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Here's one from Steve Elliott of the News Junkie Post. How apt is that?
Yes, I'm talking about the great “marijuana/cannabis†controversy. Some activists get quite worked up about it, but any pejorative baggage surrounding the term “marijuana†is, at this point, really nothing more than an increasingly irrelevant historical footnote from the distant past.
Arizona, my current home state, and a traditionally conservative one at that, passed a medical marijuana initiative by only a few hundred votes this last year. Never thought I'd see that happen here. California … whole 'nuther venue and that one didn't surprise me.
I know people in both CA and AZ who use the stuff for medical reasons, and if it works for them, I'm OK with that. Personally, I prefer a fine single malt scotch … at least for stress reduction. It's legal, sure, but no less a crutch.
But since this forum is WWW, I have to say that the article Glenn linked brought back to mind the power of words. I will never forget how Pres Reagan decided to rename our nuclear ballistic missiles "Peacekeepers." Amazing to me how a new name can change public perception of the reality.
Likewise how the "Pro-Life" movement chose that label, forcing their opponents to choose "Pro-Choice" to avoid the label "Pro-Death."
Language shapes perception, to be sure.
Heimhenge said:
Likewise how the "Pro-Life" movement chose that label, forcing their opponents to choose "Pro-Choice" to avoid the label "Pro-Death."
Language shapes perception, to be sure.
I find the example of labeling the two sides of the abortion debate especially interesting, as you already noted in part, Heimhenge. In effect, each side's labeling of itself forces the other into a box. As you noted, if one side calls itself "Pro-Life", the other side would contrarily be "Anti-Life", which would certainly not be a label that helps their cause. Conversely, the other side's calling itself "Pro-Choice" would make the contrary position "Anti-Choice", which is not so damaging as "Anti-Life", but in these United States, calling yourself an enemy of free choice is not good PR. Additionally, the "Pro-Life" side could call itself "Anti-Abortion" with little negative effect on their message, but if the other side were to call itself "Pro-Abortion" it doesn't quite convey the message they want either.
It makes sense, of course, to choose labels that put the most positive spin on whatever one's position might be, and it is certainly not limited to the abortion-debate context. I just always find it interesting that part of the battle of the message is won if one side gets a catchier or more powerful name. (See also "Global Warming" (does not convey the whole story and is an easier concept for skeptics to attack) v. "Climate Change" (more accurate, but carries less dramatic impact).)
Good insight tunawrites! I had not considered those alternative labels you suggested. Indeed, "Pro-Choice" seems to put an "Anti-Choice" spin on the opposing group, which I guess is fairly accurate.
Not sure if I agree about "Climate Change" having less dramatic impact. But then, that might just be because I understand the difference between "climate" and "weather" (which are synonyms for many non-science people). And if you live in Canada, global warming might not sound all that bad.
Here's one more example that comes to mind … I've been involved in RE (renewable energy) for many years. Some time back, at least within the RE community, there was a move to banish the then-current term "alternate energy" from our vocabulary and replace it with "renewable energy." The argument was that attaching the word "alternate" to anything carried some negative baggage. And at that time, we were still trying to sell the whole idea of RE to the public. You still hear the term "alternate energy" used by many advocates of RE, but it is slowly being replaced by "renewable energy." I think that's a good thing, since it emphasizes what is truly good about wind, solar, geothermal, etc. And "renewable" is a much more positive-sounding word.
[edit] Just did a Google search. "Alternate energy" got about 3 million hits, "renewable energy" got 18 million. So it looks like we're winning that battle.
Heimhenge said:
Not sure if I agree about "Climate Change" having less dramatic impact. But then, that might just be because I understand the difference between "climate" and "weather" (which are synonyms for many non-science people).
Well I agree with you, Heimhenge, that "climate change" is plenty dramatic for me. However, I think the words themselves are a bit inert. The word global suggests a massive scale, and the word warming indicates a clear and threatening trend. I just don't think that the term "climate change" has the same effect. That said, I am baffled by the myriad "news" commentators who have used the recent severe storms across the country as "evidence" that "global warming" is not happening (notice that these commentators always use the term "global warming", which supports their predetermined view that it is false, as opposed to the currently accepted and more accurate term "climate change"). I often wonder if the commentators who claim that the extreme winter storms we've had for the last couple years disprove climate change actually understand the difference between weather and climate, or if they're simply being disingenuous to stoke outrage and garner support for their anti-science side. I have to believe it's the latter, since most of the people espousing such garbage are actually well-educated. But I'm not sure that makes the deliberate misinterpretation any better — in fact, it makes it much worse, nefarious even.
I think that the public interpretation of "global warming" was that weather would get uniformly hotter and that unusually severe cold weather was evidence for them that "global warming" must be wrong. I think that might be why some felt a change of term was needed.
It makes me wonder why some of the other debates have not resorted to making the implied labels of the opposing view more explicit: "pro-death" or "pro-murder" or "anti-choice" or some such. Not that I support such inflammatory rhetoric. Still, with seemingly no limits on extreme rhetoric, I wonder why these have been off limits. Maybe I just don't get out enough.
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