The Language of Intoxication
Mar. 23, 2009 by Lisa Currie
What words we choose can have a powerful influence on how we view almost anything — history, a political situation, a person, even our own behaviors and the behaviors of others. The meaning we assign to those words can also influence our perception. For example, the meaning one person assigns to the phrase “hooking up” might be very different than the meaning their potential sexual partner assigns it. This can lead to confusion, misunderstanding and more.
When it comes to the language of intoxication and drinking, University of Missouri researchers identified two areas of significant interest. The language used by different genders — in this study defined only as male and female — varies greatly, as does the language and by the experts vs. the drinkers studied. WebMD reported on the study:
Alcohol researchers often rely on objective measures, which don’t reflect subjective feelings or experiences, Levitt tells WebMD.
One problem is that people perceive the word “drunk” in many ways.
He and his colleagues studied 290 college students, ranging in age from 17 to 24. They later questioned another sample of 145 undergraduates. In both groups, most students described themselves as “moderate” drinkers.
“We found that intoxication-related terms reflected either moderate or heavy levels of intoxication, and that ‘drunk’ reflected a level of intoxication somewhere between moderate and heavy,” Levitt says. “Men tended to use heavy-intoxication words more than women, which were also relatively more forceful in their tone, such as ‘hammered’.
“Women tended to use moderate intoxication words more than men, which were also relatively more euphemistic, such as ‘tipsy.’”
But their use of the word “tipsy” reflected an average of four drinks over two hours, which researchers say meets the definition of binge drinking for women but not for men.
When males in the study used words like “trashed” or “wasted,” it reflected about eight drinks over two hours, Levitt tells WebMD.
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrealmuse/4757004/