Language Matters and Freedom of Speech

DIY Writing and Communicating

(The first in an on-going series entitled Language Matters)

Language Matters and Freedom of Speech

DIY Writing and Communicating

Brené Brown’s 2022 HBO Max series on her most recent book, Atlas of the Heart, triggered a sea change conversion in me, bringing together years of my thinking with current research.

The largest trigger—and I mean this in the most positive sense of the term—was that we now know words create emotional reality. For example, the words we use to describe our emotion can define the emotions we and our recipients feel by us using them—and, I would add, others can be much more harmed than we intend.

A foundation to Brown’s approach is that humans are emotional creatures who sometimes think, as opposed to the opposite.

I felt vindicated when I learned the way words can hurt. I had begun to think of misinformation as lives lost by certain freedoms of speech and that speech is not truly free if it costs anything.

The current research Brown presents dislodges the delusion imposed upon us arguably from the age of reason as much as anything. Furthermore, to try to understand human emotion in the language of reason often misses the point.

Following the logic that words create reality, we can see that abusive language abuses.

Abusive language is most certainly not free.

I believe many people who are fighting for freedom of speech only want liberty to spew harm and pain without social sanction. They want the freedom not to have to pay attention to the consequences of their word choices.

It’s time for us to pay attention to the full range of consequences resulting from our language, because it matters.