Those possibilities are not only how we think and what we think is possible, but how we feel and how we are placed affectively in the world with others and in relation to ourselves. Worsham studies how language transforms events, and she is particularly interested in the relationship between language and violence and emotion. In fact, she believes that violence is the most important public health issue in the world. She wants her students to ask questions about where violence comes from, what perpetuates it and what role language plays in inculcating a way of thinking and feeling that are preconditions for violence. Author Toni Morrison, in her Nobel lecture, says that representations of violence are not just representations.
Language has a way of doing violence.
I mean language in a very broad sense, the language of everyday life, the language that is the foundation of our institutions, the language of pedagogy. I'm interested in particular emotions, and I'm interested in shaming rituals and the effects of the constant barrage of shame on the individual at the social level to produce outbursts of a righteous, humiliated rage. Righteousness here doesn't mean that violence is justified. But you can understand how someone who's been systematically denigrated over time can just lose it entirely. Students go into the community to find writing projects, which ensures that their writing will have meaning to them.