The Mighty is a website with resources for those facing disability, disease, and mental illness. In an essay there, Kyle Freeman, who lost her brother to suicide, argues that the term commit suicide is a source of unnecessary pain and stigma for the survivors. The term commit, she says, is a relic of the days when suicide was legally regarded as a criminal act, rather than a last resort amid terrible pain. She prefers the term dying by suicide. Cultural historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, has written that the phrase dying by suicide is preferable, but for a different reason: it’s more blunt, and “doesn’t let death hide behind other words.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Another Name for “Committing Suicide””
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
I’ve been following a discussion about language online recently that’s pretty sad and serious,
But I think it’s really useful.
This is on the website called The Mighty.
This is a website where people discuss issues about disability and disease and mental illness.
And Kyle Freeman wrote an essay on there.
She lost her brother to suicide several years ago.
And she had some interesting thoughts about the language we use to discuss suicide.
She wrote,
As time passes and the shock subsides,
I’ve discovered that I bristle each time I hear the expression committed suicide.
Historically, in the United States and beyond, the act of suicide was deemed a crime.
Until as recently as 1963, six states still considered attempted suicide a criminal act.
Thankfully, laws have changed, but our language has not,
And the residue of shame associated with the committal of a genuine crime remains attached to suicide.
My brother did not commit a crime.
He resorted to suicide, which he perceived in his unwell mind
To be the only possible solution to his tremendous suffering.
So to say that someone committed suicide feels offensive to me, and I’m not easily offended.
I don’t judge people for using this expression.
Until August 17, 2007, I did the same, but now I don’t, and I humbly ask that you consider the same.
When you have occasion to talk about suicide, please try to refer to someone dying by suicide.
And she argues that by shifting our language around suicide, we have the power to reduce some of the shame carried by the survivors of suicide.
And Grant, the discussion that followed in the comments was really interesting to me.
A lot of people were saying, oh, you’re parsing this expression too closely.
You’re breaking it down too much and focusing on the language too much.
And other people were saying, hey, you know, it bothers her and it probably bothers other people.
Why not respect that?
Do you have any thoughts about that?
I do.
I think dying by suicide is a great replacement.
And it doesn’t have what I sometimes feel when people have these essays where they want to change the language because there’s something that bothers them.
A lot of times their suggestions are weak or tinged with another mistake or are not really fully addressing the problem.
Dying by suicide, to me, sounds like a great replacement that you can’t argue with.
Really?
Yeah, it does.
It sounds like, to me, it’s grammatical for one thing.
It’s perfect English for another.
And we do talk about dying by cop.
You ever heard this expression, right?
Suicide by cop.
Suicide by cop.
And it has an echo of somebody seeking out ways to die and choosing suicide when they could have chosen another way.
That’s really interesting.
At first I was thinking that way, and then I was looking at some of the comments,
And some of the people were saying, you’re just making too much of the word commit.
Yes, you can commit a crime, but you can also commit to another person.
You can also commit to a cause or something like that.
It’s really a benign word.
But then I went back to thinking the way that you were thinking about it.
And I think my feelings are pretty much summed up by Jennifer Michael Hecht, the cultural historian, who wrote the book Stay, A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.
I wrote her for her thoughts about this, and I wanted to share them.
She was suggesting the same thing, that commit is a word that has a life outside of just the idea of crime.
So she doesn’t think that that’s really a big deal.
But then she added, it’s a calcified phrase.
That is, I don’t think people quite hear its components anymore.
And whenever that happens, I’m in favor of changing it up.
Lately, I avoid using commit suicide because I know that some people have said they don’t like it.
And I’m not interested in distressing anyone over the issue.
I think dying by suicide is better for a different reason because it’s more blunt and doesn’t let death hide behind other words.
Oh, that’s beautiful.
Doesn’t let death hide behind other words.
Yeah.
And we do find that again and again throughout English and different euphemisms for death.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Where we, it’s a fact that we will all face.
Right.
But we hide it until that last moment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I like that.
I liked the way that she’s suggesting we honor the survivor’s experience,
The fact that their loved one died.
But I’m sure we’ll have lots of responses to this.
We’d love to hear what you think about this term.
Is committed suicide an offensive term to you?
Is it uncomfortable?
Does it bother you?
Let us know.
You can email us.
The address is words@waywordradio.org
Or call us 877-929-9673.
