In SPoR, the beauty of the hyphen is critical. The hyphen is a part of speech that creates combinations and compounds words into one. This should be well-known. You don’t need to be long-winded about it. And, the hyphen is user-friendly. See what I mean?

The beauty of the hyphen is not only that it joins and compounds but also creates a dialectic between two things. It creates a third force between two things where something happens and this is open-ended.

In language we often join more than two things together such as daughter-in-law and each hyphen brings together important parts of any relationship. The hyphen is a relational/semiotic-method/tool and is just as critical as metaphor. Just as we live by metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson) we also live by the hyphen.

In SPoR, Linguistics is critical to how we understand risk. For example:

In our book Following-Leading in Risk, A Humanising Dynamic (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-risk/) we intentionally join following and leading together. Moreso, we intentionally focus on the participles (active nouns) of following and leading. It is so important that we see both as: combined, active and reciprocal. This is how following-leading should be, not one or the other but both in movement with each other. The dialectic and moving space between following and leading are mutual, inter-dependent, co-dependent, reciprocal and intra-dependent.

One of the most important uses of the hyphen in history was by Martin Buber in his wonderful book i-thou (https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs21/Buber-c1923-I_And_Thou-ocr-tu.pdf). According to Buber, there is no such thing as an individual, all of life and being is social.

In SPoR, we like to magnify the hyphen to think a bit more about what is going in it. This was done beautifully in Aneta and Brian’s book Real Meeting. (https://www.embodied-leadership.eu/books/ )

What the hyphen brings to Mind is the importance of movement. When we enter the hyphen we move towards the other or they move towards us or perhaps we ‘meet’ in the middle.

It is in that ‘meeting’ where e-motion (the energy to move) happens and that’s how we learn, not about data but about being in relationship.

When we understand Language as a Social Semiotic, (for more read Halliday –https://archive.org/details/languageassocial0000hall), the power of language comes alive and we stop speaking nonsense to people in safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-experts-in-speaking-nonsense-to-people/) like ‘pre-accident investigations’ and 1% safer’. Wouldn’t it be great have less spin and noise in the safety sector?

If you want to learn more about how Linguistics shapes meaning you can register to study in our next free module series: Philosophy and Risk: https://safetyrisk.net/philosophy-for-risk-and-safety-free-workshops/