Decomposition: A Close Look at the Lexical Features of Some Birth Words - a podcast by Sara Pixton

In this episode, Sara takes a close look at some pairings of words commonly used in birth and what lexically defines each word. Often, one word better contributes to an empowered birth experience.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, and welcome to today's episode. As I said in the introduction, we will be doing some lexical decomposition during this episode. Stay tuned to figure out what that means.

But I wanted to start by drawing your attention to my new website. I've mentioned it previously, but I want to give a little more detail about the features on the website. And the new URL for the website is www.birthwords.com. And I want to thank my friend Julie Francom, for her help in designing most of the website. Thank you so much, Julie, for your work. It looks great! And you'll see when you go to www.birthwords.com, that there are a number of resources there for you.

On the homepage, you can get a feel for the mission of Birth Words: to help people realize the power that their words carry and to consider what they're doing with their words. And then you can also see that there is, at the bottom of the homepage, a place to share your ideas. Anytime you have a thought about some topic that's at the crossover between linguistics and birth: between the words we use and how we shape our world through language; and pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, I'd love to hear your ideas. So there's a form there where you can enter your information. And if you're interested in being a guest on the podcast, I'd love to host you. If you just want to share an idea that you want me to explore, that's also an option that you can submit there. And of course, there's places where you can connect with Birth Words and follow me. My email address, birthwordspodcast@gmail.com, is listed there. You can follow me on Instagram and there's a link on the website. My handle on Instagram is @birthwords, and find me on Facebook. Again, the name of my page on Facebook is Birth Words. And I invite you to also join the Birth Words Community, where we have some discussions about the role that words play in the birth experience.

If you look back at the menu, there's a tab for Listen Now, which is where you can directly stream the podcast from the website. Of course, you can also find it on podcast apps, including Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and TuneIn. But if it works better for you to stream it directly from the website, there's a place for that.

There's also a tab about Classes. And this is an exciting place to keep checking back, because it's going to evolve over the coming months. Right now, the classes that I offer are video consultations, private video consultations, either with birth workers or expectant families. I offer consultations where we'll walk through the language that you use as you're preparing for and giving birth, if you're an expectant birthgiver, or for birth professionals, the language that we use when we're supporting those giving birth. And we'll talk through some activities and exercises to help you be reflective, intentional and empowering with the words that you choose as you work through that birth process.

Keep checking back on this page though the Classes tab. Because coming soon, there will be a webinar that you can download from that page, a one-hour webinar for birth professionals that is an adaptation of the workshop that I gave at the Evidence Based Birth conference. And I'm also working on some more robust online classes that will come with videos and workbooks for you to do along with them. That will be coming in the coming months, both for expectant families and for birth professionals. So keep checking back.

You'll also notice that on most pages, there's a place for you to join the linguistic reformation: you can sign up for the monthly newsletter. And yes, it's only once a month, but I give you some news about what's going on in the Birth Words community. That's where you'll hear about new classes, and other opportunities and new products. And it's also where you will get promo codes that are exclusive to newsletter recipients. So make sure you sign up there so you can stay up to date with everything going on in Birth Words.

You click on the About tab on the website, there's more description of what we do with Birth Words. But as I said before, we want to make sure that the language we're using as we prepare for it, birth and support others through it, we want to make sure that our language is intentional, that it's reflective, and that it's empowering. You can find more information about that there.

And the last tab is newly added: the Shop tab. Right now, the products that are for sale on my website are solely affirmation cards. I invite you to check them out, though, there's a wide range of different affirmations that you could purchase. There's also the option to purchase a custom affirmation. So check that out. You can have those shipped directly to your doorstep. Beautiful cards for you to find encouragement and inspiration as you prepare for and give birth. Keep coming back also to the products tab. I've got exciting new plans for other products that will be coming on that Shop tab.

So again, please go visit birthwords.com, share it with your friends, colleagues, and I was gonna say random pregnant people on the street, but maybe I don't know if that's well advised. In fact, probably not. But share it wherever you feel that it could be helpful and empowering to somebody who is supporting or preparing to give birth.

Now, jumping into lexical decomposition, you may have noticed that I titled this episode Decomposition, which is really a terrible word. But I figured it would be intriguing. Its clickbait. So if you clicked, I won! Right? It's actually a thing that people do in linguistics—lexical decomposition—it just sounds like rotting matter. But what we do with lexical decomposition is taking a look at the semantics of words. So in linguistics, semantics has to do with meaning, and how meaning is conveyed through words and how words differently do that job. So lexical decomposition means taking a word and breaking apart the different aspects of its meaning.

So for instance, if I say woman. Lexically decomposing that, it has the features of female and adult and human. Contrasting it with man, man also has the features of human and adult, but has the male component rather than the female. That's a basic example.

We're going to go into different pairings of words that are used during birth, and most of the pairings have one that's more empowering and one that's more disempowering for you to consider which words will help you to prepare to have a positive and empowering birth experience.

But I'm going to start off with one that is just a clarification that comes up a lot in the work that I do. And that is doula versus midwife. Now both of these are empowering roles. Both a doula and midwife want to support and empower birthgivers. But sometimes, I say that I'm a doula and people think that I'm saying that I'm a midwife. So I just wanted to clarify: doula and midwife have in common the lexical features that they are support people for birthgivers. However, while a doula provides emotional, physical, and informational support, a midwife is the one who gives medical support and can additionally give that emotional, physical, and informational support. But a doula cannot give medical support. It's not in a doula’s training to do so. So there's your clarification between doula and midwife.

A midwife can be seen as your medical care provider throughout your pregnancy. Midwives assess maternal and fetal well-being. They can monitor heart tones. They can do vaginal exams if requested or chosen by the birthgiver. They can assist in the birth of the baby and by actually catching the baby. Whereas doulas are going to be giving more of that emotional physical support, telling, giving lots of affirming words and phrases, lots of affirming back rubs and hip squeezes, and helping partners support the birthgiver. And that is the role of the doula. And of course pointing them towards information, encouraging communication with the care provider, who has that medical roll as well. So there's the difference for you.

Next, I want to talk about, like I said, we're going to go into some more terms, one of which is a little bit disempowering, or maybe a lot, and the other which is more empowered. And I'm going to switch up which one comes first… to keep you on your toes.

So I'm going to start with the first term, which is probably more typical in most circles and maybe one that you're more familiar with and then contrast it with another lexical term that has more empowering features. So the first is patient versus client. The hospital is the most common place to give birth in the US. And I'm not arguing that that should or shouldn't be. But one thing that happens in the hospital is that the birthgiver is given the title of patient. Some midwives and most doulas that I know choose to use instead the term client. So let's look at the lexical differences between client and patient. Both terms have the feature of a person receiving support or care. A patient however, is seen as ill or otherwise, maladied and infirm, more passive, whereas a client implies that they made the informed choice to hire the professional, and that the professional is working for them and their needs. So consider whether you want to use the term patient or client when you're referring to yourself in your situation as during pregnancy and birth, or as you're supporting others in pregnancy and birth.

The next one is consent versus choice. We talk a lot in the medical world about informed consent. And of course, it is very important to have conversations with people receiving care so that they know the risks and benefits and alternatives to any treatment that is proposed any intervention any option that is proposed. Sometimes we call that informed consent. Another way to think of it is informed choice. Informed consent has lexical implications. The lexical components of informed means that it was—information was given. Consent means that, that a choice was made but more like a choice was made by another and then followed through with, conceded to. Whereas the term informed choice, again, you have the aspect of information being given, but choice is a more active word that puts the birthgiver in the role of being the one making a decision, rather than conceding to a decision already made.

Let's take a look at the words pain versus pressure. Many women use the word pain to describe the process of labor and birth. Others choose to use other words like intensity or pressure. And I'm not here to tell you one way is right or the other or that you won't experience pain during birth. But let's take a look at what these words--let's lexically decompose these words, pain and pressure. Both have a lexical component of intensity. That's implied in the meaning of both words. Pain, however, seems to also have an indication that something is wrong or abnormal, whereas pressure doesn't have that feature. So some women choose to use the word pressure rather than pain because it doesn't include that lexical feature of an indication that something is going wrong, rather that an intense physical process is happening.

Here's another interesting pairing. When you talk about your water being broken or breaking during birth, we can use the word break or the term release. So let's take a look at those two words lexically. Break and release. Both of them have the feature of something being there and then letting go. But the word break has the sense that it ought to be that way, that it is broken. That it was whole and now it is broken, whereas release lacks that lexical component. It seems more that maybe it's a process that is supposed to occur. So sometimes, we can choose to say that my water is released, especially if it happened naturally and physiologically without medical intervention, versus water being broken. And so that's an interesting term to consider.

Let's talk about one last pairing of birth words and their lexical decomposition. Allow versus encourage. The context that these are typically used in birth is sometimes a birthgiver will say, my doctor allows me to labor or allows me to push in whatever position I desire, my doctor will allow me to have intermittent fetal monitoring, versus encourage in those situations. You could also say, my doctor encourages me to labor in whatever position is comfortable or to give birth in whatever position feels right. My doctor encourages me to have intermittent fetal monitoring, etc. And there's a big difference between the lexical components of these two words. Allow and encourage both it have the component of an outside person in some position of authority or trust, promoting an activity on the part of the other. However, allow has the additional component that that position that that person in a position of trust is in a position of control. And that their authority—allow—gives them that position of control in which they can allow things to happen or not to happen. Whereas encourage, while it still has the component of a position of trust, maybe even authority, does not have that component of control, but rather of encouragement of thus giving the encouraged more of a sense of power and control. Whereas allowing takes the control from the birthgiver and gives it to the authority figure, encouraging gives some of that authority to the birthgiver, to be a decision maker.

So interesting. Okay, fun. Like I say this a lot, but I could do this all day. If you're interested in doing this all day, call me and we'll set up a time to just chat. But I hope this gave you some things to think about with the terms that we use when we talk about birth. They really matter. They make a difference. And sometimes the terms that we use, we do so so subconsciously and without thought that we're not considering the implications that our language has. So I encourage you, whether you're preparing to give birth, whether you're supporting a birthgiver, remind yourself or remind the birthgiver of her role as a birthgiver, an active, not a passive participant in the process of bringing life into the world.

 

Outro:

Did words play an important role in your birth experience? If you're interested in sharing your story on the podcast, go to www.birthwords.com. If you're liking what you hear on the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast app. For more resources about harnessing the power of words to benefit the birth experience, visit birthwords.com

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Further episodes of Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth

Further podcasts by Sara Pixton

Website of Sara Pixton