Language Shapes Awareness

       In Chapter 5 our book talked about how "Language Shapes Awareness".  There are three main ideas in this section that are important: we give names to things that matter to us, language is not static, and we shape meanings of our culture.
       The first idea is that giving names to things gives them importance. Whatever we name, that word is given power that it would otherwise not have. When we name things we also shed light on a subject, so that when others who have had the same experience can share what happened to them. The word rape is fairly recently developed. In the middle ages, a lot of women were raped and didn't know exactly what to call it and therefore didn't know what had happened to them. If you are confused about what happened and how to describe it, then you might become doubtful that anything bad even happened. This might lead a woman to become embarrassed to talk about the rape and pretend like it never even happened, or that it wasn't a problem and trick themselves into thinking the sex was consensual. Now people are able to describe what rape is, and the different types of rape there are. Women everywhere in the nation are able to recognize rape and they have found ways to protect themselves and prevent it from happening to other women because they were able to connect by recognizing that they were "raped".
       The idea that language is not static, means that we reject words that we disagree on and find new terms to use. One example is male generics and using the word "mankind" to describe all people on earth, from both sexes (male and female). The word that is politically correct for such a description would be "human kind" or "man and woman kind" but the latter sounds weird.
       The last aspect included on this subject is that we shape our cultures meanings. What that means is that our culture changes constantly to fit the norms of our society at that time. An example of this would be how in the past women always took their husbands last name, so the male's name could be carried on.  In our culture now that is not always what happens, modern women have choices for what they can do with their last name when they get married. They can hyphenate their maiden name and their husbands name, that way a woman can allow both her marital and maiden name to be carried on through their children. Of course they can also choose to take their husbands last name or just keep their maiden name and not change anything. The point is that women have choices now, and our culture has changed to allow them/us to do so.