Challenging Labels

Practice

1. Challenging labels.

This is rather similar to the ‘Why’ technique described in a previous section. When one challenges a name, a label, or a concept one is not asking for the term to be defined. One is questioning the use of the term as a term, not asking for its justification or explanation.

An article is taken from a newspaper or magazine and read out to the students. If there are enough copies they can be asked to read it for themselves. The task is to pick out certain labels which seem to be used too glibly. Each of these labels is underlined. It may be a label or a concept that is fundamental to the whole argument or it may be a label that is used very often. For instance in an article on management the labels picked out might include ‘productivity’, ‘profitability’, ‘coordination’. Each student makes a list of such cliché words and at the end the lists are compared and discussed. The discussion is focused on how these labels are being used in too convenient a fashion. The point is not that the labels are right or wrong but that it is too convenient to write ‘profitability’ whenever one has to justify something. In another article the cliché words might be ‘justice’, ‘equality’, ‘human rights’. In addition to discussing why the label is being used too glibly one also discusses the danger of using labels in this way.

2. Labels and discussion

Two students are asked to debate a subject while the rest of the students listen. At the end the other students comment on the use of labels during the discussion. It is enough that the students become aware of the easy use of labels. It is not a matter of deriding whether the label was justified nor a matter of commenting on debating techniques.

Possible subjects for such a discussion might include:

Are women as creative as men?

How far is obethence a good thing?

One should only learn subjects which are going to be immediately useful.

If you don’t get what you want you should go on trying.

Parents should help children with their homework.

Children should dress as they like at school.

Some people are different from others.

3. Dropping labels

Here it is a matter of seeing how well one can do without a particular name or label or concept. The label is dropped completely and the article is rewritten without the use of that label. It is convenient to do this with newspaper articles that make much use of some particular label. In commenting on the result the teacher notes whether dropping the label has caused the thing to be looked at in a different way or whether the label has been replaced by a cliché phrase instead.

4. Dropping labels in discussion

Here one student is asked to discuss a subject. Then another student is asked to explain what the first student has said but without using some particular label used by the first student. This type of thing can also be done with a debate between students with both sides forbidden to use some label. It can also be done with only one of the sides forbidden to use the label.

Possible subjects for discussion:

War (with label of fighting dropped).

Car racing (with label of fast, speedy, etc dropped).

Walking in the rain (with label of wet dropped).

School (with label of teaching dropped).

Police (with label of law dropped).

5. Rephrasing.

Instead of dropping a concept label in the course of a discussion or rewriting an article one practises doing it with single sentences. This is rather more simple to do than the previous exercise and it can be very useful practice. The teacher selects a series of sentences which may be taken from newspapers or just made up. The sentences are read out or written up on the board. The label which is to be dropped is underlined. The students can then offer suggestions in open class as to how the sentence could be rephrased without that word. Alternatively they can each produce a version of the sentence and at the end the different versions can be compared. The important point with this exercise is that the meaning must be kept as intact as possible.

The type of sentence which could be used is as follows:

Children should be as tidy as possible in their homework.

Everyone has the right to equal opportunity in education.

In a democracy government is by the will of the people.

If a thief is caught stealing he may be sent to prison.

Strawberry ice cream tastes better than vanilla.

If you drop a plate on the floor it will break.

The difficulty with this type of exercise is that very often one simply gets synonyms. Thus in the above examples one might well get ‘careful’, or ‘neat’ instead of the word ‘tidy’. One cannot really refuse to accept synonyms for the dividing line is very difficult between what is a genuine synonym and what is a different way of looking at the situation. So one accepts synonyms but goes on further and asks for further ways of putting things. Instead of refusing them one tries to exhaust synonyms.

6. Headlines

This is very similar to the previous exercise. Instead of sentences a series of headlines is taken from the newspapers. The task is to rephrase the entire headline so that no one word is the same as before and yet the meaning is the same. It is necessary to choose headlines which do not have specific labels in them. For instance the headline ‘Ribofillo’ wins Derby’ would be difficult to rephrase unless one were allowed to say, ‘Favourite triumphs in classic Epsom race’, but this would imply that one knew Ribofillo to be the favourite. One has to allow some licence in this respect.

7. New labels

Since communication is so very important one does not really want to encourage students to develop their own special labels for things. One can however have an open class session in which the students are asked to put forward ideas which they feel are:

1. Improperly classified.

2. Left out by existing labels.

For instance someone may feel that a hovercraft is not really an aeroplane or a car but something special. Someone else might feel that ‘guilty’ and ‘innocent’ are too sharp a division and that there should be room for a person who is technically guilty but innocent as far as intention goes (or technically innocent but actually guilty.)

Perhaps there ought to be a special label for something which is not ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’ instead of having to call it ordinary. Perhaps there ought to be a special label to cover the phrase, ‘the way you look at something’. Perhaps there ought to be a special label for something that was going well at the moment, but was clearly headed for disaster. Perhaps mere ought to be a special label for something that was not entirely an accident nor was it entirely someone’s fault but a mixture of the two.