Last night, page 24 of the Williams-Sonoma catalog greeted me with this statement: "solid teak for outdoor living." I did a double-take. When I think ‘outdoor living,' I think ‘homeless,' not ‘solid teak.'
Williams-Sonoma, masters of marketing expensive stuff we probably don't need, really made me think about the power of language.
We interpret the meaning of words based on what we know, and based on our backgrounds and perceptions. I think a lot more about social justice and social change than I think about patio furniture, so ‘outdoor living' means something different to me than to a patio furniture aficionado. Obviously, I also think a lot about suicide, which means I think a lot about death, and the means by which people take their own lives. So, I see suicide and death differently than someone who doesn't spend their days thinking, writing, and talking about these subjects.
Earlier this week, a colleague received a call to let him know that a student had died by suicide on a college campus. The caller wanted advice about how to support members of the campus community in the aftermath of this death, and how to continue to promote suicide prevention at a time of crisis and tragedy. At the end of the call, my colleague said to the caller: "Hang in there." Immediately, my colleague back-pedaled, thinking, "Wow, what an inappropriate thing to say to someone calling to talk about suicide."
But, was it? When most people say, "Hang in there," they're not thinking about suicide. One of the most thoughtful things that a friend did for me during a stressful time was give me a card with a little kitten hanging from a tree with "Hang in there!" written on the front. Cheesy, yes, but also supportive.
Suicide does change how we think about the words and phrases we use every day. I say "died by suicide," not "suicided" or "committed suicide," because the latter phrases feel accusatory to me. My colleagues are careful to avoid saying to each other, when faced with a tight deadline for an assignment, "Don't kill yourself over it."
These words have a different meaning when you can think of someone who did "kill himself over it."
At the same time, there are ongoing conversations about how disconnected some of the suicide prevention lingo is from the people we'd like to be connecting to suicide prevention information. The jargon of the suicide prevention field - phrases like ‘died by suicide' or words like ‘postvention' - can be confusing, or worse, can mean nothing to people who aren't already schooled in suicide prevention. Since those people are the ones that we most want to make sure know about how to prevent suicide, it makes sense that we spend some time thinking about the words we use and how they are interpreted.
Should we trip over ourselves to make sure we're not being offensive, particularly to people who have been personally affected by suicide? Or should we try to speak a more common language that resonates with people in general?
What do you think?
Copyright 2010 Elana Premack Sandler, All Rights Reserved
