What’s In A Word?

This post has been in my mind for quite a while. I finally decided to write it this morning, after reading a news report that Scottish police have been told not to say ‘blind as a bat’ because the phrase may cause offense.

I’ve always loved the English language, but I’ve been thinking recently about how disability-unfriendly our clichés are. So, let’s start with ‘blind as a bat.’ Bats are ‘flying mammals’ according to a dictionary. They’re found in dark places, and, as the phrase above suggests, they don’t have the greatest eyesight! The thing about bats is, they scare most people. So to compare blindness and bats may have been meant to suggest that blindness was negative, which it is. These days, however, it’s easy to understand how blind people might be offended by the phrase, because they could take it to mean that sighted people should be as scared of them as they should be of bats. It’s not very disability-friendly, that’s for sure.

The Scottish police think the instruction not to use the phrase is a crazy waste of time. But let me give them ‘paws’ for thought by considering rabbits for a second. Rabbits, unlike bats, have great eyesight. They also use any available surface as a toilet. So I wonder how a sighted person would feel if they were ever to be described as ‘sighted as a rabbit?’ I don’t think I’d like it, any more than I’d like to meet a bat while walking down the street.

Which leads me nicely to the next phrase I have a problem with. Those who can’t walk could easily find ‘walking down the street’ an offensive phrase. How are you supposed to get down the street if you’ll never take a footstep in your life?

There’s another one. ‘Standing on my own two feet.’ What if you can’t stand? The phrase is used to suggest independence. True, if you can’t stand, you’ll always need help with some things that people who can stand can do without help. But I know some very independent wheelchair users, thank you very much! When are they going to be told that they are able to ‘sit on their own four wheels’ without it being considered an original play on words?

Or how about ‘seeing is believing’? What if you can’t see? If every blind person took offense at that phrase, which maybe they rightly should, they would be able to accuse all sighted people of being liars, because since they can’t see, they can never believe anything that they are told.

The only slightly disability-friendly cliché I’ve ever heard is ‘love is blind.’ But that is seen as a negative characteristic of love, because it suggests that love doesn’t question things that, maybe, it should. So does that suggest that blind people, like love, don’t question anything negative? I can definitely see why they would find that offensive. I’m sure they do question anything they don’t agree with!

So what’s in a word? Well, to turn another cliché on its head, ‘sticks and stones may break bones, but words can break hearts.’ Bones forget and heal, hearts don’t. So let’s invent some disability-friendly cliché’s! Suggestions welcome.