Adding power values to words

Words like Nee (lower you), Avan (lower he), Aval (lower she) etc. are lower level words that are used to subordinate a person among a group of persons. They also do have other connotations, like that of intimacy, endearment etc. However we are now not discussing about this second said features.

Being lower level words, they are quite powerful in their effect. But then, right inside them, or let us say, within them, there can be a wide variation in the numerical value of their negative effect. This value can depend on a number of items. We can now discuss here, how the factor of hierarchical strings can affect this numerical value.

One man comes to another person’s house, with whom he has no personal acquaintance. He addresses him with a rude Nee. Now what is the power in this Nee? The other person can get annoyed, irritated, distracted, provoked, and seemingly subordinated. Or else, he can get subordinated, and made obsequious.  

In the first case, the other person can react in a manner as to correct the other man’s verbal behaviour; or he can go in for a verbal attack back. In each of these different reactions, what happens are of different social significance.

But then in the other situation, wherein he goes in for a willing subordination, the situation is totally different.

Now what creates all these differences? Well, it could depend on the power that is encoded in the Nee that was delivered. What lends this power?

Well, look at this scenario: the person who has come to the house is an Indian police constable. The Indian constable is a lowly official in the police department. Most of them of very negligible intellectual attainments, and mostly of very low English knowledge. They are kept at the servant class subordinate levels by their officers by the use of lower indicant words, and by forcing them to use higher indicant words to and about their officers.

Yet, they are quite powerful when they accost the ordinary persons of India. For, they are part of a string of hierarchy, wherein their Nee, is actually the lowering of the person to a shit level much below that of the constable. The person who is thus addressed by a Nee by an Indian constable is more or less held in a vice-like grip by this word, and its associated words like Avan, Aval etc.

There is a loaded power in this Nee, as it comes to hammer the ordinary individual.

If the ordinary individual tries to equalise the situation by using a Nee back towards the police constable, it is like a weak army attacking a powerful fortification. He will be battered down. Actually, in real life, the ordinary individual will not be mentally able to put up such an attack back.

Now, suppose the individual who has come to the house is an ordinary individual. His Nee has no power encoded inside it, that pours into it from the routes of the powerful hierarchy. It is a Nee devoid of any power.

What I wanted to convey here was that even though there are indicant words of different levels, in actual reality, the power that is encoded in them does depend on the routes of hierarchy through which they are delivered.

An indicant words that stands in a solitary position with no powerful string attached cannot be much forceful. Yet, it can by its very poor strength be also a powerful disintegrating entity. There is where the whole concept of indicant words can be quite complicated, and much, much beyond the ordinary understanding of a native English speaker. 

I can give a hint. A socially feeble man is addressing the householder with a Nee. It is a feeble Nee. Yet, it is an action of shitification. For, he is literally trying to pull down the householder to abominable levels. What is the defence against this? Well, the householder can address him back with a Nee. However, this only makes him equal to the other man.

The best defence against this would be to act as if he has not seen or mentally detected the other man. In fact, in India, people do practise this act of ‘not detecting’ certain others in the society.