I would like to raise another interesting question in response to this discussion. Had my daughter survived would that have made the quiz being sent to me by a friend any more or less offensive and if so why? Think about it. Had she lived people would have leapt to my defense I suspect and this friend would have been frowned upon, forgiven but chastised, but as she is dead they chose not to and it appears I am the one at fault for emotionally responding to his thoughtlessness. Apparently I ought to have been restrained and emailed him privately. Personally I think that line of thinking is ridiculously unfair and as Dave says it all comes down to fear. Fear of dead babies.

For me the fact that my daughter is dead is irrelevant to this particular argument. Had she lived we’d be just as pissed off.

And Mike is completely right. It should not take having a family member with a disability for people to understand how offensive this particular word is. However that being said, it was the fuel for my emotional response to the offense and I make no apology for it, especially if his response is to cover his ears, sing lalalala, and pretend I said nothing at all.

I really ought to blog this myself but oh well. Moving on. Moot point.

I did rather think you missed the point with your first post Thorne but it’s clear to me now that you didn’t quite understand what we were talking about. No offence taken.

Sorry if anyone here in the relatively personal forum took offense at what I said under “third and lastly”, especially with regard to post modern discourse; something I am almost completely ignorant about. I’d hoped that the word ‘poking’ would illustrate my intent to gently troll there.

And Sophie, just to clarify, I think the use of this kind of language in facebook is offensive: whoever sent you that quiz would have needed only an instant’s thought to see it. My point is that we cannot (as much) blame the author of the quiz, since they don’t know you at all, and were thus not taking your feelings into account when writing it. Were they making careless, inappropriate use of the word generally? Maybe.

If I find myself with lots of time on my hands, I may have to go back through my comments here and see what replies I’ve missed…

Sorry, I forgot to mention how powerful this is! Thanks.

1)Make matters worse by pretending that nothing has happened, be silent and let the people who have found your words offensive stay offended, further upset people by invalidating their feelings by not listening. By not responding to them you make the people offended feel you don’t care and you are showing others that it is ok to be offensive.

2) Respond to the people who through no fault of your own you have offended in some way. Never underestimate the value of saying something as simple as “Thats not what meant.” or “I meant no offense”. You don’t need to admit fault and say “I’m sorry “ if you don’t want to, but responding goes a long way in making the offended parties at least feel that they have been heard.

Why should the way you respond to an offended people differ when you are in the same room with them compared to when you are not?

Thorne, you can continue on being as insensitive as you like and defend your right to do so. All I did was defend my right to call people out on it. And thus we have an understanding, one that can’t be achieved through silence.

First, Thank you. I don’t think I could put this as eloquently, even if I do disagree on some subtleties. As english speakers we’re privilileged to speak a very lithe young natural language, bursting with the kind of vibrant ambiguous heavily loaded baggage that only centuries of warfare and cultural brutality can instill. It behooves us to use our powerful, dangerous language responsibly. To this end, it’s always a good idea to talk about langauge like this.

Second, to agree: This worries me too, every time I talk to a child. Below a certain age, the very act of talking to a child is an act of creation; re-creating this language as it will be spoken and understood henceforth, as well as creating the subtle fabric of the semantic glove through which this child will perform the most important acts of their life. I always try to be honest, patient and painfully linguistically precise with small children, because it seems like the responsible thing to do.

Third and last, I’m inclined to poke gentle fun: What bizzarre misconception gives you, as an author or a speaker, the idea that you control the meaning of what you say? I can be deeply offended (if I want) by your use of the phrase “gave them hell” as it seems to imply that you and your peers led other children to become eternally damned! You’re unlikely to retract your statement to placate my hypothetical fringe religious hyper-sensitivity though, and there’s the rub: the vast majority of statements are offensive and hurtful to someone, and in some contexts (such as this one, or the context of writing a stupid facebook quiz) you have no selective control of your audience! Thus, while the anonymous quiz-sender was clearly insensitive to send this quiz to Sophie, I will defend my right to use dangerous, heavily loaded language in a public context because causing offense and being misunderstood are unavoidable consequences of public discourse. Besides, I thought you were proudly post-structuralist, Mr G, so to paraphrase Tina Turner, what’s authorial intent got to do with it?