted to talk about sexual violence and abuse. However, these terms are contested for their inability to apply to a variety of situations because the two words group many situations into one umbrella word whereas each umbrella word has drastically different connotations, relating back to how language both dictates reality and is dictated by reality.

References

This article "Language as violence" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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