Some Thoughts:

...on the power of words

In learning French, I have had occasion more than once to think about the meanings of words in terms not only the dictionary definition but also of the emotions that words evoke. Much of the art in writing for publication or for speeches is in finding and using the words that result in the desired reactions. There is a power in words, and some words have more than others.

Words can lose their power or change in meaning and induced reaction. Take one of the most obvious examples, the word “gay”. This word no longer means “happy” in American English, even though it is still a definition listed in the dictionary. For proof, just go up to a laughing man in a bar and ask him, “Why are you so gay?” His reaction will tell you what his definition of the word is, along with the emotion the word evokes for him.

Other words have kept the same meaning, but have lost the power to bring a strong emotional reaction. The word “war”, for instance. After the First World War, use of that word in a serious context had a strong undercurrent of fear that it did not convey before the deaths of millions, an undercurrent that was reinforced by the Second World War and then the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Then, the word began to be used in rhetoric. War on crime, war on poverty, war on drugs... Any time a politician wanted to spend money, they said we were fighting a War on Something. The public, being both more savvy and less intelligent than they are given credit for, recognized that the boy was crying “wolf” and the word lost the power it once had. Now, many are asking the question, “Don’t people know there’s a war on?” The answer: the public has been told we are in a War on Terror, just as they’ve been told about a War on Drugs for 20 years, a War on Poverty before that, and a War on Crime before that. Nothing significant changed during any of those earlier “wars”, so why should it be different now? A very savvy yet unintelligent question. The rhetoric has numbed the power of the word "war" to the point that many no longer feel the emotions once associated with it. So, how do we convey the serious nature of the War on Terror? I have no answer for that question.

What has happened with the word “war” should serve as an object lesson in the misuse and overuse of words in superheated rhetoric. We are in danger of having many important words and phrases lose their meaning and their power. When a right-wing nutjob like Ann Coulter calls a left-wing moonbat like Michael Moore a “traitor” for exercising his right to say what he thinks, no matter how distasteful, it deprives that word of the power it needs to describe someone like John Walker Lindh, a citizen who actually took up arms against the country. If the radical left-wing feels it is acceptable to equate President Bush with Hitler, how do they then describe the crisis in Sudan, where true government sponsored-genocide is occurring?

Oddly enough, it is the French who provide us with an irony that exemplifies the dangers in misuse of words. Well before the French Revolution, Voltaire provided in a very concise statement the true meaning of freedom of speech, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Yet, when the Revolution arrived, the word "traitor" was applied liberally, sometimes to those who spoke their mind, other times to those who were regarded as an annoyance. Eventually, the trials and executions for treason became so prevalent that people began to mutter about "The Terror". In an irony that could be called one of the prime examples of poetic justice, the man responsible for the most egregious misuse of the words "treason" and "traitor", Maximilien Robespierre, ended up in the guillotine beheaded after being accused of "betraying the Revolution," the same crime that he had heedlessly accused so many others of committing. When finally the public was exhausted from all the fear and death and numb to words, Napoleon arose and in providing the order so long disappeared also crushed the last vestiges of the democracy that had been stillborn in the excesses of the Revolution.

When winning rhetorical points in an echo chamber becomes more important than communication, democracy fails. When political opponents are labeled as “evil” and compromise becomes impossible, demagogues come to the fore and divisions are exacerbated instead of healed. When people become numb to words that describe the truly heinous acts humanity is capable of, it becomes all the easier to allow those acts to occur without restraint.

Words have power. Use that power wisely.