Why We Need to Master Verbal Self-Defense
Angie Beaudry
04/21/10
Mr. D. Albright
Psychology 101
Paper Project
Why We Need to Master Verbal Self-Defense
This is a tense and touchy world we’re living in, always ready to flare up into physical violence and coercive force of every kind; it seems to me the need for verbal self-defense skills is growing more urgent everyday. We need verbal self-defense “literacy”, for which both sets of verbal self-defense skills—those needed for establishing a language environment where hostile language is rare, and those needed for dealing with hostile language when it can’t be avoided are indispensible. The short answer to this question, for children of any age, is that you teach the verbal self-defense techniques by modeling them. When hostile language is flying around in the language environment and the kids are there, you use verbal self-defense to defuse that language, head it off, respond to it, or whatever else is needed—so the kids can see, hear, and feel how it’s done. One of the goals of verbal self-defense is to communicate in such a way that hostile language environment; you use those techniques around the kids too, and your wholesome language behavior becomes part of the raw data they observe. They learn the grammar of verbal self-defense in exactly the same they would learn the grammar of fighting and being verbally abusive by observing adults do that. You don’t take little kids and give them formal lessons on how they use their own language acquisition abilities to follow your example. When you have mastered physical martial arts skills, you’re well prepared for physical conflict. If muggers try to attack you on the street, if you find yourself involved in a fight in a bar or at the beach, if you see someone physically abusing a weaker person, you’re ready and able to deal with that. This is the martial art of verbal self-defense. You might not have needed it in parts of the world where life is brutal and violent for almost everyone. But
04/21/10
Mr. D. Albright
Psychology 101
Paper Project
Why We Need to Master Verbal Self-Defense
This is a tense and touchy world we’re living in, always ready to flare up into physical violence and coercive force of every kind; it seems to me the need for verbal self-defense skills is growing more urgent everyday. We need verbal self-defense “literacy”, for which both sets of verbal self-defense skills—those needed for establishing a language environment where hostile language is rare, and those needed for dealing with hostile language when it can’t be avoided are indispensible. The short answer to this question, for children of any age, is that you teach the verbal self-defense techniques by modeling them. When hostile language is flying around in the language environment and the kids are there, you use verbal self-defense to defuse that language, head it off, respond to it, or whatever else is needed—so the kids can see, hear, and feel how it’s done. One of the goals of verbal self-defense is to communicate in such a way that hostile language environment; you use those techniques around the kids too, and your wholesome language behavior becomes part of the raw data they observe. They learn the grammar of verbal self-defense in exactly the same they would learn the grammar of fighting and being verbally abusive by observing adults do that. You don’t take little kids and give them formal lessons on how they use their own language acquisition abilities to follow your example. When you have mastered physical martial arts skills, you’re well prepared for physical conflict. If muggers try to attack you on the street, if you find yourself involved in a fight in a bar or at the beach, if you see someone physically abusing a weaker person, you’re ready and able to deal with that. This is the martial art of verbal self-defense. You might not have needed it in parts of the world where life is brutal and violent for almost everyone. But