The Power of Words
A few days late on this one (as are most of my posts surrounding current events), but this was too vital not to post. Judge Jeffre Cheuvront declared a mistrial in a sexual assault case after he deemed media attention and protests surrounding the proceedings had tainted the potential jury pool. The trial received much attention after the judge banned the use of certain words during the court proceedings, words he deemed loaded, that is, simply, not neutral. The words Judge Cheuvront banned? ”Rape”, “sexual assault”, “victim”, “assailant, and “sexual assault kit”.
These words were potentially profoundly connotative, decided Judge Cheuvront, and, citing fairness, didn’t want such presuppositional vocabulary to color jurors’ objectivity—the judge didn’t want the prosecution to have an unfair advantage. And further, jurors weren’t to be informed of the proscription.
Hmmm. Justice?
Luther Campbell, of 2 Live Crew, famous for his obscenity controversy in the late 1980s and early 1990s (when I was in high school), said “Words are just words”. Alternately, Samuel Beckett, playwright of the 20th absurdist Humanities staple Waiting for Godot, said “All we have are words”.
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Read the Fallacy Files entry on loaded words for more.