{"id":56431,"date":"2013-07-19T11:30:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T16:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=56431"},"modified":"2013-07-18T17:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T22:50:31","slug":"language-and-trayvon-martins-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/07\/19\/language-and-trayvon-martins-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Language and Trayvon Martin’s Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dispatcher: Which entrance is that that he\u2019s heading towards?<\/p>\n

Zimmerman: The back entrance… fucking punks.<\/p>\n

Dispatcher: Are you following him?<\/p>\n

Zimmerman: Yeah.<\/p>\n

Dispatcher: Okay, don\u2019t<\/em> do that.<\/p>\n

Zimmerman: Okay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you followed the Zimmerman\/Martin killing at all, you probably recognized that this is not what the dispatcher said.\u00a0 The correct transcript is:<\/p>\n

Dispatcher: Okay, we don\u2019t need you to<\/em> do that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nowadays, we don\u2019t tell people what to do and what not to do. We don\u2019t tell them what they should or should not do or what they ought or ought not to do.\u00a0 Instead, we talk about needs \u2013 our needs and their needs.\u00a0 \u201cClean up your room\u201d has become \u201cI need you to clean up your room.\u201d<\/p>\n

The age of \u201cthere are no shoulds,\u201d the age of needs, began in the 1970s and accelerated until very recently.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are Google n-grams for \u201cyou need to\u201d and \u201cthey need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a> \"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0We don\u2019t say, \u201cThe writers on \u2018Mad Men\u2019\u00a0ought to<\/i>\u00a0watch out for anachronistic language.\u201d We say that they \u201cneed to\u201d watch out for it.\u00a0 It was Benjamin Schmidt\u2019s Atlantic post (here<\/a>) about \u201cMad Men\u201d that alerted me to this\u00a0ought\/need<\/i>\u00a0change.\u00a0 Schmidt created a chart showing the relative use of \u201cought to\u201d and \u201cneed to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All the films and TV shows in the chart are set in the 1960s.\u00a0 But the scripts that were actually written in the 60s are more likely to use \u201cought\u201d; the 60s scripts written in the 21st century use \u201cneed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Real imperatives (\u201cStop that right now\u201d) claim moral authority. So do\u00a0ought\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0should<\/i>. But need<\/i>\u00a0is not about general principles of right and wrong.\u00a0 In the language of\u00a0need<\/i>, the speaker claims no moral authority over the person being spoken to. It\u2019s up to the listener to weigh his own needs against those of the speaker and then make his own decision.<\/p>\n

No wonder Zimmerman felt free to ignore the implications of the dispatcher\u2019s statement.\u00a0 It was not a command (\u201cDon\u2019t do that\u201d), it did not assert authority or the rightness of an action (\u201cYou should not do that\u201d).\u00a0 It did not even state what the police department needed or wanted.\u00a0 It merely said that Zimmerman\u2019s pursuit of Martin was not necessary.\u00a0 Not wrong, not ill-advised, just unnecessary.<\/p>\n

If the dispatcher had spoken in the language of the 1960s and told Zimmerman that he should not pursue Martin, would Trayvon Martin be alive?\u00a0 We cannot possibly know. But it\u2019s reasonable to think it would have increased that probability.<\/p>\n

Philip Cohen<\/a>, for what it’s worth, tells me that a TV commentator said that dispatchers have a protocol of not giving direct orders.\u00a0 If such an instruction led to a bad outcome, the department might be held accountable. \u00a0So police departments’ efforts to avoid lawsuits may also have contributed to\u00a0Martin’s death or, at least, the not-guilty verdict for Zimmerman.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dispatcher: Which entrance is that that he\u2019s heading towards? Zimmerman: The back entrance… fucking punks. Dispatcher: Are you following him? Zimmerman: Yeah. Dispatcher: Okay, don\u2019t do that. Zimmerman: Okay. If you followed the Zimmerman\/Martin killing at all, you probably recognized that this is not what the dispatcher said.\u00a0 The correct transcript is: Dispatcher: Okay, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,23384,253],"class_list":["post-56431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56437,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56431\/revisions\/56437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}