6. Know that Words Matter (Part 1 - Considering why words matter)

This is the sixth article in a series of ten which has the collective title ‘On Working with Conflict’. The fifth article in this series is ‘Develop and Use Empathy’ and you can find links to its four parts here (Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 and Part 4 ).

The title of this article is ‘Know that Words Matter’. I wrote in the article on ‘Pay Attention to the Emotional Climate Part 1 ’ that I am now more mindful of the language I use as I am more aware about the extent to which words can influence the construction of emotions. In that article I referenced the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett, who I understand as saying that one way to better understand and manage your emotions is to have the vocabulary to describe them more precisely.

I want to look at why words matter in a bit of detail, so this article will have four parts:

Part 1 Considering why words matter

Part 2 Epistemic injustice

Part 3 Metaphors and Stories

Part 4 Choosing your words

Introduction

I am going to put my cards on the table at the start and say that I have a firm belief that words do matter. In this article I will share some thoughts and learning about this, but first some more general musings.

I’ve always been interested in what shapes the language we speak and the words we use. Related to this, I enjoy reading books which celebrate words and word play. I have written before (see 'Keynote Address – The Ombudsman Today – An International Context Part 1 of 8 ') on how I think that 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass ' should be required reading for all those who work in ombuds organisations – and I would extend this recommendation to all who work with conflict.

I read the labels on everything and I’m addicted to reading the signs I see in the street (you will see a few of these in the photos at the head of this article). I also seem to spend a lot of time looking up words in dictionaries to better understand their meaning (and this recently led me to read ‘The Dictionary of Lost Words ’ by Pip Willliams, which is a fictionalised account about the making of the first edition of the OED – the Oxford English Dictionary). Professor M. Lynne Murphy (author of ‘The Prodigal Tongue: the Love–Hate Relationship between British and American English ’) wrote in a 2020 Guardian article on how writers share a vocation to record a particular language as it is used rather than how anyone would like it to be used. She said that “This is especially true of the OED, which is designed as a tool for the historical study of the language, recording evidence of changes in English words and meanings over the past thousand years.” She also writes that “If dictionaries record the usage of only the authorities, the voices of the people are lost.”

In a May 2015 blog - with the title 'The world and his or her wife ' - the British linguist Deborah Cameron (who wrote the book 'The Myth of Mars And Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? ') wrote that “The associations of words are a product of the way they have been used over time.” She gives the example of the word ‘wife’, saying that its “use has been shaped by the history of marriage as a patriarchal institution” (also observing that in her thesaurus the entry for wife contains the following list of synonyms: Mate, helpmeet, spouse, bride, better half, little woman, the missus, old lady, ball and chain, trouble and strife. And that by contrast, the entry for husband reads Mate, spouse, groom, bridegroom, partner, old man, hubby).

Another fascinating book about language is 'Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words ' by Dr Jenni Nuttall who “guides readers through the evolution of words we have used to describe women and the experiences they might share including menstruation, sexuality, the consequences of male violence, childbirth, paid and unpaid work. Along the way, she argues that as women have made slow progress towards equality, we've lost some of the most eloquent parts of our vocabulary for our lives.”

Dr Pragya Agarwal has written in the Epilogue of her book ‘Hysterical: Exploding the myth of gendered emotions ’ that “Language, and the words we have available, can shape what we feel, how we feel, how we attach meanings and how we label things and people.” Fascinatingly, she also writes that “Those who speak only English are slower in distinguishing between different shades of blue compared to speakers of Korean, Japanese or Turkish languages, which have much finer-grained, nuanced vocabularies for colour gradations.” I’ve also recently become aware that in tonal languages such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, the meaning of words is dependent on their pitch.

I have favourite words. One is petrichor – the smell of rain on the ground after a dry spell – which is such a precise description (and as Jo in Little Women said “"I like good strong words that mean something"). It also reminds me of my African childhood, as do words such as murrum, bundu, jacaranda and kahawa. Other favourites are words remembered from visiting my Lancashire relatives, such as mither, jiggered, lozzock and chuffed. And the words ginnel, kegs, chelp and mardy from my time spent in Yorkshire. Living in Scotland as I now do, I have learned numerous wonderfully descriptive words, many of which are about the weather (but which don’t often celebrate a sunny day) - words such as dreich, drookit, haar, smirr, snell and baltic. A Scots word I have learned recently – and am intending to practice more – is ‘hurkle-durkle’, which means "to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up and about". When writing this article, I realised that many of these favourite words are evocative as they conjure up people and places.

But as well as favourite words there are words which rankle. Words which I find irritating or demeaning. I have a thing about ‘institutional’ language in public services (which often reflects a deficit approach with services viewed as transactions) and summed up some of my thoughts about the language I’ve experienced in the NHS in a 2023 article ‘Views and Learning about Patient Experience ’. This included “Phrases are used like ‘challenging behaviour’, ‘refusal to engage’, ‘non-compliant’ - all too readily blaming people instead of acknowledging organisational failings … By defining people as problems are they being seen as problems?”

I also wrote “There is also not much talk about people – there are patients and cases and referrals – and people are described by their conditions or by what they do or don’t do (such as Do Not Attend). I said that “I have believed for a while that the language we use reflects our values and our feelings and that this in turn influences the way we think and the way we behave.” Also that “My experience has been that language – particularly jargon – can perpetuate unequal power dynamics.” I acknowledge that I was a bit on my high horse when I wrote this, but my view is still that the language used in the NHS is often so deeply entrenched that there is little thought about the meaning or impact of the words used.

Attaching Labels

Many of the words which rile me relate to the ways in which people are categorised. In my 2020 article on 'Seeing the Person behind the Behaviour' I spoke about the need to stop attaching labels to people. And in 'Being Trauma Aware' I wrote about reading a study which concluded that psychiatric diagnoses are scientifically worthless tools to identify discrete mental health disorders. This article quoted lead author Dr Kate Allsopp, University of Liverpool, as saying: "Although diagnostic labels create an illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice. I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences."

In the 2023 article ‘Views and Learning about Patient Experience ’ referred to above, I wrote that “Labels are applied which assume ownership – ‘my cases’, ‘our patients’ – so that people become passive recipients. And I have learned that labels can also be othering – such as the use of the term ‘vulnerable’ and that ‘hard-to-reach’ can imply individual responsibility for a situation or predicament. In addition to labelling people, their behaviours are labelled too – particularly when people don’t behave in a way it is believed that they should.”

I said in my NHS article that I had borrowed from the work of others – and this includes the writings of Bryony Shannon in her always thought-provoking blogs on Rewriting social care . In these blogs she sets out why language matters , which includes that “The language of social care creates barriers, and there are enough of those already in the statutory social care world. The terms we use perpetuate the power dynamic between the ‘professional’ and the ‘vulnerable person’, the assessor and the assessed, ‘us and them’.” She has written about ‘Professional ’ language and says about ‘Labels ’ that “People usually require a label (eligible, vulnerable, at risk…) to enter our social care world. And once they’re in, our labels define their ‘journey’.” Also that “There have been numerous surveys and much speculation and debate about the “preferred terms for labelling individuals” in health and social care, and “what do we call ‘them’?” remains an unresolved question. But it’s the wrong question. We don’t need to change the labels. We need to remove them. But we can only do that by radically rewriting social care.”

I also greatly value the work of Paul Taylor whose writings include a blog on ‘The Unintended Consequence of Putting People in?Boxes ’. He says that “Thinking about others in terms of their group memberships is known as?social categorization—the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups. This helps us to make mental shortcuts, which are vital for quick decisions but an overgeneralization makes it more likely that we will think about and treat all members of a group in the same way. When we?label people we end up limiting our curiosity about a person.” Also that “Placing people in these convenient boxes results in what people have termed misery mapping – putting humans into categories according to their particular problem.”

So can we stop labelling people, such as referring ‘the homeless’ (which always makes me want to respond by asking 'the homeless what?'). The same with ‘the disabled’. I’m also not keen on the word ‘customer’ in relation to public services. So welcomed this 2022 blog on 'Language Matters ' by Emily Lindley who writes that “I’ve often heard the argument for using the terms tenants and leaseholders is to draw attention to their legal status and therefore their legal rights in the relationship.” But she goes on to say that “If housing is a profession, one which not just puts customers at the heart of everything, but prioritises their best interests over those of the organisation, then I’d like to think there would be a lot less focus on language, because what matters most is how people are treated. If the balance of power is considered fair by all parties, nouns lose their importance. But from a quick glance at the Housing Ombudsman’s online casefile, that’s not where we are just now and so I wonder to what extent language debates are a despairing attempt to hold on to a slither of power by ensuring that at least your landlord recognises your legal status when they speak to you?”

I also particularly value this contribution from Adam Lent, writing in his final (April 2024 ) Local Government Chronicle briefing as chief executive of New Local on how he would transform local government if he was dictator for a day, which includes: “I’d ban the word ‘residents’. People don’t just reside somewhere, they are the lifeblood and the energy of a place and should be treated as such. Instead, let’s use the word that, for some reason, has always provoked bum-shifting in the UK and call people what they are: ‘citizens’. People with rights and responsibilities of course but also expertise, ideas and passion for place.” And he says “I’d also abolish the term ‘public services’. A phrase that suggests what the public sector does is a purely transactional arrangement – a health and well-being version of the service sector; Tesco but for homelessness and broken limbs!”

Use of the word ‘vulnerable’

Over recent years I have spent a bit of time considering the word ‘vulnerable. This has reinforced my views on why words matter and I want to share some thoughts and learning here.? In a co-authored August 2022 Briefing paper: 'Barriers to accessing adult social care and social housing complaint systems ' (which you can also find on the Transforming Complaint Resolution website) we wrote that “as well as identifying policy issues there are also issues around the use of language. For example, use of the term ‘vulnerable’, which is applied in the justice system to denote factors which impede ability to participate in a court or tribunal process, can be othering.“

When writing in 2021 about the word 'Vulnerable ' Bryony Shannon sets out reasons why its use can be meaningless, othering, dehumanising, possessive, excluding, stigmatising, blaming, paternalistic, dangerous and can make people more vulnerable. She says that she is not suggesting that we stop talking about vulnerability. But what she is calling for is an end to the discriminating and patronising use of the term.

Paul Taylor has also written about the regressive power of labelling people as vulnerable, saying that "we rarely hear what it is that people are vulnerable to, how this vulnerability is produced, or by whom". And he succinctly sums up the paradox of employing the term of ‘vulnerability’, saying that “it makes people more vulnerable as it: promotes a deficit mindset and encourages organisations to rush in and fill the gap with more ‘services’; leads to bad decisions by putting disparate groups of people together in one convenient box; labels people and changes our behaviour towards them, so reinforcing distinctions between the deserving and undeserving; overlooks the root causes of any vulnerability; and presents the problem as if it stems from individual traits, life choices or misfortune.”

?A key conclusion drawn in my ‘Literature Review on Consumer Vulnerability ’ (which Consumer Scotland published on their web site in September 2023) is that language does matter. Sources referenced in relation to this included Maker et al (2021) “finding that policy organisations, researchers and advocacy groups have challenged the use of the label ‘’vulnerable’ on the basis that it can be inaccurate, misleading, and unhelpful.” Mayson (2022) summarises succinctly in saying that, "manifest or nascent vulnerability might not be the principal consideration, so much as the consequences or implications of that vulnerability for the individuals concerned in the particular circumstances in which they find themselves". He concludes that, “In short, vulnerability is universal, contextual, conditional and causative. What we need to focus on is not the condition of vulnerability but the consequences of it."

My concerns about how the word ‘vulnerable’ has been used are brilliantly summed up in this 2020 ‘Valuable not vulnerable ’ blog post by Neil Crowther. This includes that “Prejudice towards older and disabled people has been described as ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. People are regarded not as a threat, but not as productive or with a valuable contribution to make. The word ‘vulnerability’ embodies and amplifies these ideas.”?And that “we need to describe differences in risk as inequalities, not vulnerabilities. Moreover, in describing the risks people face, we must not add to them by using language that makes people less safe.”

If you have the time, do read his blog post in full. But if not, I have to tell you about the reason for the title. Neil Crowther writes “So I’m going to finish my remarks here by sharing a tweet by a school nurse that went viral back in April and which for me neatly sums up everything I’ve wanted to say: Met with a yr10 boy last week for socially distanced walk and talk. Wanted to make sure he wasn’t hungry. He explained to me that he could go into school if he wanted as was on the ‘valuable’ list. My heart swelled. I didn’t correct him.”

More about why words matter

I now want now to illustrate why words matter in relation to conflict (and will say more about this later articles). I agree strongly with those who have written about how communication and conflict are fundamentally linked. Wilmot and Hocker (2011) write about communication fulfilling a number of roles in conflict: it can create it in the first place (problems created by misunderstandings), it can mirror conflict (communication reflects and symbolises what is happening in a conflict) and it is the vehicle through which attempts at conflict resolution are made. I’ve often found that how a conflict unfolds depends on the responses of the participants. ‘Constructive’ responses tend not to escalate a conflict further. ‘Destructive’ responses tend to make things worse.

Communication is about sending and receiving messages. George Bernard Shaw has been quoted as saying that “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Bernard Mayer (2000) has written that “At the heart of both conflict and conflict resolution is communication. Conflict frequently escalates because people act on the assumption that they have communicated accurately when they have not. People can work on improving communication even in very intense conflicts. Communication is one of the greatest sources of both difficulty and hope in dealing with serious conflict.”

So conflict is created in and develops through communication, as we generate, share and modify meanings. Communication is also the means by which we manage or resolve conflict. I’ve noticed that the words used to describe conflict are often adversarial, reflecting an approach which sees the other party or parties as an enemy to be defeated. About winning and losing. Right and wrong. Upheld and not upheld. Words that blame, shame and accuse.

I’ve also experienced how complaints can escalate as a result of the language used when an organisation responds. In my teachings over the years I have highlighted the negative effects that words can have, such as those suggesting carelessness on the part of the complainant (“You overlooked”, “You failed to supply”), are experienced as sarcastic or patronising (“No doubt”, “You will understand, of course”, suggest lying (You claim that”, “You state that”), are demanding (“You ought”, “You should”, “We must insist”) and those that imply stupidity (“We are at a loss to understand”).

This negative impact of the language used in complaint handling is supported in findings shared by UK Ombuds. For example, the August 2017 IFF Research report for the Legal Ombudsman on ‘The Language of Complaints ’ includes “A key issue with providers’ communication was that they were perceived to be using ‘intimidating’ language to discourage complaints from being made or, once made, progressed.” Common wording issues included ‘Pretentious’ language and jargon feels intimidating to the customer with the example “In the circumstances, our client is considered that [name] was accordingly negligent, failing to advise the impact of utilisation of the CMS. Namely once the detriment was made there was no enforcement of the maintenance, against the maintenance continued to do so in the event.... “ And apology wording that does not sound genuine “For the inconvenience caused, we would like to award you ￡250… Please note that the offer is made on an entirely prejudicial basis without making any formal admission and made purely and simply to deal with the complaint.”

This IFF report also included recommendations for the Legal Ombudsman itself, including that “There are specific terms used by the Legal Ombudsman – such as ‘remedy’, ‘premature’ and ‘out of time’ – which are either felt to be meaningless jargon or to have off-putting and unhelpful connotations. The Legal Ombudsman might instead express things in a straightforward manner and, as far as possible, say directly what they mean.”

The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) continues to emphasise the importance of communication, writing in the March 2024 edition of the Ombudsman’s findings, that “we highlight the need for clear and consistent communication. A common theme of these recommendations was the need for clear and consistent communication between public sector organisations and they people they serve.” And the November 2023 edition of the Ombudsman’s findings said that “We also made recommendations about how public bodies communicate with people engaging with their service. All communication should be professional and respectful, and any concerns should be documented using non-judgemental language.”

The English Housing Ombudsman Service has included examples of inappropriate language and tone in complaints handling (including a defensive style and the tone not being professional or objective) in their January 2024 ‘Spotlight on attitudes, respect and rights – relationship of equals ’ This quotes a resident as saying “It needs to be a relationship of equals (between residents and landlords). They are not rescuing the bad, sad and mad, but that is what they seem to think.” The tone of communications and the use of language by landlords (such the terms ‘perpetrator’ and ‘incidents’) was also highlighted in both their ‘Spotlight on: Noise complaints – time to be heard ’ (October 2022) and ‘Follow up report: Spotlight on Noise complaints – Time to be Heard ’ (April 2024) reports.

Conclusion

This has only been an overview and is very much my own take on why words matter. In?the ‘Literature Review on Consumer Vulnerability ’ I wrote that: “Language is not neutral. The way in which language is used critical to how a message is heard and understood. Words can shape mindsets, which in turn affect how we think and behave.” I also believe that words matter as they can spark new ways of seeing and understanding and that questioning the words used can open up a whole new perspective.

Associate Professor Martin Hinton, writing in 2020 on ‘Evaluating the language of argument’, helpfully sums things up for me when he says that “Language is a product of the lived human experience; without the context of that experience it cannot be understood and it could not have existed. It is not a system for describing the world, it is a system for describing the human experience of the world: it is not a system for codifying the truth, but a system for expressing human perceptions of the truth. Words reflect thoughts, not reality.”

Finally, to end by quoting a couple of respected writers, Samuel Beckett is reported as saying that “Words are all we have.” And Ursula K. Le Guin has written in her essay ‘Telling is Listening’ (which can be found in her book 'The Wave in Mind ' that “Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.”

In my second part of this article on ‘Know that Words Matter’ I am going to look at the concept and implications of ‘epistemic injustice’, which is where someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower.

References

Hinton, M., 2020. Evaluating the language of argument (Vol. 37). Springer Nature.

Maker, Y., Hudson, N. and McSherry, B., 2021. Sensitive and Appropriate Engagement with Consumers Experiencing Vulnerability: Guidance and Principles for Action. 107p.

Mayer, B. 2000 The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mayson, S. (2022). Consumer Harm and Legal Services: From Fig Leaf to Legal Well-being. Supplementary Report of the Independent Review of Legal Services Regulation. April 2022. 186p.

Wilmot, W., and Hocker, J.? 2011. Interpersonal Conflict (8th edition). New York: McGraw Hill.