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" I believe
there is a common framework to all these forms of
deprecating speech, and my goal is to devise a heuristic
model of the process that may be driving all these forms of
prejudice."
In her research, Leets finds that targets of deprecating
speech react to the trauma in a pattern similar to the response
of victims of crimes.
Like crime victims, their first reaction is strongly emotional,
followed by feeling the need to change their attitudes in order
to understand the incident. Some crime victims and
harmful-speech victims report a third phase, in which they
change their own behavior as result of the incident.
And don't miss:
"'loud and angry voices' of extremists
were eroding our relationships," Leets said. - so true on SI, as anyone can see.
Sticks, stones may break bones,
but name-calling can leave more
lasting impact
BY KATHLEEN O'TOOLE
In her pre-school life, Laura Leets made up her own words
with help from her identical twin sister. "We would flip
through magazines giving things names," says Leets, an
assistant professor of communication. Today, Leets studies
name-calling, an interest that evolved from her early
exploration of language.
Because she and her sister had their own words, Leets
recalls, she didn't feel compelled to talk to others. Her sister,
now a Southern California lawyer, translated for her. This
worried her parents, who were advised to expand the twins'
private world by sending them to preschool. Today, Leets
shows no hesitation to speak about her studies of
deprecating communication, or "how people construct
language to strip others of their dignity."
Epithets directed to Jews, homosexuals and ethnic groups,
subtle put-downs delivered with a smile, even
anti-government rhetoric delivered on talk radio and the
Internet catch her attention. "I look at how harmful speech
impacts people and how they cope with it," she says. She
also investigates how "subtly shifting language can produce
very different versions of reality," perhaps even affecting the
political climate of a whole nation. "This has significance for
how social stereotypes persist and may enable us to detect
prejudicial beliefs."
Leets' research agenda is aimed at "integrating what is right
now a very segmented field. That is, categories of prejudice
such as racism, anti-Semitism, ageism, ableism and
homophobia are viewed as separate problems. I believe
there is a common framework to all these forms of
deprecating speech, and my goal is to devise a heuristic
model of the process that may be driving all these forms of
prejudice."
Leets comes from a "multi-ethnic" background that she
doesn't like to explain because "in my classes my students are
always so curious, and I say, it doesn't guide or inform my
work. Let's focus on the issues."
"What caught my eye early was why we treat each other
differently based on skin color, when it could be eye color,
hair color or anything," says the native of Los Angeles.
After receiving one of the first doctoral degrees offered in
communication by the University of California-Santa
Barbara, Leets came in September 1995 to Stanford's
Communication Department, where she is the only faculty
member specializing in the study of inter-group
communication. She is also an affiliated scholar with the
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
"Most of the people in this [communication] department
study mass media, but you have people like myself around
the country who study language, ethnicity, identity and
interpersonal relationships from a social science perspective,"
she says.
In her research, Leets finds that targets of deprecating
speech react to the trauma in a pattern similar to the response
of victims of crimes.
Like crime victims, their first reaction is strongly emotional,
followed by feeling the need to change their attitudes in order
to understand the incident. Some crime victims and
harmful-speech victims report a third phase, in which they
change their own behavior as result of the incident.
The victims of disparaging remarks usually attribute the
speaker's motives to a "prejudicial disposition or repressed
hostility," she said, reporting on a recent study involving more
than 200 students at another college campus. They saw the
event as an "enduring reflection of the speaker's disposition,"
she said, rather than as related to a particular situation,
although the motives attributed to the speaker did vary
somewhat with the context in which the speech occurred.
Many said they would react by responding assertively to the
speaker while a like number said they would respond with
silence. A large majority 84 percent viewed silence as
taking the higher moral ground.
Many more said they would discuss the incident with people
other than the speaker. "Often processing a hurtful event
involves talking with others in order to express emotions, to
seek information and to be recognized as victims," Leets
said. "In this study, the majority of the participants were likely
to solicit support, usually from family and friends."
Homosexuals were far more likely to say they would seek
support than Jews, however, a difference that might be
related to historical or socialization differences, Leets said. "It
is not uncommon for Jewish youth to be prepared from an
early age to expect hostility," she said, given the long history
of prejudice against Jews. "In contrast, homosexuals do not
have the same pre-established family and community support
network. In fact. their experience frequently entails social
isolation."
Reactions to disparaging remarks vary also depending upon
whether they were explicit epithets or more subtle and
indirect. Less direct examples of disparaging speech are
subject to multiple interpretations and a particular meaning
that a listener gives the words may not match the speaker's
intent, she said.
An example of an indirect remark that she used in her studies
involves a Caucasian student saying to an African American
or Hispanic classmate after they leave a class discussion on
affirmative action: "You must be a good role model for
Blacks/Hispanics. Your intelligence stands out." A more
direct version would be: "You must have some white blood in
you because blacks/spics can't make it at a white university.
They just don't have what it takes."
A majority of the Asian American students in her studies
were more offended by indirect messages than by direct
ones, while a majority of African American, Jewish American
and gay American students judged the direct expressions of
bigotry toward their groups as more upsetting. Caucasian
students, who were not the target of the speech examples,
also found the direct expressions of bigotry more disturbing.
Other researchers (including Stanford psychology Professor
Hazel Markus) have shown that cultural expectations vary
over how direct speech should be. In some Asian cultures,
speaking styles are generally less explicit than in American
mainstream culture, and so it is possible that people from
Asian backgrounds are more attuned to the context
surrounding less explicit speech, she said.
'Loud and angry voices' in media
Leets' interest in words as weapons has led her also to
investigate reactions to anti-government rhetoric on radio talk
shows and the Internet with Peggy Bowers of St. Louis
University. "I think President Clinton was onto something
when he said, after the Oklahoma City federal building was
bombed, that these 'loud and angry voices' of extremists
were eroding our relationships," Leets said.
Clinton, like others after the assassination of Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, actually implied that such hate
speech might prompt people to violence, but Leets notes that
mass media research does not tend to support the idea of
"powerful, direct effects" of media. "We say that the media
affects some of the people some of the time in some
contexts. The media is crucial in setting the agenda in telling
us what to focus on but people don't accept what the media
says lock, stock and barrel. The research shows they are
more discriminating than that."
She and Bowers decided to look for possible widespread
but subtle effects of anti-government media rhetoric.
Perhaps, they thought, as Canadian philosopher Charles
Taylor has suggested, a steady stream of such speech might
break down trust between people, or their sense of goodwill.
"I took actual messages from militia groups on talk radio or
the Internet as well as some negative comments about our
government by Patrick Buchanan during his presidential
campaign, some neutral messages, and some more positive
statements by Colin Powell and President Reagan," Leets
said. "I had a professional broadcaster read the messages so
I could look at the messages themselves and not at their
[original speakers'] emotional tones. Then I asked people,
how harmful do you think this is for yourself and for society
at large?"
The reactions, she said, were of moderate magnitude for
both positive and negative messages. The positive messages
about government tended to increase listeners' feelings of
solidarity and security, she said, while the negative messages
both reduced their feelings of solidarity and security and
increased feelings of fear and hostility. Reactions to
Buchanan's rhetoric were as strongly negative as to those of
militia members, whose rhetoric is generally considered more
extreme, partly because it often advocates or condones
violence.
While she couldn't measure how the speech changed the
collective mood or climate per se, Leets said her results
suggest that "constant, unremitting anti-government speech
plants the seeds of doubt in people about how much they can
trust their government and each other, and fear breeds a kind
of self-protection that privileges self and self-interest."
Buchanan's rhetoric, like that of the militia, questioned the
government's trustworthiness and pitted one group of citizens
against another, so that, in terms of spreading divisiveness
and acrimony, his views may have been seen as "no different
than [views of] those who would back their views with
arms."
Some western democracies have attempted to restrict hate
speech by making forms of it a violation of civil laws. Leets
doubts such laws are a useful alternative for the United
States. "In this country, given our history, we are probably
always going to err on the side of free speech," she said. That
her American subjects viewed extremist messages as only
moderately harmful and upsetting to society may even stem
from the fact that Americans expect extremist speech as a
necessary part of democracy.
"Deprecating speech is the most commonly reported hate
crime and can contribute to ethnic unrest, discrimination and
acts of violence," she notes, but laws may not be the most
effective way of dealing with it. "Over time I am trying to
identify strategies that could effectively reduce the negative
personal effects of deprecating speech. At this point, even
providing a conceptual overview is helpful as people try to
understand its impact on inter-group relations." SR |
