Word Assocations

[steepholm]

I've been trying to catch up with the TLS, and last night was taken with one their occasional "Then And Now" features. In this case it was reprinting an article first published in 1918 on the subject of "Jung and Word Association". It was an interesting piece altogether, but what leapt out at me was the following sentence:

The book also contains material of great value for comparing the average reactions of the uneducated with those of the mentally deficient; there are probably very many cases in which the defective represents, not the sins of his fathers or a freak of nature, but a failure of our present civilization to provide the educational opportunities that would give expression to the more unusual, and perhaps not the less valuable, types of mind.

I found it quite hard to process the fact that such un-PC language was being used to make what is, if one can press on to the end of the sentence, such an enlightened thought. To pick only the most obvious problem, was the writer really unaware of the problems involved in describing someone as a defective while also maintaining that their minds may be just as valuable as anyone else's? Did they really have such a tin ear? Or is it our own generation that, having thought so much about the ways in which privilege and prejudice are embedded in language, is unusually sensitive to such matters? (Or has our insensitivity simply moved to different spheres less visible to us, for future generations to hoot and tut at?)

Comments

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I don't find the language that surprising, now that I've reread and noticed the 1918 date. (First read was pretty shocking!) Hell, when I was teaching high school equivalency exam prep classes, a middle-aged woman came to us to take the exam because in school she'd been put with the other 'retarded' students doing tasks like mimeographing worksheets for the students instead of being educated. This solely because she'd had a hare-lip. She was no more mentally deficient than I am (on a good day! I'm pretty damn defective on others), but retarded, defective, all that kind of language had been fairly common not that long before. Yes, yes, this is anecdotal, but the other teachers and counselor were only shocked that she was so bright and had been treated like this, rather than disbelieving of the story.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

defective was a medical term just as moron referred to a very specific band of the Stanford Binet scale.

Language changes, and whatever terms one uses, if the attitudes are negative the new terms quicky acquire the same connotations. "Remedial" was a term intended to reassure students that their difficulties wuld be remedied.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I see the cognitive dissonance you're struck by, but I also find Lady Schrapnell's response to make sense. The writer is too busy challenging the idea to be worried about challenging the common language of the time.

What strikes me as most interesting is that, if I understand the general import of the quotation, is that "defective" is being used as a blanket term to cover two states mentioned earlier: "uneducated" and "mentally deficient". As "mentally deficient" in this context does mean what we think it means, it's easier to see "defective" as being used by intent as a neutral term: it's defective, but we're not prejudging why it's defective.

Even today, the difference between ignorance and stupidity is often hard to discern.

[sheenaghpugh]

The writer is too busy challenging the idea to be worried about challenging the common language of the time.

Yup. I think he's using "defective" fairly loosely, but with no worries because the language of that day was breathtakingly blunt. I have a Sears & Roebuck from that time which I treasure for the page titled, not "Intimate Apparel for the Fuller Figure" but "Underwear for Fat People".

The only thing that surprises me is, as you say, the novel if tentative thought that people who weren't normally intelligent might have something else of value. I've got a marriage guidance manual from the 1920s that states bluntly "The birth of an idiot is the greatest affliction that can befall any home", and a book of Norwegain folk tales from the 60s (!) that says much the same thing in the same language.

I do think though that we go a bit too far the other way. I know a friend once told me she had problems fund-raising for people with learning difficulties, and it didn't surprise me, because until she told me otherwise, I thought that meant people who couldn't quite get the hang of algebra - I didn't realise it might be people who had trouble learning their own addresses. If you get totally euphemistic, you may obscure the fact that there is actually a problem...