Language Language is important in everyday discourse, but nowhere more so than when emotions are raw and so many people have suffered profoundly for decades. The Senate Report noted the importance of language (paras 1.9-1.14), and the reference group agreed. The reference groups first task was to determine how to refer to the person who gave birth to the baby. Mother would appear to be the obvious answer. But society uses a number of adjectives with that word when the baby has been adopted by others. They include birth, life, natural, biological and relinquishing. The reference group decided that they were all unnecessary and inappropriate. In addition, relinquishing conveys to many people the concept of some act or decision on behalf of the mother to agree, or at least not disagree, with the adoption. In forced adoption that certainly did not occur. Having decided upon mother, the terms father and adopted person or adopted people followed. At the beginning of the apology the word babies was used. Also, grandparents, siblings and extended family required little discussion. There were other aspects of language which were also decided upon. Experiences is preferable to stories, the latter connoting fiction or over-statement for some people. Words such as betrayed, kidnapped and abducted were avoided as being too emotive. Illegal was considered to encompass all those concepts as well as conveying, in one word, one of the fundamental features of these events.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 12:18:22 +0000
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