Sticks and Stones

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

It’s a lie.

The basic premise of this statement, one that many people learn during rough days of childhood taunts, is that words can’t really have an impact on you. They’re just words. Any good student of journalism should understand that this is just not the case. Words CAN impact you, and often in surprising ways. And you can impact others by the words that you choose.

I’ve found that you never really know how even one word choice can effect someone that you’re talking to. I was reminded of this recently while taking a client to a doctor’s appointment. She’d seen this doctor three or four times already and, although a professional doctor and reasonably nice guy, he’d never come across as particularly empathetic to her. I’d even witnessed him in conflict with a nurse over scheduling issues for about 15 minutes in the middle of a pre-op room at the hospital because neither of them could seem to accept the other’s point of view. However, at this particular appointment, my client mentioned that she’d recently had to deal with the death of one of her beloved cats. The doctor stopped his chart review and looked up at her.

“What?!” he asked, “One of your cats died?!”

I was completely taken aback by his sudden display of emotion. He seemed truly upset by this. He went on to explain that he had two cats and couldn’t imagine how hard it would be for him to deal with when one of them passed away. And just like that, he became a real person. There was a change in his voice in the way that he spoke with my client from that point on. All because of “cat”. Who knew?

It helped me think about the interviews that we’d conducted on Monday night and the way that simple word choices may have influenced the direction that answers took. I think I saw this most clearly by being interviewed as opposed to doing the interview. One question in particular that was asked of me was along the lines of “how did growing up in South Carolina help in shaping you into the person that you’ve become?” I’m not sure if this was one of the original questions that was planned or if it was an afterthought. It’s not a bad question at all. However, the initial negative reaction that I had to it was a surprise to me. It wasn’t until later, when I had a chance to process that, that I understood why I may have had the internal reaction to the question that I did.

As a result of the phrasing of that particular question, I think I felt like my answer had to portray the impact of growing up in South Carolina as being positive because of the word “help”. In all honesty, I appreciate that the question did make me think about the positive side of growing up where I did, because I’m typically a lot more likely to focus on the negative and out of place feelings that I had while growing up there. However, even though I did answer the question in a positive way, I’m not sure I did the best job of giving a really accurate picture of the entire impact that growing up in South Carolina may have had. All because of how one word led me to interpret the question, whether it’s what my interviewer intended or not.

As I looked back over the questions that I’d asked during the interview, I could see that I’d also made assumptions and phrased things in a way that may have led my interviewee towards a specific direction. I hope that this lesson will be a good reminder to re-read questions that I come up with for any future interviews in order to look for leading words or assumptions. It’s always good to remember that there are things that interviewers or question askers can do to elicit certain responses, for good or bad. But even with this lesson, I know that it is still not always possible to predict how a person may respond to something. As I said before, you never really know what kind of response a specific word or phrase may get, no matter how unbiased or general you try to make it.

For example, had the subject of MY cat come up at the doctor’s appointment earlier this week, I’m not even sure it’s the cat I would have focused on. At this point in time, it’s more likely to be the lizards that we are finding on a daily basis in the house as a result of the cat.

…or at least, what’s left of them.