While language is how we communicate, it also both shapes and reflects how we think. Language and thought use categories, which are man-made containers to hold a variety of things that have something in common. Naming or labelling something puts it into a container with other things that may have little in common besides the container itself! For example, calling a person tall glosses over an undefined range of heights; it indiscriminately applies whatever positive or negative associations might be conveyed by the label. Green covers an undefined range of colour shades, with no distinction among the infinite number of green things it could refer to. Yet, each person hearing the word ‘green’ will likely associate with it something definite—a particular colour or image (e.g., a freshly mown lawn)—which may not correspond to the shade or thing imagined by someone else because of their association. This mismatch between tangible specific experiences and the generality of terms and categories is both a strength and a weakness of language.

The strength lies in the power of abstraction, which is the process of identifying that common essence of otherwise unrelated things. Colour is an abstraction, which does not refer to a particular hue or object but to colour perception, in which a whole range of wavelengths and things can be distinguished. The use of such abstractions enables logic. “All men are mortal” places “men” (an abstraction) in the category of another abstraction. By putting Socrates in the container labelled men, we can conclude that he too belongs in the larger container labelled mortal. On the other hand, “Socrates is mortal; all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is a man” is not a valid deduction, even if the conclusion happens to be true. (The category mortal contains other things besides men.)

Through the power of abstraction, words are used to treat individuals as members of a category, without regard to myriad other properties that have nothing to do with that category. As well as being mortal, Socrates might be wise or foolish, tall or squat, rich or poor. Singling out his mortality reveals little of his other qualities. (It is also uninformative because we assume that everyone is mortal through no fault of their own.) On the other hand, accusing someone of being a communist, terrorist, or pedophile is highly informative even if false, because of the stigma we bring to those categories. One ceases even to be interested in the person’s other qualities.

Insidiously, such categories remain without clear definition, subject to our wild imagination. What exactly is a communist? Does it mean belonging to an outlawed political party that proposes violent overthrow of the government? Or does it mean a belief that people should share their wealth? Instead of meaningfully defining the category, the use of such labels simply stigmatizes the other guy as bad. One can get closer to the truth by focusing on the actual behavior that led to the accusation, and its context. Often this reveals that the label was not applied to warn others against real danger so much as to impose a prejudice or inflict damage on the accused for a personal agenda.

While subject to interpretation, behavior tends to be tangible and a matter of fact. In contrast, categories and labels are nebulous and subject to abuse. We call others names so as not to be troubled by the finer points of who they are on the whole or in other circumstances, or not to feel obliged to consider their arguments seriously. We label them if they do or say something we don’t like, fixing outside time. They may deserve our disapproval in that instance, but then we think of them forever as “that sort of person.” Unkindly, we imprison them in a container of our own creation, which becomes for us their identity. But the pointing finger also points back at itself, rigidifying its owner.