An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language by Ali Almossawi

Author:Ali Almossawi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Experiment
Published: 2021-10-14T22:11:33+00:00

SEEING YOUNG RABBITS EXCITED ABOUT OUR SPACE LAUNCH WARMED MY HEART. THAT'S ONE LESS RABBIT ON A CORNER SOMEWHERE, WAITING FOR NIGHTFALL TO GO RAID A CARROT PATCH.

We find this kind of reasoning elsewhere, too: How we talk about a vaccine produced by a country can depend on which country it is, and if we like it or not. When someone alleged to be a spy is caught on foreign soil, whether that person is presumed guilty often depends on where they’re from and where they’ve been arrested.

In a 2018 interview with a professor, we hear:

The fact remains that every rabbit walking around Mount Royal Park wearing a baseball hat is making a political statement. Not every cultural identifier is meant as an affront or statement to the world at large, professor.

Elsewhere, on the internet, beneath a polemic berating an author for being disingenuous, a commentor asserts confidently: This man is funded by the Hokey Pokey brothers.

“Is he actually funded by them in any way?” responds another, drawing the reply:

He certainly feels like exactly the kind of ghoul they would throw money at.

More perniciously, we can go so far as to define who is good and who is evil by identity alone. In the writings of a foreign minister, we find:

The prime minister and I underscored the importance of countering the Rabbit Kingdom’s malign influence and threats to the region. I thanked him for his partnership. But minister, one feels compelled to point out, you yourself spend much of your time in that same region in hopes of spreading your influence. Not that it has any bearing on whether the Rabbit Kingdom’s influence is good or evil, but the clear presupposition is that our actions are categorically good, and the same actions, by somebody we don’t like, aren’t.

Modern, civilized. Writing can adopt the perspective that other people can’t be modern, often a euphemism for civilized, unless they dress like us, eat like us, speak like us, think like us, and so on. Thus, we make ourselves the yardstick for who is civilized, then dismiss other cultures as backward and inferior—or perhaps as third world countries, as we saw a moment ago.

That is, unless they have something we really like, in which case we “civilize” it by claiming it as our own:

Coffee . . . the favorite beverage of the civilized world.

Rodgers and Hammerstein grapple with the self-centeredness of this approach, even while arguably succumbing to it at times, in their musical The King and I. As the King of Siam’s wives are preparing to meet, and hopefully impress, visiting Western dignitaries, they wonder aloud why they must adopt the clear mistakes of their would-be civilizers: cumbersome hoop skirts and leather shoes that pinch. They can only conclude (as the song title puts it): “Western People Funny.”

Interestingly this particular song is often cut from productions.

Defining normal. In a recent work of fiction, we find the following two lines:

How cruel that they punished you for something you cannot change.

We love you no matter what.

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