Labelling, language and ethics

A recent twitter exchange reminded me that I have often been in discussions or even arguments where 'labelling' is thrown out at some point. It is often thrown out when one party feels that nuances are being lost or sometimes when someone is attempting to play a variety of victimhood trump card. The tweet that started me off re-musing about this was this:

Twitter / Notifications: Are all labels as attempts to describe another essentially acts of judgement? Label free speech?

To which I replied:

Of course: but 'judgment' understood as 'attempted discernment' vs 'prejudce'; some = self-take

And then also:

Meaning what by 'label'? Where does noun end & label begin? Speech acts by def are ltd gestures

What I was trying to gesture at with these necessarily brief responses (hey, they're tweets!) is that labels are, viewed from one angle, a way of referring to someone else. They are nouns. Sometimes they are nouns which those who are referred to are comfortable with or even choose for themselves. Sometimes, however, they are nouns that the refered-to dislike and would prefer not to be used. I sense that often 'labelling' is used to refer to this latter kind of noun-use. This is because nouns don't only have dispassionate meanings but also have emotional connotations which are part of their use-meaning and if the connotations are disparaging then they cannot be used equally by all parties to the dialogue equally: the use of a disparaging term will constantly be alienating and tension-building to at least one party.

The problem with the term 'labelling' is that it can get used as a catch-all term to try to disallow an(y) attempt to briefly characterise something that someone would rather not talk about at all even when there is no real negative connotation.

The solutions to the snarl ups, I think, are to find mutually acceptable terms where there is a genuine issue about a term and to remain aware that labels are 'limited gestures' and to be prepared to learn more fully and sympathetically about their referents.

Finding mutually acceptable terms is important. The solution here is not to disallow using any term at all: clearly if something is to be talked about, ways of refering need to be agreed. All language is about a communal agreement in order to carry meaning from mind to mind; it is mind reading by mediation and the mediation has to be a communally agreed instrument (vs Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's story). In fact languages are constantly in the process of being agreed, misagreed and disagreed, and it is in that dynamic linguistic-communal dialogue that accusations such as 'labelling' themselves make sense. They are a bid to steer the terms of the rhetoric.

Mutually acceptable terms is a way to recognise the bona fides of the parties in the discussion. To insist on using a disparaging term against objections is, in effect, to communicate contempt for the other. But note that the alternative is not to cease to give a label for that would mean ceasing to talk about the matter. No, the alternative to a disparaging label is to find a noun which is able to serve as a helpful token in conversation towards mutually-satisfactory ends.

The other dimension I mentioned above is to recognise the limitedness of labels. Actually, this is to recognise the limitedness of language and that 'labels' are actually a particular kind of noun (signifier, if you will). In short, what I mean by this is that I cannot convey to you the fulness of what is in my mind when I speak or write. Language is like using a two-dimensional artefact to try to convey a four-dimensional reality. It is 'lossy'.

To use language we have to choose a focus from the total of the (already limited) reality we are aware of and we have to find verbal gestures to help someone else find our focus. We then (in actual fact simultaneously) have to choose further dimensions of related bits of reality (usually our attitudes and reasons for interest are involved) to incorporate into the verbal gesturing. We do this drawing on the presumption of shared information in order to achieve the compression necessary to make a message. In effect we are hoping each time that from the limited information we can convey, the other mind will be able to reconstruct enough of our intentions for a part of our mind to be read through the medium of our speech act.

So it's no surprise that labels do not convey fully the reality of what is referred to. And since we are also inevitably conveying something of our attitudes, it is no surprise that in any community-crossing conversations, we may have to recognise that attitudes or beliefs encoded in our own usual use of the term may have to be challenged and re-negotiated for the purposes of civil and civilising conversation. Clearly this implies that the the problem is not the label itself, it is our unwillingness to be challenged and to accommodate others' views. In that we are at the edge of attitudinal matters to do with stereotyping, contempt, self-justification etc.

In the light of what I've just written, the "act of judgement" issue in the original tweet can be understood more clearly. Any use of language involves us in judging what to focus on, what is relevant, what attitudes to 'it' we convey, where lines of demarcation are to be drawn etc etc. We cannot speak without such judgements, or as I put it in response, "discernment". The question is what attitudes are being conveyed (and that includes both sent and received)? And it is the attitudes that are really in view. The problem is that the labels can themselves become the rhetorical point at issue rather than the attitudes. The easiest way around this is to try to remove the label by agreeing terms: either not to use a particular term or to mutually accept a term on the understanding that it is being used in a certain way.

Of course, part of the problem is that we hear linguistic usages in a sense through the ears of the communities we know. So the individual conversation also has to take account of the wider social context. So, while you and I might agree to use a term in a relatively neutral fashion for the sake of advancing our understanding, we also have to conduct the conversation knowing that others may hear it differently. And so, for the sake of taking the fruits of our better understanding (I would hope that might be the outcome) to our wider communities, we may be best to agree to use terms (labels) which would be best received by our respective communities and yet also have the best chance to convey to them the better understandings we arrive at and also to foster those communities in a wider inter-communal conversation.

So, in the conversation that began this reflection, I was eschewing the terms "conservative" and "liberal" in (popular) ecclesiological contexts. I was doing so as an attempt to agree different terms for conversation because I feel that these terms do not help me to think about the issues. They sound Political to me and that jars: I may be 'conservative' in terms of accepting a reasonably orthodox interpretation of Christian faith, but I tend to think that doing so implicates me in taking a far from conservative view of social matters. On the other hand "liberal" may better describe many of my attitudes to social issues, but not how I view doctrine, scripture, the relationship between God and world etc etc. So I tend to use the terms "orthodox" and "open" to try to signal that what I think is a linkage in the wider world between "conservative" faith and "Conservative" politics and between "liberal" politics and "liberal" faith is not in operation here.

I judge it is harder to change the terms in the wider world (for a variety of reasons) so it is easier to change my own self desgination and then to try to have the conversations about why I would want to do that. To me that is better than to have a sense or even the experience of being written off because of the label or of being unwittingly co-opted also because of the label. (It's embarrassing or anxiety-provoking to find oneself wanting to challenge someone who assumed that you shared some viewpoint of theirs).

I guess, with reference to the original tweet as presented above, that I do not think that "judgement" is necessarily negative or disparaging. It is possible to label positively and to judge in favour. It is not the act of judging that is the problem in reality. it is judging to the detriment of others, to do so unfairly on the basis of a characteristic that is not inherently negative and to refuse to revisit the issue of the fairness of the judgement. We need to focus on the attitudes not the act of judgement.

Sign languages make working of metaphor clearer

I'm not sure that this is as big a break-through as it seems to be written up here, though it is certainly interesting to me as a linguist. But the phenomenon described is familiar to most of us who have worked on translations or been tripped up by a literal interpreting of a metaphor only to realise that a certain sense/shade of meaning doesn't map between the most natural choices in source and target languages. Check out the summary article here: Sign languages help us understand the nature of metaphors.
"This study shows that the iconicity of a form may constrain the possible metaphorical extensions that the form might take. Put another way, certain metaphorical expressions in spoken language cannot be 'translated directly' into sign language if their form is iconic."
And if that seems a bit opaque to you then perhaps the 'for instance' will clarify. I think it's interesting. The newer thing is the way that the performance of a ASL or (in this case) ISL sign constrains the connotative meaning and so what is available in terms of extended meanings available to remap in metaphoric usage.
"it is impossible to use the sign FLY (in Israeli Sign Language and American Sign Language) in the expression "time flies" or "the day just flew by." The metaphorical uses of a word such as FLY are impossible because of the form of this sign, in particular, its iconicity. The sign for FLY is produced by moving the arms as if flapping one's wings. But in the expression "time flies," we do not mean that time is flapping its wings. Rather, the metaphor is built on an implication of the action of flying, namely that it is a very fast way of motion. So there is a clash between what the form of the sign encodes (wing flapping) and the aspect of meaning on which the metaphor is built (fast movement)."
However, we should also recall the probable truth of the thesis in 'Metaphors we Live by' and 'Philosophy made Flesh' (Lakoff and Johnson in both cases) that much language is rooted in fundamental metaphors based on bodily experience (and making neurological links co-opting the relevant neuronal gestalts of somatic experience which does seem to be borne out in emerging brain imaging research). We should note it is the role of iconicity that is being picked out here. This is telling us something about (to use the vocabulary of another school in semiotics) motivated signs and their availability for metaphorical usage. What would be interesting to place beside this would be to look at the way that the FLY signs are pressed into metaphorical usage; what are the salient connotative meanings that can be drawn from the signs that can, in turn, be pressed into extended usage. I'm aware that SLs would be fascinating to look at from this kind of linguistic point of view. I hope one day I may have a chance to find out more.

Pew PDAs

That's 'public display of affection' ... thing to remember: we're always communicating; we can't help ourselves. I see dog-walkers doing it even on their own, they talk to their dog as if there may be other people there; they're not really talking to the dog, they are conveying explanations to onlookers. I know: I've caught myself doing it!

When we communicate we do so using the media and conventions open to us. Therefore there is a huge amount of that which is cultural; culture gives us our repertoire of signals and background understandings. Some people are more skilled than others in deploying the repertoire and judging how much and what shared background can be presumed upon, but we do all do it, deftly, clumsily or otherwise.

So when we consider pda's in church settings, we need to consider a raft of issues: what is acceptable in that setting; what are congregants likely to understand or infer about particular behaviours; what image or 'message' do the couple wish to project (individually or as a joint enterprise) and how do these things interact? So check out this brief comment piece on USAmerican church pda's. It's at #139 Pew PDA - Stuff Christian Culture Likes: "When a married couple sits together in church it's understood that the husband will put his arm around the wife and he'll keep it there until it's time to get a hymnal. After the hymnal is retrieved the arm resumes its rightful position like a reflex. The people in the pews behind them are to understand that they have a Good Marriage."

And my question is: is that the same in the churches you know? Please do comment: let me know (and if you're reading this on Facebook, please visit the blog to comment, please, please, please ...)

I feel I should also point out that in such a setting it may well be the case that a couple would also have to consider the semiotic value of not doing the arm round the shoulder thing (or of the wife doing it, or of putatively paradigmatic substitutions such as hand-holding...). Would fellow congregants interpret it as 'relationship rockiness'? Or is the gesture only occasional and perhaps even interpreted as 'trying too hard: there must be something wrong'!

What's in a Name?

Just thought this was a 'nice' example of how our labelling of things does have some important consequences. A rose may smell as sweet whatever its name, but some names can put us off from getting close enough to sniff ... Worldchanging: Bright Green: What's in a Name? For the Slimehead and Toothfish, the Extreme Makeover Leads to Rampant Overfishing: "The toothfish’s new name and the firm, oily meat found a huge market. In recent years, environmentalists have said both toothfish are now threatened with heavy fishing, including by “pirate” fishing boats that ignore conservation laws."

Vicar has 'horrifying' statue of crucifixion removed from church

Well, I had a double-take when I saw the middle of this article: Vicar has 'horrifying' statue of crucifixion removed from church | World news | guardian.co.uk. The words that caused the double take were these: "'The crucifix expressed suffering, torment, pain and anguish. It was a scary image, particularly for children. Parents didn't want to walk past it with their kids, because they found it so horrifying.

'It wasn't a suitable image for the outside of a church wanting to welcome worshippers. In fact, it was a real put-off.

'We're all about hope, encouragement and the joy of the Christian faith. We want to communicate good news, not bad news, so we need a more uplifting and inspiring symbol than execution on a cross.'"

My first reaction was something along the lines of 'but that's the point: that's what the cross is about'. But then it is also worth remembering that Christian symbolism, historically, was late in adopting the cross. It seems only to become fashionable after crucifixion was a regular feature of criminal 'justice'. This would have been, I guess, because of the reasons that the vicar in this case gave: it's a nasty and scary business. Remember the Ichthus symbol was one of the earliest Christian symbols. Remember too that most crosses are symbolic and tidied up compared with crucifixion.
Here's a picture (linked back to the BBC) of the 'offending' sculpture.

I guess it is a bit scary and if you are in a culture which, unlike the medieval, doesn't any longer 'get' the basic image and story, then it may not be the best place to start. Recall that Paul was mistaken once for proclaiming two Gods; Christ and Anastasia (Resurrection), maybe our iconography needs to be more liable to that mistaking than the horror movie version?

So while the Torygraph's commentator may have a point, he doesn't think it through far enough, methinks.