Word Assocations
Sep. 14th, 2009 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmI'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:
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?)
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?)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 04:30 pm (UTC)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...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 04:43 pm (UTC)I'm not a big fan of euphemism either: it can very often be the flip side of contempt. After all, if someone perceives the need for a euphemism it's usually because whatever it is is seen as lesser in some way. "We know that X really is less valuable than Y, but we don't want to hurt X's feelings by saying so, so we'll make up a special word to disguise it." Whereas this passage is saying, don't leap to conclusions, there may be more here than will appear if you look at it only the way you've been used to do.