What is “violent” language? Within American liberal urban circles there’s the notion that language can be “violent” and I want to dig into what that actually means.
Can words draw blood and break bone? No. Full stop. Let’s be very clear here, because it matters. Spoken language is air molecules vibrating.
So what “violence” is inflicted? What is the mechanism of hurtful language? If a parent says something hurtful, it hurts not because it’s drawing blood, so where is the hurt coming from?
The hurt originates in a contrast between my held story and a contrary story being imposed onto me by a perceived authority figure. I may hold the story that I’m a loving and caring son. When a parent tells me I’m too much, I’m the cause of their suffering, I’m not enough, there is an embodied shock of my internal reality being one thing and external reality saying something very different.
There is the delta between the two stories, and then there’s the authority of its messenger. The authority of a parent pins my self-trust against my belief in them, culminating in self-doubt and shock. Authority is more than just trust, it’s power. The belief that an authority has the power to punish amounts to a form of psychological intimidation which can also bully and gaslight into embodied self-doubt and shock.
This shock registers as pain, as a kind of panic response, but lets be clear: it’s different than getting slugged in the face. Along one dimension, it’s less, because no physical harm has occurred. Along a different dimension, as everyone knows from their own lived experience, it’s far worse.
“Violent” is a misnomer. Language can be panic-inducing, crisis-triggering, even reality-shattering but none of this is actually occurring on a “breaking bone” dimension, it’s all occurring on a belief dimension.
A story that is internalized within the body becomes a belief. A belief is an embodied story. When external reality contradicts a belief, this comes as an embodied shock. It literally causes the body to panic, because its internalized reality is wrong and it doesn’t know what to do next. At the very least it challenges the held belief, and at most it collapses and replaces it.
Is this instability inherently harmful? Of course not. In a safe context with a safe person it can be disorienting without being threatening. Aliens are in fact among us and here’s the proof. This would be disorienting if the proof was actually convincing, but not necessarily threatening. This process is an essential part of learning.
One class of “violent” language is narrative imposition. Often implicit in imposing language is a threat. When a parent uses harmful language the implicit threat to a dependent and vulnerable child is “will this impact my needs”? The parent has power over a child, disagreement implies a threat. With enough perceived power, shock can be met with collapse, of the child wholesale accepting the parent’s story.
The threat may be a projection, arising out the vulnerability. The threat can arise out of identification, when one’s self-image becomes coupled to a belief; a threat to the belief becomes indistinguishable from a threat to self. Arguably this could help account for why it’s so hard to talk about politics in America — when you’ve identified with your politics any kind of disagreement (even on purely pragmatic and policy level) is perceived as a threat to self.
This matters because it helps inform self-defense. In the moment of felt imposition, re-grounding that can take place. Grounding is the process of sense-making and coming to a story of an ongoing situation and then internalizing and embodying that story.
In narrative imposition, decouple the imposition from the narrative. What is the threat? Is there a threat of violence? Is there a threat of other forms of punishment? In most contexts, the answer is none, or very close to it. Reground in that; I am safe. Hopefully this is met with a step-wise reduction in stress and embodied relief. In decoupling the threat from the narrative, narrative imposition is broken down. Now we are left with the potential of learning. If the new narrative is true, great it’s time to update, and if it’s false, there’s no downside in considering it. But this process can now happen without imposition. Perhaps the threat originates in identification, do you want to identify with that story?
Conversely, perhaps there is a threat. A threat of violence or retribution. The only kind of communication that can be violent is one where there’s violence. There’s no place for violence is good faith discourse. Deal with this on its own terms, without the narrative. What are ways of removing the threat? What are ways of de-escalating? What are sources of support or opportunities for building coalitions?
Decoupling threat-reduction from the narrative acts as a form of memetic self-defense. Bullies rely on narrative imposition being a unified package, using imposition to force you to accept their story. Power recognized is power diminished. Once recognized, the jig is up. Bullies are memetic predators. The nature of storytelling is viral, and fear is used to implant their story. In decoupling threat from narrative, implanting becomes difficult if not impossible.
Threat-reduction can mean leaving the conversation. It can also mean naming the threat explicitly: “are you trying to intimidate me with X?” Especially in a group context, naming threats can be potent because (1) it explicitly communicates to the bully that you see them for what they are and (2) it clues in the rest of the group to what’s going on. And if the question is met with aggression, the question has been self-evidently answered. Bullies often rely on divide and conquer or forms of group intimidation and peer pressure precisely to prevent this kind of defense.
But as we see with the Right, naming the threat can also be weaponized; preemptively accusing others of the exact kind of behavior you’re up to (e.g. accusing the Democrats of “rigging the election”) can act as a form of smokescreen, prompting the accused to defend themselves instead of naming the disingenuousness of the accuser. This kind of memetic warfare is highly meta, and naming the higher-level tactic can help disarm it: this is preemptive projection, you’re projecting your own schemes onto me, cut it out. If delivered properly they should glitch and shit themselves, because the script has been flipped and they’re now unexpectedly on the defensive.
The same thing occurs on the American Left, where “triggers” are also weaponized, but the opposite response is required for disarmament. In accusing their opponent of triggering them, it can be disingenuous attempt of painting them as an aggressor. In this context, shame is predicated on who has the moral high ground. Aggression or defensiveness appears to validate the accusation. Conversely, re-grounding into the moral high ground with compassion and empathy disarms the threat: “oh goodness, I didn’t realize that I was triggering you, I’m sorry, what can I do differently next time?” The beauty of this response is that it’s appropriate for both a genuine and disingenuous opponent. But in contrast to naming preemptive projection from the Right, disingenuous triggers from the Left require beating them at their own game.
If you go far enough in either direction, the Right and Left loop around and meet: they’re Bullies. Different tactics, same imposition. Fortunately the set of tactics is pretty limited, and if you think through each one there are suitable and accessible defenses.
This brings up a second class of “violent” language: triggers. The idea of a trigger is that historical trauma conditions a compulsive response, induced by the trigger. In this context, the trigger-er is framed as a kind of aggressor, and triggering is a form of violence. Let’s reground: is triggering actually violent? For the trigger-ed it can be shocking, deeply uncomfortable and disorienting, but violence is violence. Violence requires action. Similar to narrative imposition, it isn’t inherently violent. In both cases there is an embodied story, in the case of a trigger, it’s the belief that the trigger will be coupled to some terrible treatment or outcome.
The whole problem with the idea of “nonviolent communication” is that it implies that communication by default can be violent. Violence requires action. Narrative imposition relies on some kind of threat for its imposition to be effective, but that’s not in the language itself, that’s in an implied action. There is absolutely zero place for violence, and by extent imposition, in civil, good faith discourse.
For both narrative imposition and triggering there is a simple and full-proof solution: ensure discourse is decoupled from action. In the absence of action, violence is impossible. Lets say that again for emphasis: in the absence of action, violence is impossible. In the absence of action, threats are also ineffectual. Commit to decoupling idea from action, and everyone is fundamentally safe. No words on their own can break bones, draw blood, deprive you of life and liberty.
The third class: peer pressure. Peer pressure can exert coercive pressure if there is an implicit threat of exile from the group. Exile from the group may not be physically violent but abandonment has its own kind of emotional violence which feels analogous to triggers.