What with Karla Homolka being in the news again, I have occasionally seen media outlets referring to Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey as "schoolgirls."
I find this strange for a couple of reasons. First of all, the word schoolgirl is long and redundant. Anyone in our culture who is young enough to be referred to as a girl is going to be in school. There are many synonyms that are both shorter and more neutral - student, girl, teen, youth - and I can't imagine any situation in which a person would prefer to be referred to as "schoolgirl" rather than "student".
Secondly, the semantic value of the word "schoolgirl" above and beyond "girl who is in school" (which could be just as easily communicated by student, teen, youth, girl) is limited to two negative connotations: trivializing (giggling like a schoolgirl), and objectifying (like one might find in a description of pornography). Both these connotations are clearly inappropriate in this context. There is no good reason to trivialize the victims of brutal torture and murder, and that very sense of objectification is what led to Bernardo and Holmolka choosing to abduct, torture and murder them in the first place.
I realize that not everyone in the world gives as much thought to the implications of word choices as I do (that's why they pay me the big money), but I would think that journalists would be one group of people for whom word choice is an important everyday issue. So what on earth are they hoping to achieve by using the word schoolgirl?
7 comments:
That is such a good point. I hadn't though about it before, but I really agree.
I often see children who are in tragic circumstances referred to as "little"--i.e. "Little Erica has cancer, little Jessica was rescued after falling down a well, he kidnapped little Karen from her bedroom," etc.
I think that is done to put extra emphasize on their youth and especially the perception of innocence.
It's difficult to apply "little" to teenagers, because most of them aren't really little anymore, at least not in the way a 2-year-old or a 5-year-old is little.
But they *are* still considered children and still innocent victims of a brutal crime. I think schoolgirl conveys that idea more strongly than student, girl, teen, youth or most other alternatives.
I think schoolgirl an old-fashioned sort of word, but I think the usage is intentional, to imply that youth and innocence. It brings to mind pigtails and skirts and carefree giggles. It is designed to evoke an emotional response and not intended to be a neutral term.
I guess the target audience is older than me then, because whenever I see "schoolgirl" (or "little" to describe any child over the age of 6), the first thing that comes to my mind is how much the kid would hate being called that.
With the Bernardo-Homolka case in particular, it wasn't that the victims were so young that evokes an emotional response in me anyway, it's that the victims bascially could have been me (it was the same geographical area where I grew up, and they were only a year or two older than me). Which is why the word "schoolgirl" really bothers me in this case - if I had been brutally tortured and murdered 10 years ago, I would hate to be memorialized as something so trivial as a schoolgirl, and I would hate to be memorialized by the same word that is used to describe Paul Bernardo's fetish object.
I guess the target audience is older than me then, because whenever I see "schoolgirl" (or "little" to describe any child over the age of 6), the first thing that comes to my mind is how much the kid would hate being called that.
I think you're right, on both counts.
With the Bernardo-Homolka case in particular, it wasn't that the victims were so young that evokes an emotional response in me anyway, it's that the victims bascially could have been me (it was the same geographical area where I grew up, and they were only a year or two older than me).
But, as you said, most of the target audience is probably older and doesn't identify with the victims as much as you do. Which is why I suspect the media try to portray them to that older group with a term that brings to mind as much youth, innocence and vulnerability as possible.
Maybe my speculation is not completely on the mark, but, as you said in the original post, word choice is important to journalists. I am sure, at least at the start, that "schoolgirl" was chosen for a reason and the usage was not random or accidental.
So, if Bernardo and Holmolka chose to abduct, torture and murder those people because (in the first place) he objectified them, like one might find in a description of pornography, and, the approval/encouragement to objectify (like one might find in a description of pornography) comes through usage of the term "schoolgirl," is it your point that Bernardo and Homolka may not have abducted, tortured, and murdered those people if he had thought or spoken of them as "students" or "teens" or "youths" or "girls" instead of as "schoolgirls?" If that is not your point, then, is it that Linguistic semantics are the first cause of eventuating into being a rapist and/or murderer?
Two things come to mind ... it's an unrecognized fossil from the age when a 'girl' in the media could be anything up to thirty and beyond, so 'schoolgirl' fixed the age at less than eighteen.
And is the epithet 'little' used as liberally for boys. Bet not.
But I'm probably showing my era, too.
No, actually my point is the exact opposite. Bernardo and Homolka obviously did not think of their victims as human beings with thoughts and feelings, but rather objectified them. In the trial back in 1993/94, it came up that Bernardo had, in Homolka's own words, a "schoolgirl fetish". Kristen French, at least, was abducted specifically because she fit Bernardo's idea of a "schoolgirl." I remember this distinctly because I was 12/13 years old at the time and had never before heard of such a thing.
So my point is that it bothers me that the media would describe the victims using the same term that Bernardo/Homolka used to objectify them. I think the media should be making a deliberate linguistic choice to be more respectful to the victims than Bernardo/Homolka were. The victims deserve to be memorialized positively if possible, or if not, neutrally - not by the same word by which they were objectified.
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