Signification, Semantics, and Synonymy: An Analysis of the Linguistic Qualities of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative Report
Open AccessIn December of 2022, the Stanford IT Department released a report from the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative which identified racist, violent, and biased words or phrases and provided alternatives which would serve the same function without being discriminatory or harmful. To the surprise of the Initiatives sponsors (the Stanford CIO Council and the People of Color in Technology [POC-IT] affinity group), this report received intense backlash from the public following a scathing article in the Wall Street Journal which argued the project was overly “woke” and out of touch with reality. Stanford quickly removed the report from public view before taking it down completely, stating that it “does not represent university policy” and that “they clearly missed the mark in [their] presentation”. In the wake of this flurry of recent activity, some have pointed out that language initiatives such as these are actually quite popular, with institutions such as the University of Texas Austin, Indiana University at Bloomington, Brandeis University, and the University of San Francisco all partaking in similar programs of their own. So why did this particular report fail? Was it simply due to public opinion and controversy, or does this report reveal deeper, fundamental errors in how we comprehend and apply linguistic concepts such as synonymy, contextualization, and meaning making? This paper will break down the linguistic structures and concepts in practice within the report to evaluate its credibility, looking at the making and development of meaning, synonymy and other sense relations, as well as the social and cultural power of language ideologies and processes of resistance to such phenomena.
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