I am legitimately “crazy” (not going into details but I’m the counterpoint when ppl say oh well depression/GAD isn’t “crazy” it’s just a neurotransmitter imbalance etc etc faux woke awareness). I use this word all the time in everyday life and in therapy sessions to the point where I think I’ve gotten side eye from professionals. I am one person and I’m not saying I’m right, but I am completely fine with it’s use because I am not my mental illness (es) and trauma and it’s not my identity. I use crazy primarily to refer to outlandish and offensive behavior because abuse isn’t excused by mental illness and from my view isn’t even really related clinically or in the way culture talks about both (like, you can externalize and/or internalize… And plenty of “rotten” people don’t have a diagnosis)
This is a bit feisty and off the cuff and I hope I don’t offend anyone. But yes, I don’t take offense at it’s use in really any way.
Edit: this is a good time to share I find the phrase “off their meds” outrageously offensive. It’s used so often by progressives who claim to care about people. I know you’re not mentally ill because that’s not how it works. At. All. And my humanity isn’t tied to a pharmaceutical company.
I laughed out loud at this. It’s like when people tell me I’m not “disabled” just “differently abled”. Uh…lol, whatever helps you feel better about it, bud.
ETA: And thanks for your clarification on “off their meds”. I see how that’s a different animal, so to speak.
Splash some oil in the pot of your instant pot and set to “sauté”
Add onions and garlic (I did two small onions and 6 cloves of garlic, but to your own taste) and cook until fragrant
Add spices! I did an unmeasured amount of: ground mustard, ground ginger, paprika, salt, pepper, cumin. But really whatever you’re ~feeling~
In this weird case, I then added a block of firm tofu, cubed. But normally I don’t.
Add two frozen blocks of spinach, as-is, no need to defrost, on top of the the thing. Turn the instant pot from saute to pressure cooker for 10 minutes.
I let mine naturally release and then, when it’s cool enough to not kill me, I hit it with a stick blender and cackle like a mad scientist.
@Smacky is correct that firm tofu wins @Elle was correct that it still has some egg-like graininess when the tofu is blended in.
I am not personally offended, but I try not to use it. It’s HARD, and I screw up. But I also try not to do any of the examples on your list, too! For the same reason. Because while I am not offended by them in the sense that I am not a hurt party, clearly there are people who are, and it’s not that much work to try to get creative with language in order to not potentially harm someone.
Language is constantly evolving, but I’m not very worried about being “too PC”-- that’s a thing mostly espoused by people who don’t seem to understand what the point is. The point is to not hurt people. Saying “OMG Jill is so crazyintense did you see that bike flip she just did!?” is not a big deal and might be clearer, language wise, anyhow.
My two cents LOL.
eta: I do have a friend who IS bothered by it. She has biploar disorder and when she sees “crazy” being used in language, it’s often paired with manic behavior in a way that feels gross to her.
I’ve mainly heard the avoidance of calling things “crazy” from management/HR at my previous company when people were considering themes for Halloween (different departments would come up with themes - evil circus, pirates, super heroes, etc.) because they didn’t want a mental institution theme to make any employees potentially feel ostracized or like they couldn’t use the company’s EAP resources or the mental health part of the insurance benefits.
But yes, there’s also the “omg I’m like so OCD! I just really like having things clean!” minimalizing of real problems. That’s a different animal than just calling something crazy, but some people don’t appreciate the difference because they’re being careless.
I think a lot of people understand the point! Most people don’t want to hurt other people, IMO. I just don’t necessarily agree that this route is the path to not hurting people in the long term. My lived experience is that avoidance makes trauma far worse, but that’s just me.
I also find it interesting that in many of these instances of language change, the group that is supposedly impacted the most seems to be…indifferent or almost offended by the idea that they require protection from language. Obviously this is just anecdotal and based on people I know, so I was curious what others thought! I still try to avoid offending others regardless of how I feel, fwiw.
I actually don’t find this hateful either, even though it’s insensitive and uncomfortable. There’s no reason to stop associating hospitals with Halloween because the idea that mental health hospitals are. . . .doing well? Is a joke. The increased awareness of talking about mental illnesses is completely masking the abysmal level of care. And in the relatively recent past, these places were unspeakable. So, patients aren’t scary but institutions definitely are.
Def agree it’s not a cute look in the workplace or other high profile situations at all though.
It’s almost like people without the problems think that by speaking into the universe, they’ve fixed the issue and then get mad when people who do have the problem remind them otherwise.
Maybe going off topic but this reminds me a lot of the language changes around homeless people, or people experiencing homelessness (I believe now language is shifting to unhoused). Side side note my one set of great grandparents experienced homelessness for a period during the great depression, so if they hadn’t made it through that I literally wouldn’t be here. I will admit I’m out of touch and probably don’t always say the right things on this issue that thankfully I have no experience with. But I almost feel like progressives in general and some of my friends, some others who really seem misguided to me, is that …we’re all missing the point that, while a human connection is necessary, empathy doesn’t directly provide houses and food and this is a full on crisis our country should be ashamed of, that has only been escalating for a full decade before reaching a covid tipping point.
I don’t think that it has to. I think that policy is deeply important, but talking in a people-first language (aka these are people who are experiencing homelessness) is potentially a first-step in reminding others that they DESERVE policy defending and supporting them.
Me too! That’s one of the areas where I’ve come across this with people I know IRL (who have been homeless and dgaf about slight terminology changes, but rather find them eyeroll-y) and like I mentioned with “differently abled”. An IRL friend of mine and I have been begging this ultra woke cafe to buy a ramp for like, over a year now, we even offered to pay for it (it’s not expensive). They use all the right words, but they’re not sure where a ramp would fit, or who would get it out for customers, or how they would know who needs it, so they’re doing nothing. Ditto with the really inclusive climbing gym I go to not fixing their elevator.
It’s like we’ve equated words with actions wayyyyy too much, like even the idea that words can be violence or that certain words make you unsafe is really interesting. I think it’s pretty much the easiest thing to change without changing anything at all. I guess I also don’t feel convinced that it actually changes perspectives or lends more respect, but I understand the opposite POV that it does.
I usually talk about things bring crazy, I wouldn’t use it to refer to a person typically. But I suppose the word “chaotic” would be a good substitute.
I think intention matters, but it doesn’t 100% absolve you if it offends or hurts someone else.
I think you are correct, Oro, and I didn’t consider it at first but this basically putting full faith in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But I still wonder if there’s a way to override the S-W and fast track the betterment of humanity. Especially since we’re cresting a wave of identity politics (not using that as a dirty word here) humanity’s access to literacy is at an all time high, 24/7 digital media consumption, so the S-W might be severely impacted. Batsignals @diapasoun for how linguistics actually work
This hypothesis is interesting. I’d love clarity on word order versus word meaning if @diapasoun stops by. For example, I can clearly see how “wheelchair bound” promotes a worse image than “wheelchair user”, but that’s because the meaning is entirely different. Someone bound to something has no autonomy and cannot leave it. Someone who uses something has autonomy and is utilizing a tool.
Are humans just as impacted by word order? For example with “disabled person” versus “person with a disability”. To me those sound the same and have the same impact, just like, “beautiful person” or “person with a beautiful face”. I know both of those are people and the other word is just an additional description of them, but maybe our brains see things differently?
FWIW as a linguist – the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is probably correct. Your thinking is not limited by your language in the way that S-W originally proposed, which was a “if your language doesn’t have it you can’t think it” type hypothesis. Rather, you are affected by, and tend to focus on, what your language picks out grammatically. If you speak a language where “bridge” is a grammatically feminine noun, you’re more likely to describe it as “graceful” or “beautiful” or “delicate” than if you speak a language where “bridge” is grammatically masculine, where you’re more likely to describe it as “strong” or “sturdy” or the like. This is a clear case where something linguistic (noun gender of a non-sexed object) plays into a real-world gender bias.
Re: English word order, there are subtle differences in the examples you mentioned, @AllHat, and sometimes much stronger differences. Not as big as if you use completely different words (e.g. wheelchair bound versus wheelchair user), but still there. The basic meaning is usually the same, but there’s typically a sense of the property being somehow “closer” or “more innate” or “more tightly tied” to the noun when it’s being described using a prenominal adjective versus a post-nominal PP – sometimes the prenominal adjective has a much narrower range of meanings, too (think of “a fake friend” versus “a friend who’s fake”).
Generally, I’ll say this about language: Language doesn’t really do redundancy very much. If we have multiple words for something, or have multiple grammatical forms available to us for getting some point across, there are differences in the meaning. It may be intensely, insanely subtle, but if you poke long enough, you’ll find it.
Thank you so much for responding! Do you, by chance, have any book recommendations that delve into the real world bias connection to language? Like, if you see a bridge as female and therefore graceful…how does that impact the way you actually behave IRL. I’d really like to understand that better, or any interesting linguistics books really.
ETA: Thanks to everyone else too! This was informative.
I’d probably start with something on cognitive metaphor – Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is probably a good one, it was an early and pivotal book about the importance of metaphor to language.
If you read that and wanna go deeper, let me know. This was Wizard’s area of study for his PhD and so he can go wild with recs.
I should note, it’s definitely a linguistics book talking about language, so it may not satisfy all your desires for the broader sociological/anthropological stuff. If you want more of that than is in the book, I’ll hit up Wizard – there’s a lot of metaphor work on political speech, unsurprisingly.
I still try to avoid offending others regardless of how I feel, fwiw.