Loaded Language

When I asked a group of 15 people in a workshop to make a list of words they could no longer use comfortably in church or at extended family gatherings or with neighbors or the general public, every one of them came up with 10 to 15 words within three minutes. The words they listed, and we talked about, were ones they had found were “triggers”–words that changed the mood of a conversation like ink dropped into water before much more could be said to clarify or nuance an opinion. Once these words were spoken, they recognized, defenses went up, antennae went out, and in some cases, instant judgments were made: if you use that word or phrase (progressive, say, or family values or tax break or gender affirming or woke), you must be a member of a tribe about which the hearer has already formed an opinion.

Predictably, liberal and conservative were high on those lists, as well as Republican and Democrat. Words like abortion, immigrant, welfare, and patriotic made the lists, too, along with the names of political candidates, descriptors like scientific or biblical, Evangelical, and even Christian.

Words are absorbent. Used often enough in partisan slogans or ad campaigns, or by certain religious groups or by “influencers” (itself a word with a troubling history), or spun into new usages by disaffected teens, they can be diverted from their broader purposes. They become contaminated by association or overdetermined by repetition, and so less usable for more neutral efforts to identify or describe. As words are turned into trademarks or code language, they become harder for speakers outside the associated groups to use for their original purposes.

Take a word like “media,” for instance: we all know it refers generally to any or all of the means of mass communication. But a broad swath of the public has at this point heard it paired with the word liberal so often, it’s hard to separate the two ideas: the notion that a “liberal” establishment has taken over public media is imbedded in the phrase. Others of us may hear media more often used in the phrases corporate media or independent media. In all those cases the descriptor becomes not only a way of identifying a range of media outlets but a signal to alert others to possible biases or values. The trouble comes when the descriptor becomes so sticky, it’s hard to separate the two terms. The term media comes with baggage.

Language is never free of the coloration that develops with popular usage: colloquial speech, celebrity speaking styles, gossip, local story forms and dialects, as well as the work of poets and literati, are features of a lively process of linguistic evolution. But because words are now exchanged in a volume and at a pace unprecedented in history, they adapt and shape-shift much more quickly and can be hijacked with increasing ease by speakers with hidden agendas, pundits and politicians with enormous platforms, and preachers with an ax to grind as they bring the gospel into alignment with highly politicized issues in our common life.

People of faith have particular cause to be concerned about loaded language. Christians preach and practice a logocentric faith: we believe in a God who spoke creation into existence and who gave us the power of language with which we can bless or curse, comfort or call to account, pray together or have our fellow humans put to death. We rely on a body of scriptural texts that are not at all self-explanatory and that demand to be read, mostly in translation, by each generation with renewed prayerful discernment as we work out their application to our lives in the present historical moment. The Protestant principle of sola scriptura is both liberating and dangerous: it presumes that the Holy Spirit will guide our reading if we approach it prayerfully; it also presumes that the church will always seek out, ordain, and raise up careful readers, trained in ancient languages, conversant enough with literary genres to help us read different kinds of texts–history, myth, poetry, prophecy, parable and epistle, for instance–appropriately. In a faith tradition that relies on good reading, illiteracy is dangerous. Not that everyone in the pews needs to meet a common standard; children and peasants and people with little access to written words have been agents of grace and bearers of divine messages. But certainly those in pulpits need to be held to a high standard of literacy since a primary part of the work to which they’re ordained is to help us read the Word of the Lord, to which, when they have read it, those of us who worship liturgically respond, “Thanks be to God.” Because those words are gifts. In a deeply true if not literal sense, we might say with one of the ancient rabbis, “These words are my very life.”

So now, given the discursive environment we inhabit in North America, we need to read wisely–like serpents, as it were–while speaking gently and kindly and carefully, trying to be harmless as doves. We need to help one another identify and call out loaded language for what it is. Let’s inventory for a moment what it is. Loaded language includes, as already mentioned, words that serve as code or identifiers for a particular group; words that elicit a strong or reactive emotional response, often making it hard to pursue an unbiased line of argument or inquiry; words that reinforce stereotypes or sensationalize; words that serve as “virtue signals” or invite derision; euphemisms that mask realities that need to be named. Loaded language is the primary instrument of propaganda, elegantly explored by George Orwell in his famous, and newly relevant, 1936 essay, “Politics and the English Language”–well worth rereading as we navigate the heated word-wars of the current political season. A similar thoughtful–and chilling–reflection on the fate of language in a polarized political climate is George Steiner’s “The Hollow Miracle,” in which he explores what happened to German (not just to Germany) under the Third Reich.

Once we’ve acknowledged (as I’ve just done at some length) that people of faith, along with everyone else, face significant language challenges as we seek understanding and peaceable policymaking, it behooves us to consider how to repair and reclaim and reinvigorate the words we rely on. I want to suggest a few strategies that aren’t simply reiterations of those I suggested in my books, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies and Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict, though writing those involved me in reflections I was glad to undertake for my own sake as much as for anyone else’s. Here are a few habits we might cultivate to help one another heal our damaged discourse:

          1. Pause when you can for a bit of metaconversation–conversation about conversation. That is, pause in the middle of making a point to point out that you’re aware the word you’re using is likely problematic, or that people hear it differently. Make space in person or on the page to point out what an interesting word it is, after all–evangelical or unnatural or indoctrinate or anathema. Look up etymologies and share them: some words have histories so interesting they deserve a little digression.

          2. Develop helpful circumlocutions. Look for ways to name the areas of agreement–be they ever so small–that people of all faiths or parties might share: we’re all concerned about the safety of children, about infrastructure, about education and health care, about economic health, though we may define and approach each of those quite differently. Most of us care deeply about being able to gather for worship in safety. How we understand and frame those concerns, of course, may differ dramatically, but finding common ground to speak from and common concerns to invoke gives you some mooring before you sail into the choppy waters of opinion.

            If you’ve ever played the game Taboo, you might think of it as a model: the point is to make your listeners guess the word you have in mind while avoiding five obvious words that would make the meaning clear. It’s good mental exercise.

          3. Listen longer, ask generous questions, and develop a small repertoire of sentence starters that keep the door open: “I wonder how you think about . . . ” “Could you help me understand . . .” “Is it possible . . .” “Might we consider . . .” “I’ll have to think about . . .”

          4. Recognize logical fallacies so you can avoid them and, sometimes, call them out. Some of the most common are hasty generalizations, straw man building, false dichotomies, ad hominem arguments, and misplacing the burden of proof. The formal fallacies that have names and histories are actually fun to review, and important measures of accountability for ourselves, first, and then for others when they make dangerous claims or resort to insidious arguments. One short list is available at https://www.grammarly.com/blog/rhetorical-devices/logical-fallacies/ .

          5. Make it clear that there are bus stops in the conversation at which either you or others may freely exit without judgment. No one has to “win,” though your hope is to make it possible to stay at the table until everyone has a chance to consider each other’s point of view.

          6. Try story more often than argument–especially stories about how you arrived at a position you hold strongly. “How I got here” is almost always an interesting tale to tell, and stories are far more inviting, as Jesus knew, than arguments, and generally more surprising and fruitful. Imagine, for instance, telling a story that began with “I remember when I changed my mind about this matter. It took me by surprise . . .” Or perhaps one that begins with “This became personal for me in a new way when . . .”

If all these efforts to foster open conversation run aground, of course, it’s good also to remember there are times to speak boldly and take the consequences. There are moments when atrocities need to be called what they are–war crimes or genocide or injustice. There are times when we must call out lies and offer unwelcome evidence. And there are times when, though we know we may be simply preaching to the choir, the choir needs to be preached to. We need conversation with like-minded people who share our faith and our deepest convictions about how to live in this broken world.

I certainly don’t meet my own cherished standards for careful or well-timed speech, but I do think we can all humbly test our own language practices, as we do our other practices, by how consistently they foster in us the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “Against such things,” Paul reassures us, “there is no law.” In our hardest conversations we can be confident that the Spirit is present even in the breath it takes to shape the words we so hope can be instruments of grace. They can become that–not only because of our efforts, but, sometimes, in spite of them.