I recently discovered this podcast about linguistics called Lingthusism and we’ve really got into it, it’s great for driving and hanging out at home! Check it out; the hosts will infect you with their enlingthusiasm, too!
In Episode 15 the closing remarks from Gretchen prompted me to think about how the more we learn about something, the better (hopefully!) we can contextualise it and articulate how something affects us, people we know or groups.
…there’s a certain amount of similarity that linguistics has to another hobby that I’ve taken up – stargazing.
Before I started stargazing, I would go outside at night and look up at the stars and be like ‘wow there’s stars, that’s nice! They’re there! Look, pretty!’
I knew one or two constellations but if I couldn’t find those… oh, there’s stars.
Now that I’ve been stargazing for over a year and I know what most of the constellations are and how they move through the sky at different hours of the day and different times of the year and I have names associated with them – I go outside and when I look at the same sky, and what I see there is different because all of the individual pieces have meaning now and have associations with them and have patterns that I can see.
And obviously the sky hasn’t changed, I’ve changed.
But in many cases, language is kind of like all those stars – you’re surrounded by it all the time, you hear and see it, it’s there, but being able to look at language like a linguist looks at language, is, now you have words and you have frameworks that you can put in – here’s what all these sounds are, they’re not just a bath of sounds, they’re “constellations”.
So you have this way of making sense of all of the stuff you’re seeing and experiencing and putting it into some sort of context.
I think for me that’s one of the things that’s really magical about linguistics. And stargazing!
This really struck a chord with me. As I’ve said before, one of the frustrating things about being young is not having the vocabulary and understanding to effectively describe things that happen and the way they make you feel.
Here are a few constellations that, over the years, have come together and helped me make sense of the world to an extent. Non-exhaustive, of course.
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[Internalised misogyny, Gaslighting, Rape Culture and Bro Culture constellation slides]
We could name stars for concepts…
NotAllMen alpha
You’re crazy centauri
Ball & chain beta
But to be more positive, I also saw a post recently about Green Flags – the opposite of ‘red flags’ (little hints from words and behaviours that warn us of potentially abusive or otherwise dangerous and unpleasant people) i.e. hints that show you’re with a good person! Here’s a constellation for that, too.
Because while we’re sold a lot of red flags disguised as green ones (looking at you, RomComs), we’re also rarely actively taught what real respect, kindness and care looks like. So, let’s share examples of those to help each other out, too.
Perhaps it’s because of a recent conversation with a friend who’s recovering from a horrible relationship experience with a man (and hey that could be… just about any of my friends! Sad indictment of our world); they wondered how it can ever be easy to identify abusive people before you’re so wrapped up in it.
Honestly, I think it’s really difficult. Most of us have had run-ins we might have avoided if we’d known the signs. But sadly, society doesn’t teach us about red flags in a useful way – not to the extent it likes to couch abuse in the language of romance, thus sending extremely confusing and dangerous messages to children – who then become the adults entering into relationships that go badly.
A kind of relationship vaccine
People are quick to blame women especially for not realising how bad a person a man was, or for not ‘making him’ leave or change, when in reality it’s incredibly tough. Especially when combined with emotional manipulation and other forms of control. I think part of the reason it’s hard for us to identify is not having the frameworks in place to identify and describe these phenomena. But we can have them!
This is why women’s networking is vital, too, and why it’s often derided as gossip and bitching and other things that not only minimise its importance to men, but between women as well. The more women are discouraged from speaking to each other, the more abusers can get away with it, and with more people. Friendships are so valuable. And while ultimately our relationship decisions are down to us, a concerned friend who has experience and spots abusive tendencies can really save a life.
If we learn to spot and describe forms (or constellations) of problems in society, we can better understand and tackle them. Similarly, the more we share and discuss these aspects of behaviour and beliefs with people we know, the better equipped we all are to navigate our interpersonal relationships. Not just romantic ones; professional, platonic.
There are loads more that could be made – under the different axes of oppression; racism, anti-LGBTQ, ableism, classism – if you make one, let me know!
Friendships and frameworks I recently discovered this podcast about linguistics called Lingthusism and we've really got into it, it's great for driving and hanging out at home!
