“By Definition”   John Graves   
Advanced "Speaking to Inform" # 5,   June 8, 2006

I will begin with an extraordinary... physical demonstration. Drum roll, please.  I want you all to watch me  - closely. (Use rubber glove) I am now, before your very eyes going to put part of a dead animal – in – my – mouth. And swallow it! This is disgusting. (Takes a bite out of a fried chicken leg.) 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have some shocking news. You may not know it, but we are surrounded by establishments which sell ... dismembered parts of dead plants and animals to the public. They are called restaurants and grocery stores. 

Yet, we don’t go out at 12 noon and say, let’s go put some dead things in our mouth. We say, let’s go have lunch. I may tell you that the food you eat is dead but to you it may seem very much alive. 

My morbid little exercise in linguistics is NOT an attempt to make all of you vegetarians. No. But I wish tonight to illustrate – how we and others  sometimes use language to shield us from the truth, to make the truth, shall we say, palatable. 

But what is ...the truth? It depends on the words we use. It depends on the grammar we use.  

Language, you see,  is the invisible, underyling code with which we decipher our world. The very structure of language controls how we think – and what we are allowed to think about!   

We are not allowed to think of food as being dead. The word dead never enters the picture. Instead words like flavorful, yummy, and delicious enter the picture.  

Now the food we eat is just a simple example, but the underlying truth is that  we live all our lives –  deep within the boundaries and assumptions of our language. ..your thought process is inseparable from language.... how you think about time, dividing your life into minutes, days, and years... how you think about the money in your pocket, your family, the many aspects of your career,... the only way we can cope and reason with all these ideas inside our heads is with the machine of many parts called language.  

Yet you didn’t invent the language that you think with. It comes from your culture.  

All our lives we struggle to make sense of the world, we compulsively strive to sort things out, to comprehend, and to put this complicated world into a – giant file cabinet – of categories. 

And yet the categories are also kind of like prisons. Once you establish a file cabinet of categories, you only allow yourself to see the world in just... that... WAY. 

So language is the alphabet soup that makes our minds work. And simmering inside that delicious alphabet soup is a cold war of words, invisible but in turmoil, words perpetually renewing themselves for defense and offense, much as a body’s immune system fights a constant battle to defend against attacking microbes. 

Nah nah nah nah nah! Do you remember being teased in school? Ever played the blame game? What’s it like to do battle with your spouse or brother or sister? You had do defend yourself with words. Sticks and stones may break my bones but ...words, if elevated to laws, might just put you in jail.

Nah nah nah nah nah. In 1974 President Nixon’s press secretary didn’t say the president’s statements were lies. He said they were inoperative. The President’s statements were inoperative. They don’t work anymore. They’re broken.  

Language, my Fellow Toastmasters, is, in fact, pure ideology. Let me explain what I mean by that. 

At the root of all politics, are words and the ever-shifting meanings attached to them. Sometimes the meanings shift a little bit, for example such as when we say that a prisoner is called a detainee. Or sometimes the meaning shifts a lot, as when we say that a card that gets us into debt — well, this card, this is a debt card, so why do people call it a credit card?  

Now, I DO love to experiment with words with subtle shades of meaning, But nowhere do we see words and labels twisted and inverted and exaggerated so much as in public life and advertising.  I think that people should call a spade a spade! 

The Pentagon is not the pentagon it is the military. Detainees are not detainees they are prisoners. A credit report is not a credit report it is a debt report. Consumers are not consumers they are citizens.    

I think no word does a greater disservice to our way of life than the passive, pathetic word “consumer”. Isn’t consumer really just another word for everything in us that is open to persuasion and coercion from the outside? We don’t consume products so much as we consume images and ideas.  

The word CITIZEN (move arrow) is just the opposite, isn’t it? Citizen is a word that says, yes, we have a voice in our affairs, we speak out, we might even write our legislators to demand that we be allowed to elect our own lobbyists...that’s what citizen means to me.  

Consumer reminds me of a big, helpless baby waiting to be fed, blind to everything but it’s immediate desires. WAAHHH! I want my MTV. I want my HDTV. I’m lovin it. Always low prices. Have it your way. We’ll leave the light on for you. 

So if not –  the word — consumer, how then shall we describe ourselves? In what category of the file cabinet do we belong? Shall we call ourselves citizens, workers, replicants, what?? 

Now here we are in Warner Center, in the midst of the health care and insurance industries....might there be a word available ... that we could use to describe ourselves? 

How about provider? You ________are a provider of_____________. You _________are a provider of __________ And ___________here is a provider of _______ Now we have shifted the meaning back to focus on production and the value of the individual. You’re not a consumer, you’re a provider! We’ve changed the meaning of you from passive to purposeful, from dead to alive! 

So Language is a tool, in fact, a machine, handed down to us by our parents, our peers, and our culture. And the most prominent public speakers in any culture form a locus of control of language.  

It is important to understand that The President, The congress, the supreme court, and especially what we call THE MEDIA, each is at the center of a locus of control ... of language. 

Most importantly, when the media freely accepts the words and labels handed to them by the government or by paying sponsors, they become fully complicit in the ideology contained in those words.  

Terrorism is one such word       Peacekeeper is another

Consumer is another          and credit is still another. 

These are words heavily loaded with intent and prejudice as to their meaning, and devoid of neutrality, meanings we too often take for granted. 

So Fellow Toastmasters, let me come back to the purpose why we are all here. If you don’t write and speak, if you don’t control and initiate your own use of language you are well on your way to submission, because someone else is going to do your thinking for you.  

When we allow others to put the labels on the things we think about, when we allow others to choose and define our words for us, we surrender control and become consumers of language.  

Let me urge you tonight as a citizen be in charge of your language, and not to let it control you.  

By being a Toastmaster, you are taking a sizable step in the right direction. Speak up and really think creatively, independently, and intelligently about the words, labels and symbols you use in your world.  

copyright John C Graves 2006

duplication prohibited