Sticks and Stones -- June 30, 2017

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-nra-video-20170705-story.html

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This adage would always frustrate me to no end when I was a child, and it was a phrase that was echoed ad nauseam by several of my primary school teachers in explaining how we should respond to verbal bullying. In fact, I remember being a great annoyance to my Kindergarten teacher when I just could not bring myself to accept these words. “But, Mrs. Casey,” I insisted, “that isn’t true! Words really can hurt us!” (I’ll always remember this because, during my entire academic career, this was one of the only instances when I caused a teacher to lose patience with me.)

I think that the reason why this platitude was such a source of vexation for me is because, even then, I realized that this sentiment was untrue. In fact, earlier the same day that my Kindergarten teacher was parroting that banal aphorism, I had witnessed two students on the playground exchanging words, which very quickly led to physical brawling. Even with my child-like perception of causality, I was convinced that those harsh words that the two children were hurling at each other were what caused the quarrel to quickly escalate and to become physical.

Looking back now, I can understand another reason as to why this commonplace phrase was so befuddling to me. Personally, I had always believed strongly in the Italian version of this epigram, which states the polar opposite: "La lingua non ha ossa ma rompe le ossa." In English this translates to, “Even though the tongue does not have bones, it can break bones.” This Italian proverb resonated with me more profoundly than its English counterpart. You see, even from this young age, I was an ardent believer in the immense power of words.

As I got older, and I furthered my passion for the written word, I remember in high school and college reading Geoffery Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. In fact, in college, I would spend much time reading both the Middle English and Modern English versions of this lengthy work and was even required to memorize and recite certain passages. (Ah, youth! ☺) Somehow, though, in all of the hours spent studying this entire masterpiece, one single line stood out to me more than any other. In the "Prologue" of Chaucer’s novel, the character referred to as “the Host” explains to the other characters that our words are “the cousin[s] to the deed.” I remember that I was in awe of the verbiage used in this passage in that this writer conveyed a concept that I had long believed—that there is an inherent, undeniable relationship, so to speak, between our words and our actions.

So often these days, this literary passage has really been brought to the forefront of my mind. It seems as though, especially within the last couple of years, I’ve been told repeatedly that I ascribe entirely too much power to words, that I am too sensitive to malicious language, that I am too politically correct, that I am too concerned about offending others with my words, et cetera, et cetera. These sentiments would often be accompanied by a multitude of odiously trite clichés, such as “Talk is cheap,” “Actions speak louder than words,” and, my own personal favorite, “They’re just words.”

Now, for someone like me whose life-long passion and livelihood are derived from language, you can only imagine the uneasiness and frustration that phrases like this evoke in me. I have seen firsthand the level of good or of harm words have the power to inflict. Language, if employed with ill intent, can be weaponized to cause unfathomable damage, and one needs only to look at incidents that have occurred in the U.S. in the last two months to see illustrations of this. For example, on May 20, an African American, Bowie State University student was murdered by a member of a white supremacist Facebook hate group days before his graduation. On May 26 in Oregon, two courageous men were killed by a member of an anti-Muslim extremist group for valiantly attempting to defend two Muslim women on a train. On June 14, an apparently mentally-disturbed gunman opened fire, targeting members of the GOP at a practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, hitting four people, seriously wounding House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise.

Of course, it would be both grossly unfair and inaccurate to claim that incendiary words themselves are solely responsible for these tragic events, but it is undeniable that each of these incidents shares one detail in common. In each of these cases, the physical violence was preceded by an all-consuming siege of animosity that was seemingly fueled by vicious hate speech. I have always believed that although, as the old adage states, words themselves do not have the capacity to cause physical harm, hostile and disparaging language creates a social climate that facilitates violence. Logically, dehumanizing others, even with our words, is the first step to justifying violence against them.

I think that this is why I was so disturbed when I woke up this morning to find that a friend had called my attention to this controversial ad, recently put out by the NRA (see link above). In the ad, the speaker is basically insinuating that, in light of recent events, we are on the brink of a second civil war, stopping just short of implying that we should choose a side and promote violence against others who do not share our ideology or convictions. The ad, quite transparently, is playing on the target audience’s feelings of fear and anger in the hope of increasing weapon sales.

When I first watched the ad, my heart fell into my stomach. After all of the calamity and even bloodshed that is still so fresh in our collective memory, when will we learn our lesson? When will we learn that words can have repercussions that are absolutely devastating? After seeing the level of brutality that can be precipitated by rancorous, vitriolic language, I would be lying if I said that this isn’t frightening to me. Perhaps Chaucer understood this concept when he wrote that a word is “the cousin to the deed,” for even if words are separate from actions, they are still closely enough related that they can both have deadly consequences.

-- Daniella Rossi