There
is a certain movement in academia to persuade people that select
words implicitly are intended to cause harm. That is, particular
words are rigid designators invariably designed to harm individuals
as if they were nerve agent. Therefore the reasoning goes, use of the
words regarded as hay speech should be pejoratively sanctioned by the
ruling class in order to prevent further injury from consumption. If
someone used such words, irrespective of context and actually meaning
such that the words were et up and hayt, their intention was to
excrete harm on individuals and was not just use of such words in
fair arguments to support reasonable political opinions within
constitutionally valid criteria.
What
is harm? What is the relationship between a word and delivery of
harm? Consider this example… In Jean Paul Sartre's short story The
Condemned of Altoona
prisoners were held in a fascist basement during the Spanish civil
war waiting to be taken outside and executed. Plainly if one is tied
to a post with eleven soldiers pointing rifles at you the utterance
of the word fire
by
the commanding officer will cause harm to the prisoner being
executed, yet only if there are bullets in the weapons, and only if
they if hit their target, and only if… There is an eleatic
infinitude of alternate and contingent relationships and
responsibilities that might be made to describe the relationship of
word to object, yet everyone knows what the word fired
does
in that context. It was not hate speech, though it did cause harm in
commanding others to shoot, and the shooters killed the prisoner.
Language and logic together
reinforce words producing meaning. In advanced human societies some
efforts are made to control thought through control of language. Some
words are proscribed as hate speech amidst lexical lists of examples
that are pejoratively regarded as being in opposition to insider,
colonial power.
In
a sense all insider groups in a heterodox social environment act as
colonialists with a proprietary lexicon regarding outsiders. Jean
Paul Sartre described that context in his Critique
of Dialectical Reason.
Controlling language use; disarming the capability of outsiders to
express independent ideas that might be construed as opposition and
non-supportive of insider goals (as in anti-state or anti-Soviet
activities) became a common theme of dystopian novels as well as in
the Soviet Union, not to mention Hitler's Germany, in the 20th
century. State terrorism directed against its own citizens, sometimes
through intermediaries, to control public thought and speech is
always a problem.
Languages
are built up from phonemes and morphemes into syllables and words
following rules of construction called grammar. Lexicons are lists of
words that form a language. Meanings are the values those words
represent. Any given lexicon may or may not be understood equally
well by those using it for communication. One lexicon's meanings are
not always, necessarily translatable into another lexicon.
Words
thus may be regarded as abstract units with characteristic associated
with each word in a given lexicon. Sounds are often given to spoken
human languages although generally not to computer languages.
Meanings appear to follow contextual application of a word. Meanings
are not however what Kripke called 'rigid designators' in regard to
particular words.
Nominalism
and realism are two basic ways of viewing words. Nominalism regards
word meanings as circumstantial and contextual given through use
while realism regards words as having a Platonic realist nature that
is more or less timeless. Actually meanings may differ from words,
and meanings may be more or less constants if not timeless while
words may be regarded as vehicles that carry meaning temporally and
even variably.
Word
meanings considered in the abstract are simply designators. The word
points to an object that is its meaning. An example might be the word
'galaxy'. While the word 'galaxy'
could have evolved to mean a lawn or a car, it generally came to
refer to stellar clusters of stars of large scale such as the Milky
Way or Andromeda. Today the meaning of galaxy is as fixed or rigid as
the long lived galaxies or star groups they refer to. Some might
consider the meaning of the word galaxy rigid and even Platonically
real.
It
is alternatively possible to consider the word galaxy as a non-rigid
designator, for some day all of the galaxies may fade away and in
effect dissolve into their smallest constituent parts (given enough
time). Then the word galaxy would refer to no real thing, except
perhaps to a photograph of a galaxy in an old astronomy text. In the
meantime the word referring to the star clusters called galaxies may
have changed millions of times. Meanings are probably more rigid
designators than referent words. In fact Kripke apparently thought
that in some way, perhaps existentialist-phenominalist, since
galaxies once existed and there was a meaning designator referring to
galaxies, they would always exist (at least in the mind of God) at
least as a meaning, even if the actual referent object ceased to
exist.
A
recent political controversy concerning the most fundamental social
establishment in the history of western civilization- marriage,
brought the issue of hate speech to the fore. Hate speech as a
concept wherein classes of words are socially proscribed for being
implicit rigid designators expressing the emotion hate was a paradigm
employed quite a bit by the proponents of homosexual marriage. They
regarded the words 'fagot' and often 'queer' as examples of hate
speech. Proponents of homosexual marriage inclusion in the
heterosexual institution of marriage believed that just words
approved by themselves such as 'gay' were acceptable public forms for
describing the homosexual behavior.
Context
of word use is important in a free society. Words that are used to
work within the system for or against a political issue, and that do
not advocate crimes, can hardly be said to be hate speech. For hate
speech to exist there must be some actual individual that is hated
on. That is, there must be an actual victim for there to be an actual
crime. If people in opposition to homosexual marriage call it queer
or those supporting it (in the abstract) as fagots, that is as
legitimate of language use as calling communists 'reds' or democrats
'jackasses'.
If
there are people that interpret each use of the word 'fagot' as a
kill command, and if it were, then that would be hate speech. While
the word 'queer' simply describes a deviation from normal
heterosexual behavior, for some the word 'fagot' has a deeper,
frightening meaning connoting stomping under foot. Since the person
stomping a cigarette butt under foot is usually the one that sucked
on the cigarette that interpretation seems inherently absurd' a queer
would be required logically to crush the fag. Needless to say it is a
silly issue as most that use the word regard it as no more than a
synonym for 'queer'.
Controlling
public speech is a characteristic of the powerful. The powerful can
hate society and its democratic institutions preferring imperial
power. Hate speech may be done without any use of particular
offensive words; it can be done with no more than intentionally
faulty and damaging directions for example. To hate others and seek
to harm them through word use does not require swear words, it could
be accomplished with compassionate sounding, lofty and inspiring
phrases leading people to support the rise of civil war in a foreign
nation where none existed, or to corrupt and end the primary social
institution of western civilization- marriage, and replace it with a
godless, scientific, new establishment that could evolve to something
like the bonding of lizards.
Homosexuals
never were slaves in the U.S.A. They have no valid claim to have
liberated themselves from captive bondage, forced labor and
considered as property. There were laws against homosexuality that
arose in the mists of time for some reason or other. Those laws
evolved away in the United States although not in much of the rest of
the world. The United States has a history of strong tolerance for
individual freedom and self-determination if others are not directly
and adversely affect. That is probably the reason why in an era of
pervasive media presence armed with evolution theory laws against
homosexual behavior were overturned by the courts. There is absolute
no valid reason why citizens should not oppose homosexual marriage
however since that is not individual behavior; it is instead a
macro-social establishment in direct conflict with the history of the
civilization of the west. It was possible to avoid the destruction of
a normal core establishment with creation of new contract based
relationships for homosexuals that wanted some social legitimacy for
their bonding. A rational society considering world sensibilities
might have preferred a more sober approach that did not directly
adulterate the historical context of marriage.
In
the context of defense of marriage from homosexual expropriation
approbations against the behavior and corruption of marriage by the
high court with approval and homosexual marriage were not hate speech
when they were used in the political and theoretical context. It is
churlish to say that the use of such words as fagot and queer sought
to harm in-themselves when they were used as nominal designators
within a political context with real political issues such as the
Pentagon's 'don't ask, don't tell' and the corruption of marriage
act. To say that such use of those words were hate speech is nothing
more than a winning side's boasting and swollen follow up efforts to
victimize their political opposition on the issue. That is 'hate
speech'.
In
the future, one hopes that the Orwellian regard for words such as
Canuck
and bitch
will not go so far as to decree that use of the words necessarily
seeks to inflict harm on others as Platonically real rigid
designators. A cruel woman who treats children like dogs may deserve
being called a bitch
(when read about in a newspaper). A Presidential candidate that is a
citizen of Canada might rightly be called a Canuck
spoiler since his citizenship is a direct attack on the integrity of
national democracy of the U.S.A. Yet neither use urges violence
against the bitch
or the Canuck
any more than saying a fort is poor would stimulate congress to dump
bucket loads of cash on the fort. Pacifist non-use of words where all
violence against others-even some abstract violence of words-is
eschewed-may have been possible for those that could float like a
butterfly and sting like a marshmallow yet for mere mortals sometimes
would be unrealistic.
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