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February 1st, 2009
 | 09:00 am
Words do not always mean what you think they mean now.
If you doubt that, try reading an unmodernized version of The Pardoner's Tale or the Wife of Bath's Tale.
As the speed of technology changes, social changes occur, and so do alterations in the meanings of words, the way they are used, the way they are understood and the way they are wielded.
One of the things that has troubled me about much of the discussion in LJ recently is the lack of historical context. I've been online for well over 20 years, and I can remember being alive when Eisenhower was president (I can't quite remember the years of Truman as president, but my husband does, a little.) I have watched the way society has changed, and have been involved in some of those changes, but my ability to parse this in suitably formal language acceptable to academics online is limited -- and I have no ambition to be the demo meat for someone else's verbal Ginsu.
Opponents of racism, separated by language is the best writing I've found to explain why the reactions of those of us who are older may not be understood by those who are a bit younger.
I am disabling comments on this post because I would like people to read this link slowly and think about it, rather than gulp it down and immediately write. The world has shifted and two different hemispheres are trying to speak over an online equator that is only becoming wider with misunderstanding. I am tired of seeing one group of people all but lynching another online; I am tired of attempting to say, quietly and offline, that the way some words are being used now would have been unimaginable in 1954, 1966, 1968 -- I know this, I was there, years before some of those arguing now were born -- and the way the words were used then is still valid, still applicable.
It has been a struggle to write this, to attempt to convey in right speech something that is very nearly beyond words to me. In Quakerism, it requires that truth be told, that it be said in ways that are kind to others, and that it be done with respect. I am choosing to do that via email. I ask that any who write also attempt to convey their views in truth, kindness and respect.
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InsaneJournal |