It would seem, on the whole, that the longer one allows words to retain negative power, the less progress society seemingly has made in overcoming its past…or, from another view, is not the continued giving to an opponent the absolute power of knowing precisely which words will reduce one to emotional ruin necessarily providing said rival unnecessary strength and credibility at each outcry of its usage? For imagine an instance in which an American at large might be considered to be so emotionally slain by use of some specific epithet (Yankee, or perhaps more considerately phrased as the “Y” word, for instance) that it assumes an overwhelming and unjustifiable weight: would such a society truly be ameliorated by encouraging each successive generation to yet quail at the very nearness of the word so that an opposing nation might use it with impunity and redundancy to detrimental effect? Or might it not be an improved situation to teach, instead of fear, horror, and outrage of the word, the patent absurdity of reacting in any given fashion to any mere arrangement of letters…? For most certainly a word may retain emotional weight, but how is it best to deprive it of same? Is it to encourage all to view it at its greatest weight…consistently and repeatedly underlining its ability to wound and cause irreparable harm…? Or is it perhaps an improvement to strive at all turns to instead merely trivialize those who might consider it to be yet potent in light of today’s more reasonable era?
To clarify, if a word were to be used against my children that appeared to cause them abject misery due to its ability to recall to them their cultural suffering at the hands of some previous power, it would seem to me to be bad policy to encourage them to feel outrage and to stagger into the field of battle, already so wounded, demanding an apology (thereby greatly exaggerating the hurt being afflicted and thereby delivering themselves directly into the power of the bully at hand)…it would seem instead a more plausible escape from the past to derail the significance of the word itself and to teach my children to laugh at each and every instance of same…stripping it of its power, removing any desire for an opponent to use it for fear that they will merely be laughed at and labeled a fool rather than being labeled a victor over another’s emotional stability…
The means of gaining power over words is to gain control of their impact (and to encourage all allies to do the same)…to do otherwise is merely to underline the veracity of the statements used–rather than the opposite…!