Rethinking the Way I Speak About Cancer

Words are powerful, and the way we use them says a lot about the way we think. It's time to rethink the way we speak about cancer.

BY Bonnie Annis

PUBLISHED March 01, 2018

Bonnie Annis is a breast cancer survivor, diagnosed in 2014 with stage 2b invasive ductal carcinoma with metastasis to the lymph nodes. She is an avid photographer, freelance writer/blogger, wife, mother and grandmother.

From the time a child is born, words are working to escape from their vocal cords. Infants cry when uncomfortable and quickly learn they have the ability to have their needs met. As the infant grows older, crying isn’t the only sound a child makes. Soon cooing and giggling begin. The child’s natural desire to be heard is evident. Toddlers quickly learn to form simple words by mimicking their parents and in so doing, learn to use those words for their benefit. As the child grows, the vocabulary increases and soon language brings words to life.

The spoken word is powerful. A conglomeration of words pressed down, shaken together and poured out form a thought. Those thoughts, when shared verbally, allow us to communicate with one another and while it’s possible to communicate without the necessity of words, words help the listener understand more clearly.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, there are over 250,000 distinct words listed. The dictionary, however, does not contain all the words in our vocabularies today. There are so many forms of slang that it would be nearly impossible to capture all of the words used in one place.

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