I received notice in e-mail to look at an article by Jennifer Warner published on WEB MD HEALTH
entitled SWEAT OR SWEET? WORDS AFFECT SENSE OF SMELL. I received the e-mail from one of my special ed buddies. The gist of the article is that the right word choice can affect whether a subject perceives an odor in a positive or a negative way.

I think that one of the things I have learned during my time in special ed is that word choice matters a lot (and this should have a lot of meaning since it is coming from me, a linguistics and English major). In special ed, you can often soften an inevitable and hard decision for a parent by your word choice. Hearing what a child can do is more meaningful to a parent than hearing what he or she cannot accomplish. And hearing why a certain placement is the right choice is often easier than telling them why a mainstream classroom would not be best.

Madeleine L'Engle, one of my all-time favorite authors, says that we should pick the simplest words we can to describe things, saving the more complex words for when nothing else will do. I think that as educators, and certainly as people, we should pick the most positive words as well.

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