What communicators need to know about identity language
Dictionary.com’s senior director of editorial explains how language is changing — and why it matters so much for corporate leaders and communicators to stay up to date.
You can learn a lot about someone from what they say — but perhaps even more from what they refuse to say.
Language taboos have shifted over the past few years. According to John Kelly, senior director of editorial for Dictionary.com, the most offensive words in our culture today are ethnic slurs.
And that’s something new — go back a few hundred years and the most out-of-bounds language was all about profanity and religious language, such as “taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“And that indicates where the prevailing values in a society are,” explains Kelly. “Over time, the locus of taboo…has shifted.” Even a handful of years ago, language around sexual acts was more out of bounds than slurs around identity.
“This doesn’t mean that everybody agrees,” admits Kelly. “This doesn’t mean that there isn’t conflict about it.” But that conflict is to be expected in times of big change, and he argues that our culture is in the midst of a big transformation.
The language of identity
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