Offensive words, whatever the apology, reveal the world view of the person using them, writes MARIE MURRAY.
THE TAOISEACH'S words to the Tánaiste when departing from the Dáil on Wednesday night after an already somewhat unseemly display of discourtesy, raises the issue of the significance of offensive language.
This is not the first time opinion in the political arena has offended. Many will recall such choice selections as "thundering idiots" and "that's women for you", to quote some verbal leakages from the past. But there was something in the way that words were used in Wednesday's Dáil exchange and its aftermath that seems to have awoken us to just how pervasive verbal bullying has become.
When those with high office use base language, it identifies the extent to which aggressive parlance has not just entered into ordinary everyday life but has invaded all our institutions. This demands that the issue of words, the language we use and the meaning it conveys be revisited by us. It asks that words be understood for what they are: powerful communicative means by which the view of an individual and the tone and tenor of a society is conveyed. It reminds us that everyone has a right to protection from verbal abuse.
That right has been seriously challenged across many institutional sites and situations in the past and in more recent times. The accumulation of offensive missives recently launched into the public arena demands that we examine the language we use and the attitudes behind what we say. And the problem is not just about crude, rude or coarse language: it is about public discourse and how a society comes to hold the views it has.
For example, we have had rapists described in oxymoronic terms as being "of good character" or as being from "respectable families". In such words resonate all the humiliations of all the women who have been raped and who know there is secondary abuse to be had in uncertain justice here for victims of sexual crime.
Because injustice is not just conveyed by words, it is shaped by words. That is the point. It is not just what we do that determines what we say, it is what we say that determines what we do and our attitudes towards others.
The philosophical and political ideology of social constructionism is founded on the principle that societies are formed by the words they use, by the discourses that are allowed to dominate or those discourses that society subjugates.
It is what we say that says who we are.
A word is more than a word. It is an attitude. It conveys the view of the articulator. It provides an opinion. It summarises. It is chosen from a repertoire of alternatives. It reveals as much as it conceals.
If it is an expletive, it derives from the dictionary of that person's stored and selective invectives. Even when ill-advised, it cannot be denied as being part of the vocabulary of communication of the individual who chooses to use it at a certain time.
Of course we have long recognised the significance of pejorative words. We have made it illegal to use words that discriminate against identified persons, classes, minority groups, genders and creeds. Racial words once accepted as descriptive are now seen for the humiliating, subjugating offences they were: a means to bully, deny, denigrate, oppress and suppress people.
Altering the vocabulary with which those who were intellectually disabled, psychologically distressed, physically challenged or socially disadvantaged were once described was more than adjectival disallowance: it was the beginning of a philosophy of care, consideration and respect for individuals with life challenges.
Introducing obligations under which organisations ensure that their employees, men and women, are not subjected to harassment, sexual innuendo, offensive images or conversation was recognition of the potential offensiveness of words in workplace contexts.
Yet despite so much legislative progress, out in the public arena life at its most crude is discussed on many airwaves or presented explicitly in tabloid form.
Public displays of anger are a norm. Under the surface of political correctness, many deeply held beliefs and societal discourses have not altered - we need genuine respect for women's lives, protection of children, value placed on men, and insistence on proper professional attitudes and behaviour in every institution.
A word or a sentence is a giveaway that this is so. Many people are tired of being bullied by words and distressed that objections to indecency are defined as humourless and self-righteous.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist, co-author of theABC of Bullying (Mercier Press), and director of student services at UCD