The casual ultra-violence of the English language

One of the most impactful books I’ve ever read was Nonviolent Communication by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. The concept is surprisingly hard to summarize, but one example is replacing accusation-style language (yes, including popular phrases like “You made me feel…”) with “nonviolent” alternatives like, “During our conversation, I felt my need for respect was going unmet.” As you can see from this example, NVC requires the speaker to self-reflect before communicating and speak about their own experience rather than what most of us do fluently: putting the emphasis on the person we are speaking to and their actions, etc. At some point I started paying more attention to actual violent phrases people use. I mean truly violent ones. Not the subtle violence of “you made me feel,” but things people commonly say like “he ripped me a new one.” <a href="https://karinwildheart.medium.com/the-casual-ultra-violence-of-the-english-language-6ce5c75f2e83">Read More</a>