Redefining the Language

In major cultural transitions, words often change their meanings as new norms evolve and old cultural constraints loosen.  . . . [T]hose involved in the politics of deviance often foster subtle changes in the language as part of a larger campaign to alter perceptions.  An effective media campaign — one, for instance, that pushes for standards of behavior based on individual desires rather than moral categories — begins the redefinition with a linguistic assault.  The man who preys on boys becomes someone seeking only “intergenerational intimacy,” and the promiscuous teenager is redefined as simply “sexually adventurous.” In an age of imagery and sound bites, the reality of a given behavior can be less important than the emotions with which the behavior is packaged.

From the rights-based, pro-choice rhetoric of those promoting assisted suicide, to the medical jargon of those promoting the disease model of addiction, advocates for redefinitions of deviance know that the side that wins the linguistic high ground generally wins the debate.  In the not-so-distant past, words like “crazy” and “deeply disturbed” were connected with suicide.  Today, they have been replaced with words like “dignity” and “autonomy,” while those who oppose assisted suicide legislation are themselves stigmatized as “zealots” who want to strip the vulnerable of their last rights in the pursuit of cold moral abstractions.

The process of redefining deviance is a subtle one, and the changes in language we have discussed are so incremental and innocuous that the new meanings appear almost invisibly.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.153-154