Words Have Meanings
I started this post on Saturday – had blog issues since then which did not let me save what I had written – and so I am now rethinking it … and that is a very good thing as I have had a lot of time to reflect on what I was at first going to post – which was a bit different from what is here.
Saturday a gunman in Tucson shot at a crowd who had gone to an outdoor town hall sponsored by their recently re-elected House Representative.
I'm not going to try to label the shooter – he killed several people including a nine-year-old girl and a Federal Judge. He wounded many more including the Congresswoman who was holding the town hall.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings the image of a politician's "target" post from her website was shown all over Twitter and Facebook – and the tweet about re-loading was also posted – by me as well as many others.
I was going to post them here but those images were what did not get saved … I think now it was an omen to not post them again. Giving her credit or blame for this is not where we need to be headed in the aftermath of the shootings/killings. Yes – I did blame her on my FB page!
I do not now want to add to the fodder of those who make a living by injecting violence prone language on the airwaves and TV/cable shows.
Words do have meanings! They also have connotations and they have the power to incite!
We have 1st Amendment rights about free speech – but it's been well argued that this does not give anyone the right to say anything they want.
Words have meanings! They can incite people to take violent actions – even if the speaker denies that was the intent.
Does this mean we can no longer speak? Of course not.
It means we need to understand that words have meanings and think before we speak with an attempt to tone down the screaming and shrieking that is permeating our politics!
We need to know that words have meanings and listen to each other.
Comments? Thanks
A personal experience: I had a big debate with a friend about ten years back…about words and their power. I learned much from that conversation. Because my stance was that words mean nothing–it is the intent behind them where the power lies. His was that words alone by the choice of their use is intent enough.
We went ’round and ’round. It actually took me quite sometime to understand what he was trying to tell me: that claimed intent can be deceptive, but the actual act of choosing a word IS INTENT.
Like I said…took me some time, but I finally understand.
Thanks for this post, Lynn…
Thank you Janet. From the time I was a kid I knew that the old “sticks and stones” saying was wrong – names can hurt. I can see your point about intent – but the power comes from the word + the intent in choosing the word