安全: Safety

11:52 PM Unknown 3 Comments
2. Write an essay explaining whether you believe that efforts to eliminate sexism, racism, and violence in language are effective, or whether such efforts simply mask these issues.

In casual conversation, many sentences are prefaced with “no offense,” as if that disclaimer will magically lessen the harshness of what’s following. We all know it doesn't – just as carefully worded language meant to conceal sexism, racism, and violence doesn’t do anything to actually end those issues. In an effort to seek safety from offense, people use their words to avoid problems they don’t want to bother facing.
In his essay Words Don’t Mean What They Mean, Steven Pinker observes that people aren’t direct in their speech, questioning “why don’t people just say what they mean?” At points, this sort of language becomes impractical and roundabout: instead of directly asking for the salt, the flavor-lacking individual has to dance around with polite nonessentials; to avoid being labeled sexist for identifying multiple people of the female sex as “women,” people should use the unmanly “womyn” (Kakutani); and rather than using violent, yet undisputedly common language, such as “crash the party,” children are taught to just “show up anyway!” (North York Women Teachers’ Association), a phrase that just doesn’t capture the same essence of the original.
People use euphemisms and innuendoes in their speech in an effort to diminish offensiveness all the time, yet there doesn’t seem to be an apparent increase in positivity in the world. And that’s because these alternatives and roundabouts in language aren’t necessarily better than direct language – they’re just not worse. In his book Words That Work, Frank Luntz claims that use these sorts of words “not because of anything positive but because it doesn’t come wrapped with all the negative connotations.” In decision theory, the idea of “loss aversion” asserts that humans would rather avoid losses than acquire gains. This holds true with language – in dealing with the negative issues of sexism, racism, and violence, people are not so focused on eliminating them and heading towards the positive than hiding them and making them less negative. It may not be the right thing to do, but instinct tells us that it’s the safe thing to do.

3 comments:

Persuasive Prompt #1

7:00 PM Unknown 1 Comments
American essayist and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) wrote, “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” In a well-written essay, examine the extent to which Mencken’s observation applies to contemporary society, supporting your position with appropriate evidence.

The average man: somebody who works 9 to 5 in an office, earning a consistent wage; has a wife, a couple kids, and possibly a dog. His life is predictable and safe because, according to H. L. Mencken, he prefers that to taking a risk to become free. Excluding the very few outliers, most people would choose to lively risk-free and safely, because the potential consequences of pursuing freedom are devastating.
 The notion of “playing it safe” is apparent in education, with many parents and teachers urging students to pursue engineering, medicine, or business – traditional jobs with consistent paychecks. Of course, there are people who advocate for students to study what they love, whether that be art, philosophy, or Latin, and break free of the confines of societal expectations. Yet there’s a reason that the “starving artist” stereotype, describing an art school graduate who has no means to pay back the fortune he paid for school, exists – it’s holds true more often than not. Many artists, whether due to societal pressures or internal insecurities, choose to avoid that potential outcome and pursue an uninspiring, yet safe, education.
The same concept exists in the world of entrepreneurship – the potential earnings are high, but so are the risks. Everybody knows about the successful entrepreneurs – for example, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, creators of Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, respectively, who are earning more than the average man could ever imagine – but for every successful startup, there are many more unsuccessful ones. Most people just don’t dare to venture into the uncertainties of entrepreneurship and startups, so much so that the United States government sometimes offers subsidies as an incentive to prompt more people to take the risk.
This tendency to shy away from risks is not limited to just Americans, however, as it’s a natural human tendency, and thus occurs worldwide. One contemporary example is China, a communist state with censored Internet and limited rights. Many Westerners question why Chinese citizens haven’t already rebelled against the government in pursuit of more freedoms, but they don’t realize that most of these citizens already live in relative comfort. They already feel safe, and so they don’t mind the lack of a few basic rights.
In terms of economic principles, risks shouldn’t be taken unless the benefits outnumber the costs. When making decisions, humans intuitively put that concept into action. When pursuing freedom, the costs and benefits are unclear, so people are unable to make a decision, for fear of suffering the consequences.

1 comments:

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Powered by Blogger.