Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Language Of Woke Taboos" with Nick Enfield

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"The Language Of Woke Taboos" with Nick Enfield · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that doesn't deal in absolutes, that doesn't deal in blacks and whites.
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  So many shows, so many politicians, so many commentators, so much of your social media feed,
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  expects either your agreement or disagreement. Either your furious love or your furious anger.
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  I do not. I ask only that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we wrestle with ideas,
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  we reject, as well as those we think are right. Let's escape the dogmas of conventional wisdom,
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  let's have conversations that straddle the cultural divide and make us all just a little uncomfortable.
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  Today on the show, why do we seem to be getting worse and worse at understanding each other?
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  Why is there such a gulf? Why are there so many taboos? Is cancel culture an honest way of trying
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  to hold people to account or other shifting sands of terminology to demanding and too fast to keep
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  track of and are they other people being executed in bad faith when they transgress. All of this
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  was swirling around in my head when I invited Nick infield onto the show. Nick is a linguist, so he
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  spends a lot of time thinking about how we use language and how taboos evolve and what we're really
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  doing when we seem to be communicating with each other. He's a professor at the University of Sydney,
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  a professor of linguistics. He's also the director of the Sydney Social Science and Humanities
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  Advanced Research Centre. He's the head of a research excellence initiative on the crisis
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  of post-truth discourse and his research on language and culture and cognition and social life
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  is fed into by a long history of his work in Southeast Asia, so he's done a lot of work on
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  different comparative languages in the way that sort of the construction of words and taboos impact
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  cultures across entire continents. He's written a ton of books, many of which are super arcane
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  things like dependencies in language or the languages of Made Lands Southeast Asia,
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  but the two of which you should pay attention to are one of them's called language versus reality,
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  why language is good for lawyers and bad for scientists. That's his new book out this year of 2022
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  and probably his most celebrated work is called How We Talk, the inner workings of conversation.
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  That has been applauded in the new scientist, in the economist, in nature, by John McWater,
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  the celebrated professor of linguistics at Columbia University and defender of free speech.
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  The economist said of that book, from a certain point of view what's fascinating about human
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  conversation is not how hard it is, but how we subconsciously cooperate to make it seem easy.
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  One of the world's great experts in how we talk and why please enjoy Professor Nick Enfield.
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  Well that's all right, there's nothing we can do about it and there's no, we'll just enjoy
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  the dulcet terms of some gentleman shouting at us through a loud hailer.
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  Yeah, it sounds like there's a possible alarm in some other building. We'd know it'd be very
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  loud if it was this building that speakers everywhere, but it's some some neighbouring building,
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  but let's just probably picked up your COVID and they're telling everyone to evacuate.
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  Possible, possible, all conjecture, all conjecture.
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  Let's just start by tell us what you do, Nick, and walk out you interested in it and what you
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  sort of spend your days working on. Well, I'm a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney
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  and that makes me an academic that does what academics do. So sit around the lot,
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  mooch on the public purse, overcharge students for theoretical ideas that will be of no use to
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  anyone that sort of thing. Exactly, we've got our feet up all the time, but what I'm really
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  in it for like so many other academics is the research side of things and my research is
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  in the field of linguistics which is the science of language and my own work has taken me to
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  mainland Southeast Asia, mostly that's where I specialize and where I've done field work for many
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  years, especially in Laos. Yeah, let's start there before we get to language in the west. What
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  appeal to you about Laos? I was kind of inspired as a kid by various things that made me want to go
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  around the world and go to different countries. One of them was an uncle that I had who
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  ran a English teaching school in the 70s and 80s in Sydney and you know, through that I met a lot
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  of people from far away places speaking far away languages and that kind of fascinated me basically
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  to cut a long story short. One of the places where I spend a lot of time traveling around and
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  kind of going on a bicycle and so on was in Thailand and I learned a fair bit of Thai,
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  but a lot of that time I was in the northeast part of the country which is a lao speaking area.
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  At that time it was hard to go into Laos, it was a politically kind of off-limits place and
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  I visited the border at several spots and just kind of got fascinated and one thing led to
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  another and I started doing research there. You would have been proud on my recent trip to Thailand
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  at my four-year-old daughter wandering boisterously along all of the streets of Bangkok waving at
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  everybody. You're saying Sawatika in a beautiful kind of Thai sing song and receiving a lot of the
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  the bounty of good wishes from all the Thai ladies that you could imagine. Lovely, yeah, lovely and
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  one of the wonderful things about that part of the world you know it's not the case in other
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  places it's kind of interesting difference. If you go to a place like Thailand or Laos and you can
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  just say some simple thing like greeting or you know order a bowl of soup or something
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  extremely basic people will say to you oh my god you speak fluent Thai or you speak fluent
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  loud it's incredible where you literally you know don't know more than a few words. In other places
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  you know Hong Kong is reportedly one of these places that from colleagues I know who've lived
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  there for years you can study Cantonese you can become brilliant at it and people will still say
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  yeah you know you're really just speaking this just stick to English you'll never really get it.
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  Yeah and then there are other places like you go to Paris and unless you can argue about
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  Proust and 19th century French philosophy in perfect French they regard you as an interloper
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  who should be booted out immediately. Yeah so you know I didn't have to
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  push against that in Laos and that was incredibly encouraging I've lived for a long time in
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  the Netherlands and that's another country where people you know don't ever really want to accept
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  that you can speak their language so that was I did learn Dutch it was very hard work but in Laos
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  you know I think that the local attitudes about the language are just incredibly encouraging and
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  you know I do credit that with you know my my opportunity to actually learn the language pretty
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  well as I've done over the years. So how has your work on well I guess how has your work
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  focusing on the way that we speak in Western countries changed over the course of your career?
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  I don't really know if it has changed I mean it's funny everyone has attitudes about language
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  right it's one of these things that linguists have to kind of deal with if you study geology or
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  you know chemistry yeah not everyone has attitudes about geology and chemistry right
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  but you know with language they do you you know everyone kind of has a sense of what they like
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  in language what kind of way of talking is good or bad or you know outrageous or whatever
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  everyone's got their own little sort of theories about language and I would have been
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  one of those people but doing linguistics you know one of the if you do first year linguistics at uni
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  one of the things that you should take away is you know all that's wrong. Your attitudes about
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  language are you know don't bear much relation to what language is really like and one of those
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  things is you know this is correct and that's incorrect for example these are very kind of
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  political views rather than scientific views so that was actually instilled in me the very first
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  time I ever did linguistics and that was actually before I even went traveling I went to uni
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  did two months of uni before dropping out and one of the units I did was linguistics and that
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  that was the one lesson I took away was that don't trust your intuitions about language especially
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  if it's your own language step back and kind of think about it empirically and analytically and
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  so I think that from the very start that principle was instilled in me and I don't you know I
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  would hope that as a professional linguist I haven't imported you know native linguistic ideology
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  into the into the research that I do. Are there ways in which it's becoming more difficult to
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  be understood? How do you mean it's understood as in in a language or? Yeah understood in I suppose
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  in the way that we converse so there are some ways that like there are cultural and sort of
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  class barriers to the way that we speak right there are things that get there are then there are
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  things that academics talk about that sound completely alien to the rest of us there's lingo
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  there are cultural dialects and in some ways I guess things are we're finding it easier within
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  English to understand each other because of mass media and in other respects I feel like it's
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  getting harder to understand each other because we're becoming more cliquey about the way that we
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  use terms. Yeah I do think you're right so you know the the real issue at the moment is
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  scale and the fact that you know the world is very suddenly connected at a scale that's you know
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  unprecedented as people like to say the population of earth has been pretty big for a long time but
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  the way that we communicate now with the internet just means that we can form these communities
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  with very very tiny proportions of the population but condensed into one place so we can actually be
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  surrounded by people who are like-minded in some way and and one of those ways of being like-minded
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  is sharing a kind of a specialisation so in the in the division of labour there is also a
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  division of language so you know just walk into a mechanic shop and the mechanic will know
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  hundreds or perhaps thousands of words for little pieces that go into a car or a truck you know
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  so it's just natural that you have a lot of specialised vocabulary whatever field you're in but
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  one of the kind of collateral effects of that is that we use words in the same word in different ways
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  within each of these kind of little kind of clicks and subcommunities right so you know it leads
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  to this obvious problem of thinking that the other person is using that word in the same way as you
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  use it but turns out they're not and you know you walk away kind of understanding something different
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  from from what they understood so for sure I think that's kind of part of the issue but there's
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  another really important issue with understanding and that is the purpose of even talking
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  sometimes the purpose of talking is to convey information and update people on events and you know
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  whatever whether it's gossip or or something else but another important function is
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  staking a claim about who you are or communicating that you are part of this group or
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  cementing the relationship that you happen to be in in one way or another and you know these two
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  things are really foundational to language they're the main kind of two things we we do with
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  language and they're not always in alignment so you know oftentimes you're making an assertion
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  because you want to indicate something about who you are and you accept the collateral damaged
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  which is that you know if that assertion happens not to be true for example or happens not to
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  align with your true beliefs well I can live it that because it's more important that I you know
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  express who I am in this in this particular way the downside is that other people don't necessarily
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  realize what you're doing and they take you to be faithfully trying to convey some piece of
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  information and if it turns out to be false then you know they're going to hold you they may hold
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  you accountable accountable for that and I mean conversely you may think that you're communicating
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  something but the words that you use might land for the other person who's outside your clique
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  as being so in-groupy that they see it as being a form of virtue signaling or not non-real
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  communication so if you know if a conservative uses the term woke then I think anyone on the
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  progressive left is going to immediately code that person as being in bad faith because woke
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  is such a kind of pejorative meaningless term at this point and similarly if someone on the left
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  talks about the white supremacy talks about white supremacy in a way that doesn't mean actual
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  white supremacy but just means sort of invisible power structures that underlie everything we do
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  or talks about creating space for somebody or you know someone living their authentic truth or
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  you know finding safety and conversation or finding something triggering then those kinds of
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  terms that sort of language is going to immediately turn off the conservative and make them think
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  that the person is just you know babbling in code when an actual fact they might be trying to articulate
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  something they just don't realize that they're using jargon yeah it's absolutely right so there's
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  a there's a constant kind of moving target there if you like and and it is you know where is the
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  true information here in this exchange so there's a very nice little passage in a in philosophical
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  investigations by Vidconstein the famous philosopher and this point's been picked up by various people
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  including Nassim Taleb and and others and in this he says imagine that you're you've got a ruler
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  and you're using this ruler to measure the length of some object like a table you know the the
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  ruler gives you a readout and you you get some sort of new piece of information but if it turns out
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  that you're not sure if this ruler is accurate but you know the table well you know how long it is
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  then you can use the table to measure the ruler and he gives the example of a pupil in a class so
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  if the teacher asks the pupil what's the capital of France they don't want the information you
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  know they're not going to learn something new about France what they're going to learn about is
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  the person doing the speaking do they know this piece of information and I think the dynamic that
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  you're talking about is really about people reading the person who is talking as much as they're
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  reading something about the world from what they're actually saying and you know these two things
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  are constantly bumping up against each other in the way that you suggested and you know it's it's
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  a game that is always been played and you can never get away from it because every time you say
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  anything I mean you know you learn about words like woke or what supremacy that they are loaded
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  in various ways and you can avoid them if you want to but you know the vocabulary is big and we know
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  thousands of words and whenever we say something we have to pick words which is necessarily means
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  we're not picking all these other words and so a lot of the time when we're not using those especially
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  loaded words we're still signaling all of this stuff about ourselves in ways that we we can't
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  even track but it's a really fundamental point about about the way that we use languages that we
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  can never shut off those two kind of main functions we're always conveying you know making some
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  claim about the world and the things that we say and we're always revealing things about ourselves
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  you know what words do we know what ways do we like to describe things what terms do we use and so on.
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  Yeah and I wonder whether or not I mean that reminds me of the elephant in the room in all these
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  conversations about whether or not people are being offensive or whether or not people are being
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  bigoted or whether or not people are retrograde or you know or on the correct side of history
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  which is class that like there's a there's a certain way of talking that has become dominant in
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  Western educated elites which is quite a narrow university educated way of talking about racism
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  and sexism and transphobia and and it can sound quite alien and alienating to people who don't
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  don't come from that clique of expensive like highly educated cohorts and similarly the way that
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  a an average non-university educated person in rural or regional Australia UK or United States or
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  Canada might speak they might be completely unbegoted in their heart but they might just
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  casually talk about things in a way that sounds offensive or retrograde to the university educated
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  elite and I wonder whether you think there's more or less tolerance of that whether there's a way
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  of escaping those kind of class boundaries and talking to each other in a way that resonates more.
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  I mean I think one of the core issues that you're touching on is this idea of accountability
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  in how we talk it's foundational to language you know when we have conversations it's a it's a
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  cooperative activity and we are accountable for the things we say in various ways but one of the
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  problems I think that you're maybe alluding to is this idea that you know even if you don't
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  intend to offend the person who's listening or even if you don't intend to be read in a certain way
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  if someone reads you in that way then you're accountable for having meant that.
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  And you know I think this is only accountable do you mean that in practice you're held to
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  account or do you mean that you actually are morally accountable? No I mean you're held to account
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  I mean you can be accused of having said or meant something. Yeah even though you didn't
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  mean it and you know this is a really hard kind of problem to solve because
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  one of the things about language is that you can you know there's a big gap between what you
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  literally say and what you really mean to convey you know it's one of the oldest kind of
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  observations about how we use languages that we can rely on our listener to kind of join the dots
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  so a simple example would be you know today's the due date where's your assignment and you say
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  I've been ill this week and you know it's not a non-sequitur I can perfectly well understand the
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  link between these two things so we rely all the time on a listener to kind of see what you're
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  really saying underneath the words that you're literally articulating and then the problem is
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  you know that there's this downside of that which is hey hang on a second you read that and
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  that into what I said but that's that's not what I wanted you to read into it or that's not what
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  I intended and I think this is you know it's a really fundamental kind of problem and I think a
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  lot of current discourse is the intentions don't matter I think you know I've heard you talking
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  about this I've seen a lot of discourse around this as being a real problem and clearly
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  one of the things that would have to change if you wanted people kind of not to be
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  held to account for for for meaning things that didn't mean you know is a kind of tolerance or
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  is a kind of charitability you know people need to take things in the most charitable way
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  it's a pretty basic point but I think it's it's incredibly important that you know we need to assume
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  that we need to kind of look into what people say in a way that you know how can we view this
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  in the best possible like what might it mean if I'd set it you know these are the kinds of moves
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  you want to make if you want to make a charitable interpretation of what other people say but I
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  don't think that that's the rule of the game in a lot of discourse I mean it is in some we have
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  this concept of you know steel manning a position or you know ideological cheering tests and things
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  like this and I think that's there's a culture of that that we want to or I personally would want
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  to foster and see develop what's an ideological cheering test well the idea you know a cheering
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  test is where you you have a person interact with I don't know let's say a kind of a chat
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  boss or something like that and you have to decide if you're speaking to or communicating with
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  a human being or communicating with a computer machine and this is held to be you know an important
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  test of artificial intelligence the ideological cheering test is the idea that you know if you
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  really want to be charitable in your kind of discourse around whatever the topic happens to be
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  where you have some kind of disagreement you know you want to steal man a certain position which
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  means you know it's the opposite of straw manning it it's giving it it's best possible
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  representation the ideological cheering test is that if you were to
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  describe a position or make an argument that's not your own or whether it is or it isn't does
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  a matter but it would not it would be regarded as being as having come from a person who really
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  believes that position then you would pass the ideological cheering test I mean this is one
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  this is one of our problems in discourses that you know we say okay I don't agree with ex-position
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  and then we give some crappy version of ex-position and you know that that's that's straw manning
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  the ideological cheering test is you I make the position and anyone who holds that position
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  would not even detect that I didn't take that position yeah I see my god we're getting worse
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  at that Nick I mean like that one part of the problem of not wanting to hear ideas that you
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  regard as being offensive or beyond the pale is that when we're getting bad we're not flexing
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  our muscles at understanding what the other side believes so I mean most people who I know who
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  very stridently and passionately believe in something cannot articulate in a convincing way
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  their opponents point of view which makes it very difficult for them to make a convincing case for
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  their own I can't remember who said the classic line that you know if you if you don't hear your
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  opponents point of view then not only do you not understand theirs you don't even understand your
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  own and that's becoming true or intruder the more and more aggressive you become in your own beliefs
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  life here yeah that's the famous line of John Stuart Mill he who knows only his own side of the
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  case knows little of that or something along the way yeah I think the the trick to this is you know
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  sort of embracing the idea that you can separate what a sociologist Irving Goffman called
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  the animator of a message from the principal of a message so the animator of some messages you
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  know the physical body that animates the the sound so I'm animating what I'm saying now by
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  by talking um and the principal is the one who takes responsibility for that message and so
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  one of the tricks about language is that you know I can separate those two things I can quote your
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  speech even if it's something I don't agree with and and we understand I'm just voicing your words
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  and I don't you know hold on to those words the problem is that it's it takes a bit of work to
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  keep that distinction there and people are continually sort of find it difficult or even impossible
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  to separate the the person saying the words from the you know the actual person who's who's
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  convinced of their truth or who takes responsibility for their truth and I you know that inability
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  is really part of the problem here you know with doing things like passing the ideological
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  cheering test you really need to be able to separate out you know who's animating this message
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  from who's actually sort of committed to its meaning or responsible for for its content yeah
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  that's interesting and it's becoming more and more so I one of the few times that I've been
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  formally reprimanded for from a complaint as a broadcaster was I was on the air and I was talking
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  about we were joking about something and there was some funny name of some exotic frog species
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  or something and it sounded a little bit rude a little bit like you know almost what a racist
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  would say about you know another about I don't know Asians or something like that and I jokingly
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  and laughingly you said it sounds like what my grandmother would have said about the ethnic
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  who'd moved in down the street and someone complained about the use of the word ethnics and it
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  went up to the complaints department and I had to make the case that look I was in the voice of
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  of my grandmother there I'm in the voice of someone from another generation who thinks that
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  that's an okay thing to say it's not Josh steps I mean I wouldn't call them ethnics I was saying like
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  and then they said oh well why didn't you put like on your grandmother's voice a little old lady
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  voice and I was like well because then I would have gotten complaints about demeaning about being
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  ages and demeaning old people right you know so people's ability to kind of understand oh here's a
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  joke in which someone is inhabiting a worldview that they don't share versus this is something they're
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  saying I mean you know the the ultimate example of this in the past decade is the rise of the
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  N word as as the acceptable thing to say when we're when we're discussing the existence of that word
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  I mean I remember in 2012 I was doing a segment on half post live in New York about the phrase
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  the N word with a bunch of of people of color people of color is another term and we just called
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  them black people then or or brown people but now people of color were on the panel who hated
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  the phrase the N word and found it infantilizing and childish and as if they were two
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  weak to understand the difference between a person using a slur and a person simply referring
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  to the existence of that of that word and I came back to Australia on a trip after doing that and
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  I was talking to I sort of did a test where I spoke to multiple Australians about the N word
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  and no one had heard no one knew what I was talking about in Australia no one had heard the phrase
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  the N word like some of them could infer what I was talking about but in Australia in the early
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  2010s if you were going to talk about the existence of this barbaric word if you were going to say the
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  sentence the word is the worst word that you can use against someone and it should never be used
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  as a racist slur then you would have just said it and in the past 10 years that has not only become
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  really a fireable offense in in most environments but the N word has has become a sentence and anyone
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  who's not on that page is regarded and not like not just as not having gotten the memo but
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  as actually being racist for not having gotten the memo yeah there's a lot in there of course
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  you know you're talking about avoiding saying it if that doesn't go for everybody so you know
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  black Americans say it and that is fine and that you know they have the license to do so as a
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  word I mean coming back to where we started on that point this is a classic case of the distinction
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  between what language is called using a word and mentioning a word what you said in relation
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  of the word ethnic you know you were you were mentioning it talking about the word itself as
• 30:30
  opposed to using it and you know that really depends on this distinction between the animator
• 30:35
  and the principle and we do that all the time every time we quote someone else's speech every time
• 30:41
  we quibble about whether a word is appropriate you know we do that all the time so it's not a it's
• 30:46
  not a principle that has applied consistently across the board it only comes up when people take
• 30:53
  a fence and so in this case you know you were called out by some listener who didn't like it and
• 31:01
  you know I think the dynamic is very well known and it's a fast moving one as you say you know
• 31:06
  it only took a few years for this thing to really kind of take hold and you know maybe it will
• 31:13
  take hold forever and or for a very long time and people just will stop using that word and it
• 31:19
  will eventually disappear but there'll be something else and then there'll be something after that
• 31:23
  and then there'll be something after that and one of the I think important aspects of this is that
• 31:28
  it actually needs to be a kind of live issue if it's going to have the function that it has and
• 31:34
  that function is what you might call ritual avoidance you know so avoidance is something that
• 31:40
  all around the world you see there there are words that you mustn't utter so in some cultures it would
• 31:46
  be you know a person has died and you mustn't use words that sound like their name that in
• 31:54
  various Aboriginal Australian cultures that's a taboo and there are many other ones like it like
• 32:00
  it around the world and what that does is it imposes a certain cost you know it's not a great cost
• 32:07
  but it imposes a certain need for you to be vigilant so you have to kind of think about whether
• 32:14
  this word is going to resemble the the name of that deceased person and should I use it or not
• 32:21
  so actually it's this little piece of language that requires you to keep you on your toes
• 32:28
  and you should avoid it and the reason you do that is because you want to be part of the group you
• 32:33
  want to show the same values that the others show and you want to show that you are willing to incur
• 32:37
  this you know this little cost which requires vigilance and so forth so you know when you see people
• 32:46
  in the media getting called out for using these wrong words oftentimes it's like well it just
• 32:51
  sit down or you know the case of the M word there was an instance I don't know a couple of years
• 32:59
  ago I think it was Kendrick Lamar concert and you know a young woman was on the stage seeing
• 33:06
  along the song and she actually pronounced the word and then she you know she was told by the by
• 33:13
  the singer no no you can't say that you can't say that and you know that that was obviously a slip
• 33:18
  up because this woman was like a obviously a huge fan of this music and she'd probably driven
• 33:24
  in her car around town singing all the lyrics of the songs and you know you get the idea
• 33:30
  she was unable to suppress pronouncing the word in that context and that was her you know
• 33:36
  it was an era and you can certainly say that it was offensive to people and people didn't
• 33:44
  like it or harmed them in some way I think that would be going a bit far but
• 33:50
  what's certainly true is that she was unable or she failed to to suppress the use of the word and
• 33:57
  therefore somehow failed her ritual obligation just like we have you know you don't want to say
• 34:03
  certain words in in front of certain people not of this kind but just you know every day swear
• 34:08
  words they're good to say certain swear words in front of your mates you best friends it shows
• 34:15
  informality it shows engagement and all the rest of it but you avoid them in other contexts
• 34:20
  of formal setting or you know I'm trying to avoid using these kinds of words now because there's
• 34:26
  an audience etc so it's really about knowing how to manage your verbal behavior in ways that are
• 34:36
  you know appropriate to the to the context but it strikes me that what's a bit different here is
• 34:41
  A that the more A's are changing so quickly so people don't necessarily know like you'll have
• 34:50
  what the people kinds of people who I call outrage archaeologists going back through
• 34:54
  Twitter timelines to try to see what or not someone has written the N word in 2012 and then they
• 34:59
  will superimpose onto 2012 today's norms about about it so you've got these very quickly shifting
• 35:08
  sands that not that everyone is expected to be up to date with and then secondly I think it's
• 35:13
  different from a swear word because I do think there's an imputation on the person's character
• 35:19
  in a way that there isn't with a swear word like if she'd accidentally
• 35:23
  said a swear word any other swear word on stage I don't think she would have been it would have
• 35:29
  been widely regarded that she's a terrible person but I think the use of that the breach of that
• 35:34
  ritual like the mentioning of that spiritual totem if you want to call it that and the saying of
• 35:39
  that particular word is a blight on her character in a way that say saying the f word wouldn't have
• 35:46
  been absolutely and the trick is yeah how do you keep up and I think an other aspect of it is
• 35:54
  who gets to say what the current thing is you know how do we know I mean who gets to say is maybe
• 36:02
  that way putting it is kind of quarreling around authority which I think is worth doing but
• 36:09
  maybe prior to that I mean how do we how do we know and when is it appropriate to hold someone
• 36:14
  to account when they actually haven't been able to kind of keep up this actually gives people
• 36:22
  a motivation to keep up you know it gives people a motivation to know what the latest thing is
• 36:27
  because they you know they want to be seen to be kind of responsive to it right isn't that a bit
• 36:34
  like saying that the mob with a flaming torch who grabs witches out of their home and burns them
• 36:39
  at the stake is a good way of encouraging people to keep up with ways not to be a witch
• 36:46
  well that would be a bit strong I mean I certainly didn't want to imply that
• 36:51
  whatever the current thing is is correct you know that that's another matter and it's maybe an
• 36:57
  even more important surely a more important matter in some respects you know certain things when
• 37:04
  we talk about ritual you know certain things are pretty low cost and you know there's not a lot
• 37:10
  of cost from kind of refraining from it I mean I don't say the n-word and you know nothing's lost
• 37:16
  from me not doing it and I suppose plenty is gained from me not doing it but I think that
• 37:21
  well I'd quibble with that you know a certain clarity of speech a certain
• 37:26
  relaxness in language a certain ability to communicate as naturally pops into your head
• 37:32
  is is lost and what's increased is a certain self-consciousness a constant catching of one
• 37:39
  self before in especially in fast moving heated debates where you have to constantly be worried
• 37:44
  about treading on eggshells it's at this point it's probably you're probably not losing anything but
• 37:49
  because it's so ingrained but over the course of the past 10 years I don't think it's costless
• 37:55
  especially if there is no real upside like the question of how much offense is actually genuinely
• 38:00
  taken by people or rather how much offense would be taken by people if they were raised to be
• 38:05
  resilient in the face of hurtful words rather than raised to be to to have a knee jerk
• 38:13
  victimization attitude and fragility towards those words is an interesting question like I can't
• 38:21
  help but I mean just from personal experience of talking to all my black friends I can't imagine
• 38:28
  that it's terribly widespread that people are genuinely or need to be genuinely horrified by
• 38:35
  you know academic people discussing how terrible the inward is and actually mounting those
• 38:39
  mouth sounds I mean we can train ourselves to find offense at that and the more it becomes a
• 38:43
  taboo the more we will but if there's no if there was no great upside I mean I can imagine that if
• 38:50
  you're in your 80s and you live through Jim Crow and you're in Alabama and you hear people talk
• 38:55
  about it then maybe that causes a certain flicker of PTSD and that's to be avoided if possible but
• 39:01
  I can't believe that that downside is proportional to the the the the scale of the of how offensive
• 39:11
  we we're currently treating the word to be yeah no I take your point and I think I suppose I was
• 39:19
  talking about low cost you know it's really low cost on any given instance but I think what you're
• 39:25
  pointing to is kind of higher cost as as things kind of cumulate if you're constantly avoiding certain
• 39:31
  ways of talking I mean you can leave aside you know whether a specific word there's some problem
• 39:36
  with a specific word but I think what you're alluding to is more a kind of chilling effect
• 39:42
  that kind of settles in if you're constantly avoiding not just one word but a whole bunch of
• 39:48
  words then you know as you put it walking on eggshells and and that kind of thing any specific
• 39:56
  kind of taboo or sort of avoidance rule will somehow help to kind of build that atmosphere and that
• 40:10
  you know in the end can be can be really counterproductive I would hope you know that what we can do
• 40:17
  is track again track kind of context so if we think about swearing we swear in certain contexts
• 40:25
  and we don't swear in certain other contexts what what you would hope and this I agree with you
• 40:30
  I think is where we're seeing some kind of incursion here is that if you want to talk about language
• 40:35
  from a kind of scientific point of view and and you know let's talk about the power of certain
• 40:40
  words and you know we're let's say we're recording people speaking in different communities
• 40:46
  what we should be able to refer to these words in our conversations and as you point out you know
• 40:52
  that too is actually getting affected so we have zero context in which certain words or ideas can
• 41:00
  be talked about will you know I agree that creates a kind of that creates a problem
• 41:06
  and what about offensive language Nick so not not swear words but just using again coming back
• 41:14
  to this idea that there's a sort of a university educated elite progressive way of talking about
• 41:19
  things and then there's the way that human beings in the real world of suburbia talk about things
• 41:24
  so you know I mean I have family members and extended family who would talk about you know if
• 41:30
  they saw someone who was exhibiting very camp characteristics as a gay person they would say you
• 41:36
  know he was a bit fru fru is a bit of a fairy or something like that and then I have other friends
• 41:41
  in my more educated elite cohorts who would only ever refer to someone as a member of the LGBTQ
• 41:47
  I plus community and would regard the previous description as being offensive or you know
• 41:54
  someone in some context might see an Asian Australian and say oh you know where do you come from
• 42:00
  meaning you know where is your what's your family background your family heritage and that might
• 42:03
  be coded as being offensive if the insinuation is taken to be that they're not a real Australian
• 42:09
  because they have a you know Asian phenotypic characteristics you might call someone handicapped
• 42:16
  or you know say there was a disabled bloke or something instead of saying that they were a person
• 42:19
  living with a disability as a person whose university educated might say there were all these
• 42:23
  these rifts in the in the language that we use that are not just like you know sort of different
• 42:30
  dialects they're again becoming character assassinations for the people who who aren't up to date
• 42:36
  yeah I think you're right and I think this comes back to the question of intention you know and
• 42:40
  holding someone to account for saying something that they offer for conveying a meaning that they
• 42:47
  certainly didn't want to convey and you know I agree with those who would say there's something
• 42:52
  paradoxical about this coming from you know people who are keen to promote social justice that
• 42:59
  you know for all that that there's a difficulty in being you know in taking the position of other
• 43:09
  people in this in this respect um maybe there's a more basic issue and that is you know
• 43:15
  what is our sample of the community who who do we actually take the average person to be
• 43:21
  and and if you're talking about you know your average middle class academic who's you know going
• 43:27
  on Twitter and having arguments about this that and the other thing it's a it's a pretty small
• 43:32
  percentage of humanity and a lot of the time you know well people are just carrying on their day
• 43:40
  and you've got people from different walks of life working together and you know being friends
• 43:47
  and all the rest of it and talking freely in all these ways that actually aren't eliciting
• 43:53
  offense and sort of accountability and all the rest of it so I mean I think there is a an open
• 44:00
  question about you know just how much of these problems are part of the you know the discourse
• 44:08
  that that culture pundits are engaging in and just how much of it is really is part of the world
• 44:14
  large. Nick have you seen any changes in the way that academics talk to each other and what's
• 44:19
  acceptable in academia you were talking about colleagues at at university objecting to to the use
• 44:25
  of certain words in in public consultation. Yeah so this is I think a pretty new development
• 44:31
  maybe not in the States so if you look at discourse among academics in the United States you have
• 44:38
  a lot more attention to proper language or you know language that is regarded as correct and
• 44:46
  appropriate but I would notice this kind of less in Australia or at least until recently and a
• 44:53
  couple of instances in the last year or so kind of really attracted my attention so you know
• 45:01
  there were recently some consultations this where I was zoom you know really quite large groups of
• 45:10
  people all zooming in together and and talking about various administrative issues and
• 45:17
  and on a couple of occasions people piped up and said I don't think it's appropriate to
• 45:24
  use this word and two of them that I can remember one was development and the other was discipline
• 45:36
  so discipline in the sense of you know an academic discipline so linguistics for example is
• 45:41
  an academic discipline you know so it's a it's just a word in the dictionary that describes
• 45:48
  a concept and you know I think it's a really interesting case that you know a colleague said can
• 45:54
  we you know I don't want to see that word being used and the reason that was stated was that
• 46:00
  you know it has associations with violence for example and you know you can you can read into it
• 46:08
  oh yeah discipline that's right you know it refers to punishment and it refers to coercion
• 46:13
  and these are the kinds of meanings I personally think that you know this indicates an over
• 46:20
  active kind of reading into language you know you you could never speak freely about anything if
• 46:30
  you were concerned with all the possible well it's not even the same word is I don't mean it
• 46:37
  would have a different a different dictionary number underneath it one's a noun or one's a verb
• 46:43
  to discipline somebody a discipline yeah I don't even get it it sounds the same yeah it well I
• 46:50
  think you know they're they come from the same ultimately from the same idea but I think this is
• 46:55
  another sense of outrage archaeology and that is you know digging and digging into the language
• 47:01
  and saying you know sometimes you see this where people say I don't use a certain idiom I don't
• 47:09
  I can't remember them but you know there's one about circling the wagons I think which I've
• 47:14
  seen people arguing is it shouldn't be used because it has certain implications in relation to
• 47:22
  you know colonial you know states oh yeah I once got into trouble in the states Nick for saying
• 47:27
  on the air let's call a spade a spade and there was a collective gasp from the control room
• 47:33
  I didn't realize that to call a spade a spade well for a start it's not offensive but there's
• 47:38
  an apocryphal myth about its origins which has something to do with slavery and turns out not to be
• 47:42
  true I think it does have to do with dealing cards and calling a spade a spade but someone thought
• 47:46
  it was about slaves digging holes with spades or something so again yeah this is just one of the
• 47:52
  idioms that you know you can completely unawares just pull out of your back pocket in a moment of
• 47:57
  of a torrent of speech amid the millions of words that we all say and you know someone can cherry
• 48:03
  pick that out and and believe that because it sounds like something that might allude to
• 48:08
  something that we're bad that means that you're also tired with that brush and now I'm sure
• 48:12
  that tired with that brush is also an idiom that people will take offense to yeah I think it's
• 48:17
  a very curious sort of development because you know my initial reaction was why would you want to
• 48:26
  pull that out that word out and say to people oh we mustn't use that I mean it's it was a sort of
• 48:33
  a real time in position of ritual avoidance in the sense that we were talking about before where
• 48:38
  now everyone has to be a little bit more on their toes and and not say that word well okay fine
• 48:44
  if that's you know if you want to insert that rule that's fine but then where does it stop
• 48:50
  what word does not have some conceivable you know if we apply our imaginations some conceivable
• 48:57
  bad connotation so I mean you know it's it's kind of an obvious point but it's it doesn't stop
• 49:04
  the practice from from from happening and you know I think it's a surprising development but
• 49:12
  it's clearly happening and people are not what's interesting I think is that people are not
• 49:16
  disputing it or sort of pushing back against it so in this case the person who was sharing the
• 49:24
  meeting kind of nodded their head and said okay and sort of let it go without saying well that's
• 49:31
  sorry we won't be able to do that or you know they didn't kind of resist this and sort of let it
• 49:38
  let it go so I think you know maybe coming back to your point about would there ultimately be
• 49:44
  costs that would build up well you know maybe maybe maybe there would but if you don't
• 49:50
  nip it in the bud and this is sort of what happened it wasn't getting nipped in the bud let's just
• 49:55
  see where where it kind of goes well I mean also just as a matter of principle who should be
• 50:00
  deciding you know you coming back to your question of like who's going to set the terms of this
• 50:04
  debate like who do we want to be dictating our culture to us do we want it to be an organic
• 50:09
  process of negotiation between all of us do we want it to be people like for example a dean
• 50:15
  a university dictating the terminology that's used at that university both of those seem like
• 50:21
  perfectly reasonable arguments I could take either position there but do we want it to be simply
• 50:26
  the loudest person who expresses the maximum amount of umbrage and tries to pillory people in
• 50:31
  public for not siding with them well now I think we should all agree that that's not the best
• 50:35
  that's not the best place to locate the the locker of our of authority on matters of language or
• 50:41
  culture or taboos it reminds me a bit about how you know Yale and Harvard got rid of the term master
• 50:48
  you know it's an old all the English university term about how they would be the masters of the
• 50:52
  colleges and so on just a position of seniority but because it sounds like a term that was used
• 50:57
  during slavery students rose up and said that it had to be abolished and Harvard and Yale got rid
• 51:03
  of that strikingly Yale at the time did not rename Calhoun College which is named after John
• 51:09
  Calhoun who was an actual pro-slavery anti abolitionist character so there seemed to be some inconsistency
• 51:17
  or about the level of education of the people who are screaming from the rooftops about why
• 51:21
  master needs to be uh to be removed but there you go um yeah in consistency is you know I think
• 51:28
  what we've been alluding to there's just an incredible inconsistency and if I could just comment
• 51:33
  on your point about um who gets to say I think you know I think it's obvious it's an obvious point
• 51:41
  that yeah you don't want just anyone random person who happens to be the loudest to determine
• 51:47
  you know what the rules are going to be but there's an interesting sense in which culture generally
• 51:53
  is actually like that um you know culture around the world stipulates rights that people have and
• 52:02
  duties that people have and punishments that can be meted out and rituals that get performed
• 52:08
  and so on and you know they're not always fair and certainly you know kids who get born into
• 52:15
  different communities don't get to kind of now just negotiate what the rules of you know what
• 52:21
  you name it are going to be like the marriage rules or the kinship rules or the rules of how
• 52:27
  the culture runs so there's an interesting kind of issue here for just human beings and members
• 52:34
  of our species around the world we are all born into a cultural milieu that we didn't design
• 52:41
  ourselves and we're all subject to the kind of rules of it and maybe what we're seeing here
• 52:49
  is culture changing at a rate where we can see that kind of arbitrariness or unfairness
• 52:56
  you know in front of us whereas you know for many people you don't see that develop in real time
• 53:02
  you just take it for granted as being you know all that's how our people are what was the dispute
• 53:10
  about the word development well it was the same idea was you know using the word development you
• 53:17
  would see this word being used in all sorts of ways in an academic context you know academic
• 53:22
  development refers to just professors developing through their careers and so we often talk about
• 53:33
  academic development and you know I think the word was being objected to on the basis that it's
• 53:38
  associated with economic development around the world which in turn is associated with colonialism
• 53:45
  and you know development is building infrastructure and all the rest of it I mean how like how
• 53:54
  ideologically you have to be to object not even I'm not let's step away from the whole linguistic
• 54:00
  question just the economic question and the political question how would you be opposed to development
• 54:07
  like I mean do we think that the problem in the world is that there's not enough under development
• 54:13
  well it's you know I think someone is we could all use a bit more under development we could all be
• 54:20
  a little bit more like Sub-Saharan Africa and a little bit less like the West some may come back
• 54:27
  and say that's unfair you know that that they would not be saying that we shouldn't have development
• 54:36
  if development means things like minimizing child mortality or you know health of pregnant
• 54:45
  women or you know what or better transport or what have you it's just that a lot of these things
• 54:53
  and some would argue that all of these things like infrastructure development are deeply deeply
• 54:59
  political they're deeply you know have all of these financial implications for kind of global
• 55:07
  markets and corporate interests and all the rest of it you know again it's sort of taking a
• 55:14
  non charitable view of what development would be but you can frame it you can frame a development
• 55:21
  project is being you know in the interests of those who might benefit from it on you know in
• 55:28
  terms of the financial market or what have you and it's also what you can I mean you can say that
• 55:35
  you could have we could be talking about the development of Nazism in 1930s Germany therefore
• 55:39
  we shouldn't use the word development but I mean the plain reading of the word can be applied to so
• 55:44
  many contexts in which it's not bad that it strikes me as just perverse to be absolutely absolutely
• 55:52
  perfectly picking one in which the one with where it is so I think it really indicates like
• 55:57
  the futility of quibbling about words in this sense I mean the what's important is the meaning I
• 56:05
  mean okay what even does development mean if you want to sort of drill into it the problem
• 56:12
  here would be just the assumption that development means any one thing you know obviously it
• 56:18
  means a lot of different things and a lot of different instances of development have been either
• 56:23
  amazingly good or amazingly bad you know in ways that are just historically contingent
• 56:30
  and the idea that you can sort of select any of them and state that they are conveyed by
• 56:38
  someone's use of this particular one word in the language as you as you put it perverse I'd
• 56:45
  love to hear from someone if they understand this better than I do you can email us uncomfy
• 56:48
  convos at gmail.com uncomfy with a why convos gmail.com do is there something that I'm missing here
• 56:55
  about the development good I mean the development of cancer tumor is bad and the development of
• 57:00
  a radiology lab is good I don't get it anyway another thing you mentioned Nick is this movement
• 57:07
  to sort of decolonize academia what is what is what is the decolonization of academia mean I mean
• 57:14
  this term is relatively recent I don't know I mean going back maybe the last two or three decades
• 57:22
  so maybe not that recent but certainly picking up steam in recent years and the idea is
• 57:31
  that academia and kind of university life is really grounded in I don't know I kind of Euro
• 57:43
  Centrism that has been supported by and also supported the whole kind of colonial project out of
• 57:52
  Europe of centuries and you know it's a kind of obviously a very broad sweeping claim but there's
• 58:00
  a claim that this has infected science in various kinds of ways so I can you know I can talk
• 58:08
  about linguistics obviously the field and I best and the idea of decolonization is to say well we
• 58:15
  want to write that wrong in some sense we want to undo the problems that have been created by a
• 58:24
  kind of a colonialized curriculum or a colonialized form of science so for example people who
• 58:34
  are calling for decolonization of for example the linguistics curriculum would be saying okay we
• 58:41
  don't want to just have readings being given to students that are by people from European countries
• 58:50
  or you know white skinned people we want to instead have some ballots some representation
• 59:00
  that includes articles and studies by people who come from the countries that are being studied
• 59:06
  so in linguistics you know it's about people and it's about people from all around the world so
• 59:14
  the idea is that you know if I'm working on a language that's spoken in Laos as I do then you
• 59:21
  know what we want to do is have some engagement with people who are from that place and you know
• 59:27
  so readings by them for example that would be one thing that you would want to do if you were trying
• 59:33
  to decolonize the curriculum I mean there's a lot more to it than that which I mean that sounds
• 59:41
  that sounds fair though doesn't it I mean if you're studying a foreign culture not to take a sort
• 59:45
  of you know 18th century view of just being the colonialists who's talking about them but rather
• 59:50
  to look at the texts that they've been writing themselves absolutely fair and and it's exactly what
• 59:56
  we need to be doing I mean the case of linguistics is interesting because it really indicates
• 1:00:02
  what I think is is a really good illustration of quite an advanced form of decolonization so you
• 1:00:12
  know to sort of help understand the problem here it's not that hard in linguistics to just go
• 1:00:19
  back to times of the bad days of when colonialism is in full swing you find in books about I don't
• 1:00:31
  Aboriginal Australia or anywhere else in the world where people are encountering Indigenous
• 1:00:37
  groups they would say these outrageous things about the languages that you know these are sub
• 1:00:43
  standard languages or they're primitive or the people only know a few dozen words and they're just
• 1:00:48
  sort of you know bark like dogs or whatever ridiculous things that are said and these have been
• 1:00:56
  I mean they're obviously reflections of people's complete lack of understanding and oftentimes
• 1:01:02
  you know animosity towards Indigenous groups and political motivation to try to sort of
• 1:01:09
  denigrate them as not really humans so therefore we want to take their land and this kind of thing
• 1:01:14
  I think you know there's a real case to be made there that these these claims for all sorts of
• 1:01:21
  reasons are obviously terrible and but apart from anything else they're completely false
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  so of course what you want to do so linguistics is interesting here you go back to that time
• 1:01:34
  you see let's say you know 18th century 19th century early you see these complete misconceptions
• 1:01:39
  and really awful things being said about Indigenous languages and groups just just complete rubbish
• 1:01:46
  um but you had in the particularly the early part of the 20th century a very big shift
• 1:01:55
  which if you go back and look at the writing of people like France Boas it would appear these
• 1:02:00
  anthropologists in the United States who were working with Native American languages
• 1:02:07
  they were coming out and saying look European languages aren't the yardstick
• 1:02:12
  that languages need to be understood in terms of they're just you know one
• 1:02:17
  they just show one kind of set of properties that human languages can have the we've been studying
• 1:02:22
  these Native American languages carefully and actually they're incredibly complex in these
• 1:02:26
  really interesting ways and they change our conception of what human language is and you know
• 1:02:32
  this is a was a really phenomenal first step in what you might call you know the de-centering
• 1:02:38
  of European languages in our scientific conception of language and that to me is like one really
• 1:02:44
  important major step that any sort of decolonization project would need to take that is you know
• 1:02:51
  de-centering the European which is you know the opposite of what a colonial project um it does
• 1:02:59
  there's a second really important piece of this decolonization process and that is
• 1:03:03
  giving the communities power over the research that's going on and you know so so the archetypal form
• 1:03:16
  of a you know bad colonial research project is a completely unethical case of someone
• 1:03:25
  swanning into a community extracting you know words and bits of the language like they would
• 1:03:31
  extract teeth or something you know and then leaving and the community gets nothing out of it
• 1:03:39
  the community really puts nothing into it they don't help to shape the research
• 1:03:44
  it's true I mean this stuff has happened and it's had bad results all around you know poor science
• 1:03:51
  poor impacts on the on the communities and so on and again in linguistics particularly since
• 1:03:57
  the 1980s there've been these fantastic developments around the world where field working linguists have
• 1:04:02
  said look we need to work with our communities we need to be guided by their knowledge of their
• 1:04:08
  own languages we need to be guided by their interests in their own languages and that's led to
• 1:04:15
  you know an incredible array of projects around the world where native speakers of certain languages
• 1:04:21
  are getting involved at the forefront of the research on their languages so you know this is
• 1:04:27
  coming back to to to the point you you were making just before that's exactly how you would want it
• 1:04:32
  right and you you get people who you're working with who you're trying to understand to really have
• 1:04:39
  a stake in the research that's being done and linguistics is shown decades of progress and I think
• 1:04:46
  it's it's really fantastic and there's plenty more work to be done and I think it's important when
• 1:04:52
  we're looking at this move for decolonisation in in in any sort of field but in my case linguistics it's
• 1:04:59
  important to acknowledge that progress and sort of think about how you know it's not that as some
• 1:05:07
  people want to imply it's not that you know linguistics today is indistinguishable from you know a
• 1:05:14
  slave owners justification of their activities there's work to do still for sure but there's been
• 1:05:22
  great progress it sounds like an actual remedy to actual cultural appropriation like we hear a lot
• 1:05:29
  about cultural appropriation these days in terms of you know who gets to braid their hair and whether
• 1:05:36
  they have the right skin colour to be able to do that or whether or not a you know a family
• 1:05:42
  diner in the Midwest is allowed to make Mexican food even though they're not Mexicans and everyone
• 1:05:46
  gets in a half about whether or not think things are authentic and that's always bothered me a little
• 1:05:51
  bit because what I love about modern culture is the mesh mash of different cultures and pilfering
• 1:05:57
  here and there like you go to India and you know there's this delightful kind of patois in India where
• 1:06:04
  people will have borrowed and reused and repurposed English words into Indian in all these delightful
• 1:06:11
  and counterintuitive ways that we don't quite understand but that make a certain bizarre sense and
• 1:06:16
  so then to sort of denigrate anybody who isn't Indian for also borrowing from Indian culture strikes
• 1:06:25
  me as a little bit weird when there is this interplay not to gloss over the history of colonialism
• 1:06:33
  in India but there is in the 21st century this sort of delicious interplay between American culture
• 1:06:38
  and Indian culture but yes that it sounds like what you're talking about is a direct
• 1:06:44
  front to the sort of easy assumptions that genuine cultural appropriation took when we went in
• 1:06:53
  and just and pilfered with no regard for locals or for any back and forth or give and take
• 1:06:59
  I wonder what you think about Nick how where when we think about updating language and sort of
• 1:07:05
  updating than the way that terms that we used to refer to things we're currently in a federal
• 1:07:13
  election in Australia and elections coming up soon in a few weeks and I was walking past a
• 1:07:20
  campaign sign for a local member which said bringing tax relief to 64,000 locals and I was
• 1:07:30
  reminded of I think it was Frank Lance the American political language expert republican strategist
• 1:07:40
  who coined tax relief instead of tax cuts because I saw that sort and I thought yeah really some
• 1:07:47
  relief would be nice from my taxes I'd like relief it sounds better than tax cuts doesn't it yeah
• 1:07:51
  and then there are all these other things like being you know pro choice and pro life instead of
• 1:07:59
  just pro-bottom or anti-abortion or something or something like that which side of politics do you
• 1:08:04
  think does language better I think that none of them have a monopoly really it all depends you know
• 1:08:12
  I think it differs from campaigns campaign and country to country you know you can be terrible
• 1:08:18
  with language or you can be savvy with it but I think everyone knows the power of it and that's
• 1:08:26
  why people pay a lot for you know marketing people to try to help them with these things so
• 1:08:33
  people like Frank Lance you know that's what they do they hold focus groups and they look at
• 1:08:40
  you know how linguistic framing affects people's decision making and you can see in the research
• 1:08:48
  you know on so called nudging and so forth that these little bits of wording can really make a
• 1:08:55
  difference so the example that I like is from you know credit card industry when they were first
• 1:09:03
  trying to get people to take up the use of credit cards you know back in the 70s and 80s they were
• 1:09:11
  lobbying for you know they were looking at the difference between these two terms one was credit cards
• 1:09:18
  surcharge and the other was cash discount so there either two ways of framing the exact same thing
• 1:09:24
  when you you know when you use a credit card you have to pay this little bit extra and they said no
• 1:09:28
  no we don't want that what we want is you know you pay with the credit card that's just the price
• 1:09:34
  and if you want if you want you can pay cash and get a little discount and under the hood it's
• 1:09:40
  exact same thing you know but how it sounds it not only has that nice sound like you said like
• 1:09:47
  the word relief relief sounds good people have all these associations with words but it goes
• 1:09:52
  deeper than that too it really enters into their reasoning and we know for example you know it's
• 1:09:59
  in our psychology that we are willing to forego a little little kind of benefits more than we are
• 1:10:08
  willing to incur costs that are basically of the same order so you know that's why we we have
• 1:10:15
  credit card people you know lobbying for specific language because they know that people's decisions
• 1:10:22
  will mean you know their decisions will make differences in millions of millions of dollars of
• 1:10:28
  revenue so politicians know the same thing unfortunately it doesn't mean that they are any good at it
• 1:10:35
  I mean you know using language cleverly is a real art and skill and there's no guarantee that
• 1:10:43
  anyone's going to be able to kind of pull it off but so I think I think it is an art and a skill
• 1:10:49
  and who's actually getting it right will depend on on the situation and lastly Nick you wrote a
• 1:10:57
  piece last year called we could be a nation of nuance essentially posing the question of you
• 1:11:03
  know is Australia actually better placed than comparative countries to be a place where nuance
• 1:11:08
  thrives what do you mean by nuance and why do you make that case so I think the idea of nuance
• 1:11:15
  really goes back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier which is the idea that you
• 1:11:22
  can talk about issues in such a way that you know you're not going to get caught up in who's
• 1:11:30
  pronouncing which words you're not going to get caught up in the displays of identity or affiliation
• 1:11:38
  that certain ideas or ways of talking you know are conveying you're going to cultivate the
• 1:11:45
  possibility to step back from that and you know really kind of circulate different ideas with the
• 1:11:53
  aim of letting the best ones evolve you know that's that's that's that's a kind of an evolutionary
• 1:11:59
  concept of of decision making and consensus and so on is that you you have a diversity of ideas
• 1:12:08
  and that diversity is what allows you know evolution in the literal sense you know populations are
• 1:12:14
  diverse and some individuals do well for different reasons and the argument is the same thing is
• 1:12:20
  there with language and with ideas which are of course expressed through language so nuance
• 1:12:26
  is the capacity to live with that sort of diversity of ideas but also to
• 1:12:32
  not assume that you know this one word captures the whole thing so we were talking before about a
• 1:12:38
  single word like development or discipline don't get hung up on on on the essence of some category
• 1:12:44
  but step down a level and say okay what are we actually talking about in risk with respect to
• 1:12:50
  this particular instance we're trying to solve a certain problem fix a problem in the university
• 1:12:55
  or in society or whatever it may be the key is to embrace that diversity and not get distracted
• 1:13:04
  and what I think is that you know Australia is in a good position
• 1:13:09
  in it's not because I think Australia you know necessarily is the home of some different kind
• 1:13:17
  of mentality it's just that we aren't as far down the path that we see public discourse in the US
• 1:13:24
  as being so my view and what I was trying to articulate in that paper that you're mentioning it is
• 1:13:31
  that you know in Australia what we should be doing is looking at what's happening in public
• 1:13:37
  discourse in the States especially in saying to ourselves we don't want to be part of that
• 1:13:43
  we want to be a home of real progress we want to be a nation of scientists not a nation of lawyers
• 1:13:53
  you know we we want to be able to arrive at the truth however you know uncomfortable those
• 1:14:00
  conversations may be to use a kind of a meta reference to this program so I think I think
• 1:14:09
  that's the kind of key here is that we are able to actually say wait you know we could sort of
• 1:14:14
  develop a brand here in some sense people are lamenting at the moment about the direction that
• 1:14:21
  academia and also public and sexual life are taking in places like the States and wouldn't
• 1:14:27
  it be wonderful if here we could develop a different brand in some senses saying no Australia is
• 1:14:34
  where you go if you want to actually have nuance I like it let's all storm the barricades on
• 1:14:42
  that particular sentiment Nick it's great great to talk to you enjoy your your covert your imminent
• 1:14:47
  covert thanks very much for having it uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan
• 1:14:56
  posthuma follow me Josh Seps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful
• 1:15:03
  your mind humble your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly sparklingly
• 1:15:08
  collectively uncomfortable