Overcoming Dehumanizing Language

As we move further into 2024 — a year filled with armed conflict and political conflict — it’s a good time to look at a serious problem: dehumanizing language.  

Dehumanizing language is one of the most dangerous linguistic distortions out there.  

It’s language that subtly — or not so subtly — suggests that people in a different group are not as human as you are.  

And when someone isn’t seen as a full person, is consistently described in ways that suggest that they aren’t fully human, then it becomes easy to think that they don’t deserve the same care, attention, and entitlements as you. That they are morally inferior and even dangerous. 

What are some of the entitlements of someone who is understood to be fully human? Centuries of Western philosophy and law have concluded that a person has the right to: 

  • not be killed. 

  • move about freely (unless imprisoned for a crime). 

  • not be beaten, raped, or forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy. 

  • vote, hold office, and participate in governance. 

  • choose and own where they live. 

  • get credit for and paid for their work. 

  • freely express their thoughts and opinions and have them seriously considered.  

Unfortunately, the United States was set up to deny full personhood to many (especially, from the very outset, Native people, people of African descent, and women of all races and ethnicities). You can see similar patterns in many other countries around the world.  

 
chart illustrating man's evolution to show concept of dehumanizing via language

The original March of Progress illustration from Early Man (1965)

Image via Washington University ProSPER

 

Dehumanizing language violates my first principle of inclusive language, Reflect Reality. It distorts our perceptions, and suggests that some people are inherently superior to and more deserving than others. 

In this distortion, we commonly find language that suggests that compares people to animals, that reduces them to relevant body parts, or presents them as not actually adult.   

Here are three common ways that dehumanizing language shows up: 

  1. Describing the “other side” in an armed conflict or political conflict (including occupation and colonization). Includes savages, animals, demons, monsters, barbarians; collateral damage, body count;* morons, knuckle-draggers, subhuman, primitive, uncivilized, uncultured, and untamed. Dehumanization also includes not listing casualties on the other side (including civilian casualties) when tallying up deaths in a conflict, as well as avoiding straightforward use of the word children. 

  2. Describing members of another race or ethnicity. Boy (for an adult man), gorilla, ape, monkey, cockroach, snake, pig; wetback, redskin, dothead; vermin, parasite, trash, specimen; an illegal, alien.   

  3. Describing women. Girl (for an adult women), female; bitch, witch, hag, crone; piece of ass, pussy, and cunt.   

And there’s way more out there.  

As we continue into 2024, we can expect all kinds of polarizing rhetoric. Here in the US, there is a currently a lot of dehumanizing language circulating in discussions of Israel and Gaza, and more generally about both Arabs and Jews.  

And as we move closer to the 2024 presidential election, I expect we’ll see a ramping up of political polarization. Using distortions that are designed to be persuasive, designed to anger, and designed to get people to consider “the other side” to be the enemy. 

 
human looking over cliff into deep valley to illustrate concept of danger of using dehumanizing language

Human peering over a very high stone ledge

photo credit: Leo McLaren via UnSplash

 

Dehumanization has serious outcomes. In particular, it is often a precursor to violence. 

Because it lessens empathy and discourages perspective taking. And it suggests that the perspectives and lived experiences of people in the “other” or “less than” group can be safely ignored and disregarded. Because they aren’t really people. 

Dehumanizing language is used to justify making decisions on other people’s behalf. To justify using violence against an “animal” who is out of control and savage. And to justify demanding sexual access to someone regardless of consent or to justify sexual or domestic violence.  

So what can you do?  

You can keep an eye out for the words I listed above and for similar words. And then call them out.  

You can say something like, “Oh hey, saying [X] is actually dehumanizing. And dehumanization is dangerous.”  

This may mean interrupting conversations, posting on social media (where you might show a quote and give a corrective), or writing to media outlets currently allowing dehumanizing language to go through. 

If you have capacity, you might want to come up with an alternative phrasing, one that reflects the reality that people in the other group are also fully human, and just as important, individual, and valuable as you are.  

These are polarized and difficult times, and it will take real vigilance to identify and push back at linguistic distortions. And, let me be clear, this absolutely includes distortions being produced by “your side.”  

But the more we can recognize these distortions and point them out, the more we can rehumanize the world around us. 


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*Note that military training such as basic training is designed to rewire the brain and desensitize soldiers, moving them past the inborn human resistance to killing another human. 

ArticlesSuzanne Wertheim