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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (59291)	9/20/2002 7:18:27 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Words are used to commit action. That, IMO, is a very strained reading. In one sense, actions are used to commit words -- these words only appear here because of the action of my fingers on the keyboad. But I don't see how the words commit actions. Criticizing a person purely in words on this board (no facial expressions, no tone of voice, no hand raised in anger) isn't an act the way I use the term. I may be doing those things in the privacy of my home or office, but if you can't see or share them, they're not acts to you. I think we're forgetting a key point -- the way any of us chooses to receive and deal with the words we read here is ENTIRELY up to us. If somebody calls me a traitor and I know I'm not one, what difference does it make if they call me that? If that's their opinion, that's their opinion, and they're entitled to it. It doesn't make it one whit more or less the fact that I am or am not a traitor. People here tend to react to things that are said iin ways they choose to react, and then blame the author for their reaction. Nonsense. Only I am responsible for how I react to anything said here. If I get mad, or happy, or upset, or whatever, that is entirely within my control. Even the choice to read the words in the first place is within my control. I think some of the people who choose to participate here (and it's a choice an increasing number of people are making recently) have to do a better job of accepting their responsibility for their responses to what is said here.

To: one_less who wrote (59291)	9/20/2002 7:22:59 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 82486

interesting article.. reason.com The trick of transforming speech into "verbal acts" of "psychological violence" is the subject of Franklyn S. Haiman's book. "Speech Acts" and the First Amendment is a sharply focused rebuke of the idea that certain kinds of speech are not really speech and therefore fall outside the scope of the First Amendment. Haiman, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University and a vice president of the ACLU, recognizes that this sort of reasoning threatens the distinction between word and deed that underlies the liberal tolerance for diversity of opinion. "Speech is not the same as action," he writes, "and if it were, we would have to scrap the First Amendment." He carefully dissects the major rationales for treating offensive speech like a crime or tort. Haiman writes: "What has converted speech into a speech act for those who choose to define it that way--be it fighting words, obscenity, racist slurs, orders, or threats--are the ideas or meanings that have been communicated to persons who understand them. One can call it an act if one wishes to--as Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass observed, you can name anything whatever you want to--but it is essentially a symbolic, not a physical, transaction. And though it is true that symbols can, and commonly do, arouse physiological as well as mental responses in their audience, the mental response comes first and mediates what follows. Without a response of the mind, nothing follows, for nothing has been comprehended." Haiman therefore rejects the idea of "situation-altering utterances" (such as orders or promises), noting that something beyond mere words--at the very least, the listener's interpretation--is always required for the utterance to have an effect. Similarly, he observes that the impact of fighting words and incitement hinges on the reactions of the people to whom they are addressed. The target of a racial epithet has to understand the message and decide how to respond--whether with silence, a rejoinder, or a fist. The same is true of a rabble-rouser's audience. When a conscious mind intervenes between speech and action, nothing is inevitable.