We have not developed a common language that accurately reflects our aspirations and expectations for our daughters as well as our sons
Zia Sardar calls for a new language of equality
Language is how we make ourselves understood. Of course, we do have other ways to communicate, such as body language or gesture, but they are hardly precise and can be easily misinterpreted. Language is our largest and most flexible store of information: the tool that allows us to learn, to teach and to change. Without language, we would be restricted in everything we do.
In fact, language is more than a communication tool: it shapes how we think, how we conceive of ourselves and the world around us. Language is a living thing, made in the process of living together by members of society. And language serves multiple purposes for all the different individuals and groups who make up our society.
The trouble is, even with language, we can create misunderstanding and our words can be open to misinterpretation. Between what we mean to say, what we intend to mean and what our words mean to other people, there is plenty of room for error, unintended offence and talking at cross purposes.
We all know language changes; otherwise today’s pupils would not have such a struggle with Shakespeare. We are constantly taking in and finding new words. Some tatty old patches drop off; newly constructed pieces are added. Computers and the internet have added whole new sections to dictionaries. They have also altered the most obvious meanings of words that have long been in use: when we hear the word ‘net’, we are far more likely to think of how we email a friend than a hairnet or a fishing net.
Yet even today, much of the language in which Shakespeare expressed his ideas remains part and parcel of everyday communication. The truth is our language is a patchwork. It has been forged in the past, and reflects old experiences, ideas, and encounters as well as new ones.
But there is nothing uniform or preordained about how words and their meanings come into or fall out of use, nor about how meanings change. Society changes, our ideas and attitudes are transformed, but these changes are not necessarily in sync with changes in language. This disparity can have troubling consequences.
It can result in people saying things they don’t strictly mean, or implying meanings they may not actually consider proper or acceptable. We may keep on using old and familiar words and expressions – often with an imaginary pinch of salt – because we have failed to develop new words that are both easy to use and more accurate descriptions of what we think or want to say.
The four decades since the 1960s have seen a radical transformation in British society and attitudes. Take as an example a visit to hospital. Today, your nurse is quite likely to be a man while your doctor is a woman: a situation almost unheard of in the 60s, but now taken as normal.
The question is whether our language, and how it shapes our thinking, has caught up with changes we find perfectly acceptable, indeed preferable – because life is now more equitable in the opportunities it offers to men and women.
Way back in 1976, in a seminal study called ‘Words and Women’, the sociologists Sally Hacker and Kate Swift asked three hundred college students to select pictures from magazines and newspapers to illustrate different chapters in a sociology textbook. Half the students were given chapter headings like ‘Social Man’, ‘Industrial Man’ and ‘Political Man’.
The other half were given different but corresponding headings such as ‘Society’, ‘Industrial Life’ and ‘Political Behaviour’. Guess what? The first group of students, from both sexes, consistently choose pictures of men only. The second group, working without ‘man’, selected images of both males and females.
We continue, however, to use the common generic term ‘man’. In a phrase like ‘the ordinary man in the street’, the speaker is actually referring to everyone: men, women and children. But what do we actually think of when we hear this sentence: ‘What should rational man do in this situation?’ Or a philosopher ‘who uses his reason to guide him?’ In these examples, the generic man is meant to stand for both men and women – for all of us.
Should we worry about this? The fact is, regardless of the author’s intentions, using ‘man’ is not interpreted as gender neutral. The phrases above still carry implicit assumptions that everyone on our streets is a man, rationality is limited to men and all philosophers are men. Yet this is not the premise on which our society operates in reality. We are, in effect, continuing to talk at cross purposes. Or, to put it another way, we have not developed a common language that accurately reflects our aspirations and expectations for our daughters as well as our sons.
What is the effect of this language gap? Many will surely feel that, even if we talk at cross purposes, we basically know what we mean, or at least what we intend to mean. But such complacency may be misplaced. In tabloid papers, popular magazines and across the whole gamut of the mass media, old language – loaded with its baggage of implicit meanings – is sending conflicting messages to young women and men, saddling them with outdated attitudes about the choices they can and should (or should not) make about their lives. And the common currency of old language can make it much more difficult us to discuss and resolve any conflict.
Sex equality is by no means the only issue to have changed our country over the past four decades. Britain has also become a multicultural society in that time. The vast majority of migrants who settled in Britain have transformed how we live: from what we eat to how we shop, they have brought a range of experience, talent and service that has become part of everyday life.
Yet the process has been neither easy, nor is it complete. On the one hand, British people like to pride themselves on being fair minded and tolerant. On the other, we know racism has been a common experience for immigrants. And, if we stop to think about it, we know our everyday language contains hoards of negative, pejorative – indeed openly offensive – words and expressions on the subjects of race, colour and ethnicity. And worse, we know people continue to use such language without thinking about how it affects the lives and sense of belonging of the minorities referred to.
If we want to talk about how to create a cohesive society that is fair, that asks of and offers to everyone the same promise of acceptance and opportunity, we must also ask: do we have the language to honestly debate the issues? Does the terminology we use create barriers to thinking and talking about how we want to shape Britain’s future for the benefit of all?
Our language does not serve all our people equally. Social bias, inherited and sustained, about sex, race and sexual orientation, as well as age, disability and religion, is reflected in the words we use to discuss these subjects. And language itself reflects what it has helped create and sustain. Promoting equality thus requires, among other things, raising awareness of this bias. And doing something about the negative underpinnings of words – and all the possible consequences these implied meanings could have.
Language has the power to direct our gaze. What we see or hear is not always ‘out there’; sometimes we see and hear what language directs us to look for in experience. Language says ‘notice this’, ‘ignore that’, ‘pay attention to this’, ‘separate from that’, and ‘such and such things belong together’. The language we are taught from infancy predisposes people to take such discrimination for granted, as an inescapable part of life.
It also has the potential to bring people together, and the power to create and shape our collective outlook as a society. This is why the Equality and Human Rights Commission has established a language group. Recently, the group has been examining the way language controls what we see, hear and think. It has been looking at words that are inherently discriminatory and exploring neutral or positive alternatives. Our report will be available soon.
Promoting a language of equality is not about imposing some authoritarian notion of political correctness. Rather, it is about understanding why political correctness failed and devising the kind of language that resolves the problem of talking at cross purposes. We all know that the overzealous pursuit of politically correct language often leads to absurd situations: there is no shortage of silly terms around, such as ‘folically challenged’ for bald, or ‘negative buoyancy factor’, which simply means the ship sank. But calling a person with Downs Syndrome ‘mongol’ is not only offensive but dehumanising – likewise referring to people with communication impairments as ‘dumb’, or describing disabled people in general as ‘invalids’.
We are not looking to lay down rules so much as inviting everyone to consider how better to ensure that what we say is what we intend and want to mean. Language is all about cooperation. Everyday language is something we create and change together, and looking for ways to improve it can help us to express in words what we want to see in practice: a society of equality based on dignity, respect and value for us all.
Zia Sardar is a writer, broadcaster and academic. He is also a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.