Bryan Colbert: The Power of Language

Whenever i heard the 'sticks and stones' saying growing up I always laughed at the ridiculous rhyme. Words are possibly the most powerful way to hurt somebody. In our society you can say whatever you want with almost no fear of repercussions. You can't go to jail for what you said to somebody and you can't be told what to say and what not to say. But do we take account how many people have committed suicide off of just being mocked and teased? Being somebody that was picked on as a kid, I know how powerful words can be. There would be days i wouldn't even want to leave my room because I knew what the day had in store for me. I was never touched, but it didn't matter because the words hurt that bad. Sometimes I would've even preferred being hit with a stick. The only way I knew how to deal with the banter was to do it to others before they did it to me. Not only was I bullied, but i saw myself become a bully as well. I knew how to make people hate themselves just by my words, I could make people cry within seconds and never lift a finger... I was proud of that. To this day people I grew up with tell me how much I made their lives hell...and the sad thing was I don't remember saying any of it. But they remembered, just like I remembered what my bullies said to me. And that's the power of words, they remain within you throughout your whole life. Whether it's negative or positive, a mere sentence can dictate how you view people, society and even yourself.

Although I attend UNL, i had never heard about the UNL Haters Tumblr account, but what i saw when i visited the page was sadly not surprising at all. Viewing my class mates blog post, it seems like the majority of people were surprised that our campus was filled with such ignorance and hate. But these tweets and posts were no news to me; having to deal with racism and hate a great deal on this campus. I've had people tweet to me and my friends that we were NIGGERS and even had white guys tell us they don't like us because we "take all their women".

My eyes were even opened when I saw people I knew on it. It made me question me and those peoples relationships, because who knows what they really think about me. Granted some of the posts are meant as jokes and only as jokes, but they're still unacceptable because something that may be funny to some, could offend a lot of people. This is an example of one of the components of language: Pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of how meaning is constructed in relation to receivers, how language is actually used in particular contexts in language communities (Martin and Nakayama p. 225).

Whatever the case for the hatred towards other races, sexes and genders at UNL, I am pleased that UNL Haters are exposing it. I think it's important that peoples eyes are opened to the ignorance that some people on our campus still have. I think that this UNL Haters will help calm down the ignorance displayed on social network sites and I am glad they're helping.