There are ebbs and flows to the use of language in all areas of our lives. During the lockdown part of the pandemic, I am not ashamed to recognize that the “propriety” of how I communicated in my home, with my children, took a dive. There were a lot more curse words and rants coming out of my mouth. I could make excuses about why I did it, but it wouldn’t take away from the observation that I did do it.
Adults will observe the language use of children and marvel at the expansion of language from toddler to grade school years. Later, children’s language skills will become more sophisticated to the point where you might wish they were toddlers again and less likely to have pithy comebacks.
Another observation is noted in what children talk about and how they talk about it. I am obsessed with… This is awesome… Or even phrases that don’t seem to make sense but to a pre-teen like when my daughter told her uncle that she liked his shirt from Target by saying “sick Target drip.” I had to double check what that meant.
One more observation is noted in the use of language to talk about difficult things. The word “bullying,” for example. I am not getting into a conversation about what constitutes bullying in as much as I am asking you to think about how that word is used by children. The idea of “concept creep” written about by Nick Haslam shows how we expand some concepts, particularly about “harm” based words like bullying.
When we expand some of these concepts, there are benefits. On the other hand, when we expand some of these concepts we can catch a number of behaviors or observations that might cause more harm instead of prevent it.
As educators, we must be in tune with our language. How precise the word we use in the situation, how we interpret student’s uses of words, and most importantly, how we handle challenging situations when words become charged and heated.
Be precise when you describe a situation. Ask a student to talk about what happened and try to avoid interpreting, especially through your biases as an adult. Be clear when talking to parents and keep interpretations out of the conversation. Pay attention to how some words might be changing for both students and for yourself.
Language is the means by which we understand the world- vigilance in how we communicate will allow for us to all get along better.
