Can I use a “bad” word in a quote?
The request arrived in my inbox a few days after a major holiday.
“Suzi,”* my friend wrote, “do you have an article or a resource about why using the n-word is unacceptable? We have an instance in our family we need to address.”
I was surprised to get this email from her. I mean, holiday gatherings are famously a time when family members say shocking or upsetting things. Sometimes on purpose, to be provocative. And other times because they don’t realize what the effect of their words will be.
But my friend is multiracial and partly of African descent, and even though she had been transracially adopted into a white family, I guess I figured that her relatives had learned over the decades to be careful with their language.
I figured wrong.
I’ve learned over the years that it’s important to know where people are at before you start trying to give them new information. Especially when that information might be counter to something they’ve believed for a long time. So I asked:
“Trumpified older relative? Can you tell me more?”
“No… an older white dude who isn’t Trumpified… He was quoting a long-dead relative, so didn’t see why he shouldn’t be true to the words that had been spoken: ‘hot as a n-word’s pocket’.”
Ah! It was the age-old question: If someone else says a “bad word” and I am just quoting them, I can quote that bad word, right?
I sent my friend two useful resources to pass along: an explanation by Ta-Nehisi Coates and a BBC article.
And then I asked if she wanted the linguistic anthropology breakdown of what’s going on when we quote other people. She did! And now I’ll share it with you, because it can give real insight into what’s going on when a person faithfully reproduces someone else’s word(s).
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Erving Goffman came up with the idea that a person producing language can be understood as performing different roles.
Author. The person who has come up with the words being said or signed or written.
Animator. The person who is saying or signing or writing those words.
Principal. The person (or institution) who is aligned with the position being expressed by the words. “The one who is officially responsible.”
Let’s call the person at the holiday meal James and the deceased family member he was quoting Ezra.
In the Case of the Holiday N-Word, James probably thought he was “safe” because he was only the animator of the words in question.
James wasn’t the author – he was quoting Ezra, who was the author.
And James probably felt like he wasn’t the principal – because he was only quoting Ezra’s words, he wasn’t “officially responsible” for all the negative connotations.
But with words that are as taboo and strongly “flavored” as ‘the n-word,’ even being an animator is out of bounds. Just by saying the word, James is now likely to be interpreted as a principal, in alignment with and “responsible” for all the bias and negative impact that goes with that word.
(And note that in this case, the entire phrase ‘hot as an n-word's pocket’ is problematic.)
By using ‘the n-word’ in full, even in a quote, James violated several of my principles of inclusive language: show respect, draw people in, incorporate other perspectives, and recognize pain points.
Stefan Vladimirov / Unsplash
So what can you do?
You can still quote someone who used a “bad word.” But when you do, you’ll have to do some extra work to let people know that you are animator only, and that you’re not aligned with the bias or other issues associated with that word.
For strongly taboo words, you should shift to the taboo-avoidance form of the word, here, ‘n-word.’
(Note that I am talking about people who are out-group only. If you are Black, you are licensed to use the word in ways that other people are not. And you can make the decision pronounce it using “the hard r” to show intent, while other people should limit themselves to just saying “with a hard r.”)
For other, less-strongly taboo words and phrases, you can find other ways to distance yourself from the sentiment. For example, “She said – and this is a word I don’t like to use myself…”
Then you can faithfully represent what happened and, by pointing out that you see it as problematic, also follow the principles of inclusive language. And you’ll have the positive impact that is aligned with your good intentions.
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* There are three people on the planet who are allowed to call me Suzi, and the email I am referencing was written by one of them. The set of people in this category will not be expanding.
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