The power of words and word choice

Blackburn's (2003) paper discusses the power of words and what our word choice reveals about us. For instance, in her discussion about developing a glossary of various sexual and gender identity terms with one of the members of the Loft, she brings up how the inclusion of heterosexual as one of the terms in the glossary placed heterosexuality on the same level as transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality and disrupted the idea that heterosexuality is "normal" and thus a term that does not require definition.

Similarly, Kamler (1994) looks at the revelation of gender stereotypes through word choice. She looks at the texts produced by a boy and a girl during kindergarten, first, and second grade. Her analysis of their texts suggests that social and cultural contexts led the boy to produce texts in which he portrays himself as the active participant with control over his experiences and environment (and usually in a self-centered way), while the girl produces texts full of description in which she rarely portrays herself as an actor in control. It is crazy for me to think about how the stereotype of men as active participants and women as passive observers is already visible in the writing of children this young!