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mk  ·  3215 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A personal account of how call out culture has harmed teaching

I agree with all of that.

It's probably also worth considering that language is often more symptom than disease. Where language is hurtful, we are likely to find ignorance. Ultimately, we aren't after reducing hurtful language as an end to itself, we are after reducing the ignorance from which it manifests. The truth is, sometimes the greater ignorance exists on the part of the listener.

IMHO this is why there is often a disconnect between older and younger generations on this issue. Often younger people see hurtful language as evidence of powerful ignorance, and while this is often the case, it isn't always so. It is a difficult and complicated matter that previous generations navigated a different culture, not only with different norms, but with different manifestations of language, even from those that actively sought to minimize their own ignorance (and that exercise wasn't even the same as it is today). Culture can have the same effect as time. Culture changes the context, the definitions of ignorance, and the meaning of words.

It's an aspect of language that almost any word can be hurtful in context. In the end, we are interested in whether or not individuals are hurtful, and whether or not they are interested in being less so. However, the onus does not only fall upon the speaker to consider all contexts and the associated potential for harm. It is also the listener's responsibility to understand the context of the speaker, and to consider the meaning of the words within that context.

To take the words that someone said and to obfuscate or modify the context so that it becomes harmful, or more harmful, is a hurtful thing to do.