I love words. I have a strange passion for knowing words and an annoying desire to use the right word in every situation. I like my language to be precise. So when I encountered a Twitter thread about the word “dyke” (in terms of lesbians, not water resource management) and I thought “what’s that called?” I meant the class of word that historically is used pejoratively but the previous victims of the word use amongst themselves.
I hate not knowing words. Fortunately the discussion gave me the word I needed: Reclaimed Words. The linguists apparently call this Reappropriation or Resignification. There are a bunch of them that I cannot use socially, and wouldn’t want to, unless someone in that group gave me explicit permission to use it to address them, and that, frankly, hasn’t happened and I wouldn’t expect it to.
And I do appreciate this reappropriation of words. I can’t use them as I am a straight white cisgendered male with a Christian background and an upper-middle-class mentality[1]You know, the demographic that doesn’t need a Day of Visibility or Awareness Month, but I am hopeful that the words, through new usage, can take on new meanings one day. Those meanings will not be full of hate. Those new meanings will be used to identify a community of people, and if they have their own private language.
Everyone has a private language they use. Every marriage is a language[2]The Language Archive by Julia Cho. Every family has a language. Every community has a language. Every profession has it’s own language. It’s kind of amazing that we can cross-talk at all some days. Well, most days we can’t.
In Why You Can’t Understand Conservative Rhetoric, Doug Muder describes one difference between the political left and political right as a basic language problem. Liberals have a literate culture, Conservatives have an oral culture. The basic relationship to words is fundamentally different. I come from the literate side. Words have set definitions. Those definitions can change over time, but it is an evolution of a definition. On the oral tradition there is no grand unifying definition, but context-aware usages. For example , “Cancel Culture” is Josh Hawley loosing a book deal with Simon & Schuster, but Colin Kaepernick losing a football career isn’t.
Do I feel bad that I can’t use words like “dyke”, “faggot”, “nigger”, “chink”, or “jap”? Nope. The hate and dehumanization are, currently, part of the definitions of those words. The words have not evolved enough for public consumption and practical usage. I have no reason to use the words because I don’t want to dehumanize those around me. If the members of those groups use the word, that’s their business[3]And sometimes their Constitutional Right. See The Slants for details. Someone on the thread asked if non-lesbians could use the word “dyke” and was told probably not. So I won’t.