PEDIATRICS Vol. 56 No. 2 August 1975, pp. 172
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"THINGNESS"

N. Postman 1 and C. Weingartner 1

1 Teaching as a Subversive Activity

The structure of our language is relentless in forcing upon us "thing" conceptions. In English, we can transform any process or relationship into a "thing" by the simple expedient of naming "it" into a noun.

We have done this with "rain" and "explosions," with "waves" and "clouds," with "thought" and "life." Professor Allen Walker Read in researching the origin and uses of the word "psychosomatic" provides us with a recent example. The word was evidently coined to express a relationship and process, explicitly to deter us from thinking that illness can always be categorized as either physical or mental. What happened is typical. We began to use "psychosomatic" as a synonym for "mental." ("Give it to me straight, Doc. Am I sick or is it only psychosomatic?")

Even the term "the whole child," in spite of its good intentions is as static a metaphor as any of the others. "Child" is a "thing" word, and there is no stage of human growth that is more visibly a process than "childhood."