The Challenge of Change

Adapted from the article by Lethea F. Erz, PhD, “The Challenge of Language: Teaching the Language of Partnership.”  It is taken from The Partnership Way: New Tools for Living and Learning, 2nd ed. by Riane Eisler and David Loye.

In linguist Suzette Haden Elgin's visionary novel, Native Tongue (1984), women create their own language to express female perceptions and concerns which are not represented in their dominator culture's common language. It eventually causes completely unforeseen changes in consciousness, which affect every aspect of their lives. Trying to understand how this could have happened, one of the characters plaintively asks: "How can you plan for a new reality when you don't have the remotest idea what it would be like?" The answer is, of course, that you can't - no science exists that can predict a new-paradigm world from within the old one. So perhaps we can't completely predict what far-ranging effects a language of partnership might have on our individual consciousness or on our society. But we can see how the language and culture of domination and violence reinforce each other, and how continuing to speak in these terms can only bring us more of the same.

And we can ask: what might children be like who've learned to speak in terms of cooperation instead of competition, of creating and nurturing and healing instead of fighting and defeating and dominating? We can try presenting them with words and pictures (and experiences) of peace and pleasure and partnership, of art and music and dance, of love and sharing and caring - and we can watch what happens. If we can even begin to imagine a world which respects and celebrates all life's diversity-and if we can educate our children with words and images and metaphors that describe this vision, perhaps our children will be the ones to bring our vision to life!

Some Common Words and Phrases and their Partnership Alternatives: