Occupy Language, Take Over Demeaning Words

This is one of those ideas that I wish I would have thought of myself. It’s also an idea who’s time was inevitably coming. A New York Times opinion column, written by H. Samy Alim, a professor at Stanford University, takes the use of the word “occupy” and turns it on its own axis.

What if we occupied language? it asks. What if we took over the meaning of certain words, to change what they had become out of common usage? Alim cites the word “illegal”; I’d add “anchor baby,” and others.

The question is to the occupy movement what feedback is to microphones and speakers, they’re not meant to come so close. But wouldn’t that be the main reason to do it? Alim talks about how the Occupy Movement has not only changed the meaning of the word, but also changed the framing of the debate:

It has already succeeded in shifting the terms of the debate, taking phrases like “debt-ceiling” and “budget crisis” out of the limelight and putting terms like “inequality” and “greed” squarely in the center. This discursive shift has made it more difficult for Washington to continue to promote the spurious reasons for the financial meltdown and the unequal outcomes it has exposed and further produced.

Where “occupy” used to have a military meaning, it now has a social and political meaning. What if we were to occupy language and take over the meaning of words we find offensive:

Occupy Language might also support the campaign to stop the media from using the word “illegal” to refer to “undocumented” immigrants. From the campaign’s perspective, only inanimate objects and actions are labeled illegal in English; therefore the use of “illegals” to refer to human beings is dehumanizing. The New York Times style book currently asks writers to avoid terms like “illegal alien” and “undocumented,” but says nothing about “illegals.” Yet The Times’ standards editor, Philip B. Corbett, did recently weigh in on this, saying that the term “illegals” has an “unnecessarily pejorative tone” and that “it’s wise to steer clear.”

This is not a new idea. NewsTaco has tackled the issue in the past. What’s new and interesting, to me at least, is the correlation between terms Latinos find offensive, and the world-wide justice movement. Or as Juan Padilla, of the People of Color Working Group , was quoted in the NYT piece:

To occupy means to hold space, and I think a group of anti-capitalists holding space on Wall Street is powerful, but I do wish the NYC movement would change its name to “‘decolonise Wall Street”’ to take into account history, indigenous critiques, people of colour and imperialism… Occupying space is not inherently bad, it’s all about who and how and why. When  white colonizers occupy land, they don’t just sleep there over night, they steal and destroy. When indigenous people occupied Alcatraz Island it was (an act of) protest.

Alim suggests “occupy language” as a transformative movement – to claim a linguistic space, to define what we say:

By occupying language, we can expose how educational, political, and social institutions use language to further marginalize oppressed groups; resist colonizing language practices that elevate certain languages over others; resist attempts to define people with terms rooted in negative stereotypes; and begin to reshape the public discourse about our communities, and about the central role of language in racism and discrimination.