I'd say there's been a lot of talk about a certain issue in a certain town (or couple of towns) lately, but the truth is there's always been a lot of talk about some issue or another. Some hot-button issue where people on both sides see things very differently, and my own particular views or where I fall and on whose side, if anyone's side, are irrelevant to this post, except in that this particular issue was the cause of my pondering the power of words.
I'm not talking about the power of words to convey us to lands of imagination; as writers of fiction, we're all aware of that. And a little bit afraid of it, I think, mostly of harnessing that power imperfectly. This power of words that I'm talking about is also the power of labels, names, the things we call our actions and ourselves and the terms we use for one thing or another.
Here's an important word, "but." It's a word that comes after you've tossed out an idea, and maybe that idea's a good one. Maybe it's stark and brilliant in its simplicity. And maybe it's an important idea, you want to get it out there so that others will know it exists and some will agree with it. Maybe you hope this idea changes something you think needs changing. And then when you say it you realize, wait. I don't want all this color and brilliance. I don't want to put myself out there that far, and I don't want to stand out, I want to be quiet and not be recognized. And so you attach a "but" and chop off some of your first statement, put a qualifier on it. What comes after 'but' limits and de-powers what comes before, and a lot of times it's not even on purpose. Taking a stand or making a bold statement is scary. Using "but" takes away some of that fear, because then you have an exit door you can duck out of if things turn out less well than you want.
"If" is another good one. "If" means that what you're about to say or what you just finished saying is true only in a specific set of circumstances, and the more specific you get, the less likely it is that that "if" will come true. It's not quite as much of a backpedal or a mute button as "but" but it's close. Depends, as with all words, on how you use it. When volatile issues come up a lot of people bring out the "if," for this reason and also because "if" implies control. It implies that there is something that didn't happen, that might have happened, that meant you could control the situation. That may not always be true, and clearly wasn't true because that situation clearly got out of control. If X had/hadn't happened... you see? That makes "if" a very tempting word indeed.
There was a movement recently in fanfiction writing circles. Well, not relatively recently, but recently enough that I remember seeing it. Previously, people would "warn for" certain contents of their stories, or put warnings in the headers of their fic. And this led to a number of other writers pointing out that warning for something implies that there's danger or distaste in the contents of the story, leading to potential denigration of certain subject matters. Nowadays a lot of authors are using the terms "contains" and "content notes", which achieves the same result of telling a person what's in the story that they might be interested in reading or avoiding, and removes the value judgment.
I'm a writer. Apart from the medium by which I choose to write, my only other tools are words. Syntax and grammar, synonyms and descriptors and different languages in one sentence, they're all different tools in the same overall category. And by and large when I'm writing fiction, on the first draft I don't pay as much attention to the fine details of word choice so much as I do to the plot, the pacing, trying to get as much of what's in my head out onto the page as possible. It's when I go back for the rewrite that things get dicey. Then I have to look at every line, look at my editor's notes, look at all of the places where what came out doesn't convey what I had in my head or isn't clear or something else, and I have to change it. And out comes the tool box, and I have to find different words, put them in a different syntax, sometimes even go to a different language for a different set of words describing a concept so I can bring that non-English point of view back to the original story. That's a whole other essay, by the way, the theory that different languages influence a person's mind to different ways of thinking and behaving. It's called the soft Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity if you want to look it up.
I'm a writer. I have been for a very long time now. At first I only needed to concern myself with childish things, as the saying goes, but then as I grew up I found myself tackling more and more adult subjects. And alongside my growing up, the internet grew up as well. I found myself communicating in a medium I was supremely comfortable with. For what feels like the longest time (proportional to my expected lifespan it probably isn't) I was pretty careless with my words. Then, as time progressed and the internet became more of a regular thing, so much a part of so many people's life that it became invisible and taken for granted, I started to become more aware of how I was communicating. Part of it was the overwhelming tendency of my corners of the internet to focus on social justice, but part of it was also living through several kerfluffles at least exacerbated by if not caused by poor communication. And, dammit, I'm a writer. I should be better at communicating via text than that.
So, I started watching, and paying more attention, and trying to do better. And explaining what I was doing as best I could when called upon to do so, or when I felt moved to ask someone to change their words. This whole post started out by my feeling moved to ask someone to consider that they had appended a "but" to a statement that I felt the first part of it was the most important. I felt that adding "but" was placing conditions on a thing I felt was unconditional. We had a brief discussion, and I think we both came away happy. Because, again, words have power. They are important, they matter. And I'd much rather use mine to help and teach and heal than to excoriate or chastise.
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