One of my first evenings in graduate school, a couple of classmates and I were drinking 25-cent beers (it was another century and it was a dive) when I made the mistake of saying the following about one of our classmates: “She seems like a really great girl.”
I was immediately admonished, then subjected to a lecture about how offensive it is to say “girl” in reference to a woman. Girl, I was told, carries with it the weight of thousands of years of sexism — misogyny even — endemic to a society run by men for the benefit of men. Simply using the word means that I am participating in a system that refuses to acknowledge woman’s equality and insidiously works to keep women downtrodden, abused and exploited. (Read a short discussion on this topic in IT Week, earlier this year.) “But… I don’t mean it disrespectfully,” I complained. “Besides, I think she calls herself a girl.”“It doesn’t matter,” my new friends answered. “The language itself plays a part in perpetuating an unequal — and fundamentally unfair — system. If you can gain awareness of how language informs thought and perpetuates cultural norms, then you can help to stop the injustice and participate in making the world be a better place.”At this point, I was thinking, “And how many years must I spend with you?”But the bottom line is that they were right — while we think of language as the expression of our thoughts, it also works the other way around: the way we think is influenced by the language we’re accustomed to using. I have already written in the Hart-Boillog about how using the term “like” to evaluate creative work or messaging keeps us bound within our own preferences rather than liberating us to think from the target audience’s perspective. We combat this by using the word “work” to evaluate messages or creative output, as in “will this work for the target audience?” Such a question may lead to a more effective approach than the more common: “Do I like this?”The influence of language on our thinking stretches much further. For instance, when talking about a communication campaign, we often use words and expressions such as:- We need to tell the audience that…- We are hoping to inform our constituents about…- We have to blast the following message to…- Our goal is to make as much noise as possible about…In these examples, the action words are “tell, inform, blast and make noise.” Notice what they have in common? All of these words are about the speaker, not the audience. Using such words focuses our thinking on ourselves and the message we want to broadcast instead of the audience and how it needs to be influenced. What if we trained ourselves to use language that is primarily focused on the audience and its needs, desires, pains and fears? Then, we might be saying:- We need the audience to understand that…- We want our constituents to learn about…- Our target recipient should experience…- The audience should be deafened by the noise about…Is this so important? Consider it on a personal, rather than professional, level. If you want to get your favorite person to join you for dinner and a movie, and you know that it’s a show he or she might not like, will it work better to say:”I really want to see X-men revisited, number 23. Will you go with me?”… which is all about you, or:”I know you really like eating at Chez Louis. Want to have dinner there and then suffer through a movie that someone you love wants to see?” … which is primarily about your audience?In a post earlier this year, Elizabeth wrote about some of the things she does to change her perspective as she designs. Add “language I use” to the repertoire, and let go of the notion that “it’s just semantics.” As we change the words that we use, we will also change how we perceive our work. Ideally, we will improve our ability to influence our target audiences, be they personal or professional.Note: Many have debated, and continue to debate, how language influences thought:Click here for discussion with Lera Boroditsky, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Stanford University, who “describes how the connection between language and thought was first noticed because different languages described the world in very different ways structurally. She describes how different languages use different genders, tense, and case, and how this may alter the way speakers of said language view the world–mainly that in languages that use different genders or tenses or cases, these differences must be noticed in the real world in order to be applied.” This piece also gives some great references at the bottom.
