Locus of Control and the Power of Words

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Humans have always used words maliciously. Even the classic bar fight is usually preceded by verbal sparring and insults. Before the printing press, malicious words had to be aimed at individuals from close range, which sometimes invited a physical response. In the internet age, we can insult and disparage from pretty much anywhere on the planet. Being more than an arm’s length away has emboldened many of us to be more aggressive and even provocative in our responses to people and groups that we have issues with.

You’d think our tolerance for malicious speech would be higher as a result of all the noise – our skin thicker. But the opposite seems to be happening. We are finding more and more words that have the potential to be offensive to someone, somewhere, somehow. Here are some recent examples:

• The University of Southern California School of Social Work recently eliminated the word field from its curricula. Their explanation is phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.
• Stanford University published a 13 page guide that lists 150 words or phrases separated into 10 categories of harmful language. Included in the list were words and phrases like brave, American, seminal, and take a shot at.

It is fascinating that in a time when it is easier to insult or disparage an individual or group before a mass audience than it ever has been in history, we are simultaneously more sensitive to the power of words than we’ve ever been. I have a theory as to how that can be.

Behavioral Scientists use a phrase called locus of control. Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they have control over outcomes in their lives or are victims of external forces that are beyond their control.  Individuals with a high internal locus of control (Internals) believe they control their own destiny – I scored poorly on the exam because I didn’t study hard enough. Individuals with a high external locus of control (Externals) believe that outside forces are in control – I scored poorly on the exam because my teacher doesn’t like me.

Typically, successful people have a high internal locus of control. A 1972 study showed that Internals were more likely to vote Republican and Externals more likely to vote Democrat. I suspect this is still true. The rhetoric from Democratic politicians often focuses on the need for government solutions to social problems while Republican rhetoric often focuses on freedom from government overreach and eliminating barriers to self-determination.

So it’s no surprise that universities and left-leaning individuals and organizations are more sensitive to language and its perceived power. Individuals who blame nearly everything on systemic problems are most likely Externals. Externals link the words to those external forces.

Internals likely have a hard time understanding how the word field could be offensive. It is such a broad term. It can refer to a small meadow, a vegetable garden or a vacant lot. Pretty much any plot of land is a field. It is also used to describe a profession or branch of knowledge. It seems a pretty narrow context would be necessary for someone to link field with slavery. That context certainly isn’t there when one says, I work in the accounting field, or I’ll meet you at the softball field. Many people who own or work on farms rightly see their work in fields as a noble pursuit. The issue with slavery is not that many slaves were forced to work in fields, the issue is that they were forced to do so against their will by people who treated them as property and not as humans.

This is the problem with playing gotcha with language. If field is triggering, how about cotton, basket, bale, boll weevil, etc. Using the Six Degrees of Separation theory, we could probably take any random word and figure out how it can be linked to colonialism, slavery or racism in six steps or fewer. It is literally impossible to purge all the words and phrases that can potentially be offensive.

A friend of mine worked in an urban school district with a majority black student body. One day a white middle school kid showed up at school wearing a white tee shirt. He’d written, It’s a White Thing and You Picked It with a sharpie across his chest and glued cotton balls all over the front. My friend, who happens to be African American, snatched the kid out of the hallway before anyone could see him and got him a replacement shirt. He laughed and told me he may have saved that kid’s life. The kid was obviously being intentionally provocative. To what end, we’ll never know. But it is perfectly logical for someone to be offended when they sense that another party is being intentionally provocative.

But let’s say a teacher in that same school bought a couple of bags of cotton balls so that students could use them to make puffy clouds in an art project. Is that potentially triggering? In today’s world, I’m sure there is someone who would make an issue of it – passing cotton balls out to black school children – how dare you? Never mind the context.

A school in New York recently had an incident where they served fried chicken and waffles along with watermelon on the first day of Black History Month. The vendor apologized profusely, of course. A similar thing happened at a university I am associated with many years earlier. I happen to know some of the actors in that episode. The Dining Director was white, but the menu planning was handled by the school’s Executive Chef, who happened to African American. The chef planned a menu of fried chicken, collard greens and watermelon to celebrate MLK day. He thought he was doing a good thing as those are all foods that he liked and he thought it was an appropriate tribute. When the activist black students vehemently complained about the clearly racist menu, the matter got escalated to university administration. The chef was prepared to issue a statement that he was black, he loves fried chicken and watermelon, it reminds him of his childhood, he loves Dr. King and felt it was an appropriate tribute. Administration decided that telling the truth would appear as though they were scapegoating the chef, so instead they put out a lame statement about how those items are often on the menu and it was all a misunderstanding.

Perhaps it’s because I’m an Internal that I have difficulty understand why people find words that are used appropriately and not provocatively as triggering or offensive. There are really only two possible explanations. First, they have such a strong external locus of control that they see the devil behind every bush and tree. These gotcha words are just evidence to them that the speaker is aligned with the systemic forces that are out to harm them – a witch that sold her soul to the devil. There’s always a word or situation that proves that the problem that defines their existence and controls their destiny is still out there. Or, second, they simply derive pleasure from putting people on the defensive.

That being said, if I were a residential developer, I probably wouldn’t name my next neighborhood Elliott Plantation. But I’m still on the fence as it pertains to master bedroom. Like field, master has a lot of definitions and is rarely used to describe a human relationship any more. Phrases like mastering a skill or master of ceremonies are neutral on their face and should be non-triggering to rational people. But I’m fine with master bedroom or master suite aging out and being replaced in the same way fireman became firefighter.

Language evolves and should. And social change is often a driver of language change. But we must remember that we can’t solve social problems simply by deciding certain words that were neutral are now anathema. People with a strong external locus of control are always going to find another word that offends them, particularly if it is uttered by someone who represents a group they don’t like. The best long-term solution would be for parents to instill a strong internal locus of control in their children and for schools to teach from an internal locus of control perspective rather than the external, as it seems to be now. In the short-term, Internals should simply ignore Externals when they become illogical. I’ll stop using the word plantation, I’ll eventually stop using master bedroom, but I’m not going to stop using field. If that offends you then that says more about you than me.