Words are Worlds: Why Words Matter
Last year in our small town, our university hosted a conference to greatly expand abortion access across the African continent. Tragic as that was, what also got my attention was that it was titled a. Can you see what happened, and what is happening? One would campaign the evil of abortion in days gone by, but who would want to campaign against ‘justice’ today? Suddenly, through the deceptive play on words, evil became‘good’, and those standing for what is right are now the enemies of this ‘good’. Once that subtle twisting of words is accepted in mainstream culture, the acceptability of the action (in this case abortion) gains momentum, and the Trojan Horse is permitted through the gates of cultural norms.
