It’s obvious that the language we use affects the force of our arguments. And there are many examples of how an uncomfortable truth can be disguised by changing the language used to describe it.
There is a beautiful and unsettling example of this in one of the Times leaders this morning. The topic is the decision to award the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Professor Robert Edwards for his pioneering work in IVF. (The photo is of Alfred Nobel not Edwards!)
Professor Edwards’s work has its critics. The Roman Catholic Church opposes some IVF, on the ground that it can involve the destruction of embryos. And it is beyond argument that this is what happens: fertility clinics generally fertilise many eggs, and often implant two, to maximise the chance that one will survive. The remaining tiny embryos are then frozen or discarded.
But there is nothing anti-life in IVF: the embryos are created to produce babies and allow the chance of parenthood to couples who want a child of their own. Nature itself creates and fertilises many more eggs than become babies.
The embryonic cell can also be taken apart, at an early stage, to yield stem cells. Research using stem cells offers the promise of finding a cure for debilitating conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.
Do you notice how the language of ‘embryo’ in the first and second paragraphs is changed, without any fuss, to ‘embryonic cell’ in the third paragraph? As if the leader writers are happy to talk about embryos being ‘frozen and discarded’, but uncomfortable with the idea that ‘the embryo can also be taken apart, at an early stage, to yield stem cells’. So the sentence that would have seemed most natural is changed to ‘the embryonic cell can be taken apart…’
I don’t know if this is the art of persuasion, or a subconscious unease with the moral position being taken and the starkness of the language required to describe it (‘taking apart embryos’). Either way, it shows how important it is to monitor the language being used to make ethical arguments, and to question why someone chooses to adapt their language in unexpected ways.
I love the language of science. I also revel in the language of human love and human struggle. For me, to be fully usable, they need to be interchangeable. For this reason, ‘embryo, with its scientific tone is just a handy replacement of the more evocative word ‘ baby’. But handy for what purpose?
Yes, I know that when I make statements such I am immediately open to comments of sentimentality. Funny how the raw nerve brings out a defense. In defense of what? Where is the rub in all this stuff?
Could it be that in the center of all this is the fact that we are dealing with mystery, with such power that is so open to us, so free so vital, that we want to own.
So subtly do we flick the mysterious ways of nature and compare discarding embryos to nature capacity for evolution… [Nature itself creates and fertilises many more eggs than become babies].
The tide of opinion surges like a wild river away from touch and the gaze of our own children.
When it’s a “wanted child” it’s a baby.
When it’s an “unwanted child” it’s a foetus, or embryo.
It seems to me that people appropriate scientific terminology to depersonalise the unborn human being and thereby strip away his/her right to life. Father Stephen’s example is a step further, where the embryo him/herself is further depersonalised by reference to “the embryonic cell”.
Further examples are “assisted dying” (i.e. assisted suicide or euthanasia) and “pro-choice” (i.e. pro the right to carry out an abortion).
Away from the life issues, one could highlight the use of the term “progressive” in some political quarters to describe a policy that they believe to be good, with the implication that anyone advocating a different view must be “regressive”!
[…] Bridges and Tangents makes an interesting comment on the leader article in today’s Times: The power of language in ethical argument. […]
This has certainly made me think about the way I use words and to analyse what I read and hear more closely.