The Hayakawa Approach

Perhaps the single most significant concept that I left Dickinson with was that cow 1 is not cow 2. This basic concept has informed my critical thinking and writing for over five decades. I’ll explain what this has to do with Leda Fisher’s op-ed (“Should White Boys Still Be Allowed to Talk?, Feb 7, 2019) as well as many of those who commented on her op-ed column.

All first year students at Dickinson in 1963 were required to take Soc Sci 10 and 11. There were many complaints from my new classmates about its breadth. One of the books assigned was Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa. The author was a linguist and, late in life, a U.S. Senator. The book is still in print.

Hayakawa’s premise is that the words we use often connate abstractions. But we can also use the same words to be very specific. 

For example, consider “dog.” This refers to an animal we are all familiar with. All dogs have some commonality: four legs, head, body, ears, tail. We might generalize that dogs are “man’s best friend” that they are domesticated and so on. But “dog” is an abstraction.  We can be less abstract when specifying a breed of dog: Greyhound is very different than Chihuahua. And we can be most specific when we point to an individual dog—this greyhound or that Labrador. This greyhound may be a different color than that greyhound. It may be able to run faster—or is slower, than that one. It may have been trained to sit on command—or not. Yet they are all, in the abstract, dogs.

So there is a “ladder,” explained Hayakawa, with steps that move between the most abstract to the most specific. Thus, Hayakawa would say that white boy 1 is not white boy 2. If Ms. Fisher had written that “In one class, Chris, Ryan, Oliver, and Sean [white boys 1, 2, 3 and four] regularly spout the narrative of dominant ideologies and pretend they’re hot takes….”  she would have been on firmer ground. (I also understand that if she had been less strident it’s less likely her column would have gotten so much attention.  But being extreme is exactly why society seems so polarized today—whether a President’s extreme Tweet or a college senior’s screed). 

By the same token, many of those who commented on the article need to internalize that Dickinson student 1 is not Dickinson student 2. One such critic wrote, “I will no longer consider making contributions to your college,” thereby generalizing that the opinion of one student captures that of the entire institution. 

If we bring the discussion down from the abstraction to the more specific we may be able to reduce polarization. 

I pulled my yellowing copy of Language in Thought and Action off my bookshelf today—one of two books I have saved from my Dickinson days (the other being Janson’s History of Art.) There, on page 88, is the section “Race and Words.” He notes that words can have both informative and emotional (affective) connotations. As one example he uses, saying that someone is a “communist” can mean that they believe in the communist political philosophy. But used with a different tone (That communist!) has a connotation that the person ought to be thrown in jail or run out of the country. (Note that the book was written in 1939). 

“White boys” certainly has an informative connotation. Leda Fisher could point to Jake or Chad and say “white boy.”  Factual.  But she is using white boy for its emotional connotation, ultimately saying or implying that, simply by this characteristic alone, they all should be muzzled and ignored, at least.

Ms. Fisher’s actual recommendation for white boys is to “encourage you to critically examine where your viewpoints come from, read a text that challenges you without looking for reasons to dismiss it, and maybe try listening from now on.

Perhaps this would be a reasonable suggestion for some white boys, perhaps many white boys.  Most specifically, she may point to Jake, Chad and Alex. But her affective connation up to that point is that white boy 1 and white boys n are all the same. I think she knows better. In casting such a blanket condemnation of white boys 1 and 2 she has created noise that has overwhelmed a reasonable conclusion.  

Maybe we should again make Hayakawa’s book required reading for all students.