The importance of words: revising the social insect lexicon
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Insectes Sociaux
EDITORIAL
The importance of words: revising the social insect lexicon M. D. Breed1 Received: 24 July 2020 / Revised: 24 August 2020 / Accepted: 3 September 2020 © International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI) 2020
Abstract With the goal of creating a more open and inclusive scientific culture in the study of social insects, suggestions are made about word choice in publications on social insects. Scientists must acknowledge that the use of words with major human cultural associations can deter students and colleagues from engaging our field, and that students may feel emotionally harmed by the use of words like “slave” in scientific contexts. Specific reference in this commentary is made to the applications of slavery, caste, race, and social parasite, which have been used to describe aspects social insect biology. Cleptotecton, meaning stolen work, is suggested as a substitute term for slave, and cleptotectonic for slave-making. The use of geographic descriptors is also discussed. Better, and less culturally loaded, vocabulary is available for these concepts, and authors should reflect on the impacts of word choice on the community of social insect scientists. Keywords Lexicon · Vocabulary · Metaphor · Slavery · Caste · Race · Social parasite Some commonly used words in the vocabulary of the social insect literature, such as slave, social parasite and caste, could have negative connotations in human social interactions. This language could severely impact people as they learn about the field by triggering negative emotions, cultural (Eyerman 2004) or generational trauma, and may be perceived as outrightly hateful. These words may also prevent scientists from pursuing research that may become emotionally loaded because of the terminology or even drive students from the field (Herbers 2006, 2007; Hoefele 2019; Herbers 2020). This speaks deeply to the importance of well-considered word choices in our speaking and writing. Here I argue for the importance of increased attention by authors and editors to the language choices made when discussing social insect biology. I offer these thoughts as a suggestion for self-assessment and in the hope that we can do better as scientists, teachers, and authors. Key to my argument is the concept that words used to describe specific attributes of human societies, such as slave, race, social parasite and caste, should be avoided in the social insect literature. When applied to insect societies, * M. D. Breed [email protected] 1
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309‑0334, USA
these words can lead to poor scientific thought and interpretation, because it becomes hard to separate the human cultural burden of a word from the discussion of insects. Additionally, social parasite and caste have, over time, become weighted with multiple meanings in the social insect literature, so an additional concern is that their use is imprecise. Social parasite can refer to a large number of
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