Label It

Being late made me criticize others for labeling me…

late

Hearing your friends yell “What time is it?? What time is it??” as they notice you walking into the room, 7 minutes late, is never comforting. Using my power of deduction (Sherlockian style), I quickly realize they’re betting on the time I would actually arrive to our scheduled meeting. I fall into a surly haze, brooding over that fact that my “friends” are using my habitual late coming for their entertainment. As I sit in my chair, fueled by frustration and disdain, I retreat into myself and begin to think of all the other times that I had been made fun of for my unpunctuality. I think,

“I am being labeled: Tennyson is tardy.”

No longer an observation, but a description of who I am.

It was terrible coming to the conclusion that my friends label me as “that one guy who never shows up on time.” It was as if that was all they saw me as. Some tardy fool. But that realization allowed me to start thinking about labels. Labels, as in the names and phrases we use to categorize someone in order to make some general sense of them. It’s impossible to ignore their prevalence in the world, and was impossible for me to ignore thinking about them too.

two distinct labels

I am going to pose that there are two distinct kinds of labels. The first ones I call cultural labels.

Cultural labels are the tools that allow us to make immediate guesstimates about people. They help us make sense of those around us without expending the social energy needed to know them. With cultural labels (and even labels in general) we categorize people starting from multiple simple observations that lead us to a general impression of how that person might exist in our worlds.

(While I’m still at the start of things, let me dispel a thought that could be bubbling up in your subconscious. You might say labeling people and placing them into categories is an inherently restrictive and often inaccurate way of describing people. Well, I agree. Labeling people is bad. But sometimes it is good (and useful). In fact, “labelling makes communication possible.” The point is that people are not going to stop applying labels to others and it’s fruitless to argue against their use.)

The various groups of complex thoughts and ideas that make up cultural labels form over a long period of time. These single descriptions are then associated with particular groups of people. These groups can vary wildly in size and manner of creation, but some of the most common attributes are appearance, language, and behavior. We can get a better feel for how this concept plays out by looking at examples:

• Seeing a tall black man walk through a school campus, you might be surprised to know that he speaks with an English accent and has a deep seated love for Shakespeare.
• At the Farmer’s Market on a Saturday, you take some time to watch a street performer juggle bowling pins while standing on a bed of hot rocks whistling “What’s New Pussycat.” Turns out, he’s a graduate student at the local university working toward a PhD in chemical engineering (on full scholarship).
• A yoked up gym rat would probably be assumed to be training for her next triathlon before it was revealed she was an esteemed fine artist getting ready for a demanding performance art piece.

The oddness surrounding each of these examples is revealing to the existence of cultural labels. If we weren’t surprised by these situations then we could rightly absolve from the categorization of others. But most of us cannot.

Before we move on, I would like to mention something important: cultural labels are the basis of our perceived understanding of the people around us. They merely provide us with a solid foundation to lean on when we communicate with others, especially those outside of our own personal network. They are not representative of what people actually are, which is where my second label comes in.

Emergent labels are those based off the things that people do, say or can be characterized by. I call them emergent labels because they emerge from our observations of the repeated day to day actions, interactions and habits of others. Unlike cultural labels, emergents aren’t collections of assumption about a group of people. They the specific, factual observations we make by directly interacting with a person.

These labels can actually represent who we are, not who we are perceived as. You could say she is white, he plays the bass guitar, he wears the same clothes everyday, she always has a cup of coffee in her hand. Those are all emergent labels. This actually explains why we get so offended when something like our abilities are criticized, or our hidden behaviours are pointed out, or our language use is ridiculed. We are being criticized for who we truly are, those emergent labels that people have placed on us.

Cultural and emergent labels are two separate ideas as I’ve been describing them. But as you may be realizing, I’m having a problem keeping them apart from each other. The issue is that these while these labels have specific differences, they are very closely related, dependent even. There cannot be one without the other.

codependency & characteristics

First off, cultural labels are the accumulations of various many emergent labels. They are the averages of related observations we’ve made on people; when we begin to notice trends in the emergent labels we assign people, we corral them into their own categories. All the observations we make on a daily basis influence how we see our own cultural labels.

On the flip side, cultural labels also influence how we interpret emergent labels. They are an interpretation of the ways we make meaning from our observations (our emergent labels). This unstoppable interaction between cultural and emergent labels means that they are constantly shaping and influencing one another. As we assign emergent labels, we interpret them using cultural labels. While at the same time, our cultural labels are being influenced and transformed by those same emergents. These labels wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for their ability to change over time.

This ability to change is a label’s fluidity. Fluidity is the propensity of a label to change, especially over time. With this we ask, how does a particular label change over time? What is it about labels that changes? What incites this particular change? Obviously some labels are more apt to change than others are, but no labels is absolutely static.

Consider the labels masculine and feminine. Masculinity is fairly rigid in its nature. Few movements have had much power (agency) over its definition. While it has indeed expanded, its values, ideals and characteristics today are still similar to those of a century ago.

Femininity on the other hand can be seen as being more fluid, as what it means to be feminine has changed dramatically over the last century. The femininity of the 50’s is radically different from the femininity of today. No longer are women assumed to be the proprietary caretakers of the household, they are active in the involvement of supporting the family. It seems like the labels applied to women are progressing toward more traditionally “masculine” terms like leader, strong, hardworking, innovative. Not to say there haven’t always been women that could be described as these things, but it’s only been recently that these labels have become increasingly commonplace. They are advancing to the forefront of what we consider feminine.

Applied to emergent labels, the longer we observe repeated traits of a person, the harder it will be for that label to change. If you are late to every meeting at work, you will have trouble removing the label of tardiness from your coworkers’ minds, even if you start coming to your meetings on time. Emergent labels are only as fluid as the traits they represent.

Fluidity is not to be confused with flexibility. Flexibility is the boundness of a label, as in how stretchable is its definition? Professor is a pretty rigid label and identity. A professor is one who teaches and educates at a university level. Whereas the identity of an Uncle is much more flexible in its labeling. It can be used to refer to your Mother’s brother, but it can also be used as a label for a family-like figure, a man who is close to your parents and is involved in your life despite not being related to you, one who is Uncle-like. The term Dutch Uncle is also an example of this flexibility.

So, what determines how much of an impact an emergent label can have on a cultural label? Surely, if our cultural labels come into contact with a strong enough emergent label, it’s bound to change. Same goes in the opposite direction. If the behavior of an individual changes radically enough, then their emergent labels would have to change with them. Otherwise, perhaps it’s the willingness of the labeler to accept new experiences that determines how fluid their labels truly are.

the spread of labeling

We label in order to make sense of ourselves and each other; labeling allows us to explain our position in space in relation to other people. When we use labels on others, we do this as a form of behavior prediction. It allows to predict how they will act and react towards us. The problem is, many of our predictions are wrong because they are based on biased sources and incomplete information. We are often ignorant of this fact.

By not questioning why we accept a certain label, we are ignoring its history. We should be asking ourselves: Where did the label come from? Why was it created when it was?

“We have to start searching that person’s history until we understand what led him or her to speak just so.” [1]

Every label was created to suit a particular interest at a particular time. Understanding this can allow us to redefine the ways the ways that we talk about each other.

One person may define a label differently than another person would. We should not assume that our labels are universal, because, in fact, labels are not absolute.

Thanks to Hannah Carter, Jeremy Cushman, Wanda Clarke-Morin, and the many other individuals whose thoughts, words, and deeds contributed to this essay.

Sources: [1] Jim W. Corder; Rhetoric Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Sep., 1985), pp. 18