Word Connotation in The Alligator : How Language Helped Integration

Word Connotation and its effect on integration at the University of Florida

Introduction

The Alligator and its successor, The independent Alligator are crucial pieces of information regarding the social and political landscape of the University of Florida through its history. through reading and analyzing these wellsprings of information, one can pinpoint specific aspects of campus life they wish to focus on in greater detail and extrapolate the desired information from a larger set of data. This process is demonstrated in the wider group project on the home page of this website, but this project seeks to do something different. The connotation of words in journalism and media have a tremendously powerful effect on the common man, and the usage of certain words when relaying information can and has altered the perception of the reader. This project seeks to look at the words used when covering the issues of desegregation at the University of Florida, and to study the words used when covering the issue. This project aims to analyze the words used by The Alligator and The Independent Alligator, and to see if the uses of certain words became more prevalent as the issue continued to be debated or opinion of the issue changed. The project will utilize a word processing program hosted on Google Collab to sift through the Dataset for a chosen word or words, and then run these selections through a graphical mapping program to produce a word by volume over time graph, allowing use to view visually the quantitative data on word usage in The Alligator.

Complementary Literature

As a project seeking to study word connotation, a wide variety of sources are being used. The Alligator and The Independent Alligator are being used as the primary data set for this project. Several secondary sources have been collected on the issue of desegregation at UF, and these articles will provide the historical context necessary to interpret the findings of the word processing program. These articles include From Desegregation to Integration: Race, Football, and “Dixie” at the University of Florida written by Derrick E. White, and The Movement and the Sixties by Terry H. Anderson. Additional sources were gathered to cover the topic of word connotation and its effect on information dissemination, these articles serve as the core for the argument of this project, and will aide in the elaboration on the effects of word connotation on the integration of colored students at the University of Florida. These articles include Effects of the emotional connotations in words on the frontal areas--a spatially filtered MEG study written by Masayuki Hirata, Shifts in Connotative Meaning of Words as a Function of Previous Restrictive Experience by M.S. Mayzner and M. E. Tresselt, The Power of Language: How Words Shape Thoughts and Emotions by Margarida Alpuim, Changing Racial Labels: From "Colored" to "Negro" to "Black" to "African American" by Tom W. Smith, and Connotation and Denotation a paper published by the California State University, Northridge. Put together, these articles will compliment the data gathered through manipulation of the dataset to produce a whole and complete analysis of the role word connotation played in the integration of colored students at the University of Florida.

Findings:

The usage of the word demonstration overtime is almost congruent with the usage of the word protest, until the year 1965 and then again at 1968. The data in the graph represents the shifting of ideologies regarding the integration of students and the role student organized resistance played in the process. Demonstration has a neutral, even positive connotation while protest can be seen as having a negative connotation (California State University, Northridge, 3).

The inclusion of the above graph is meant to be taken in comparison with the graph on the use of "demonstration" and "protest" but due to technical restraints of the coding program it was necessary to make it a separate graph. There are several noticeable trends in the use of "Walk out" on this visualization, and it follows a distinctly different trend than the previous visualization. "Walk out" has a positive connotation, so the use of "Walk out" being prevalent throughout the integration process of UF shows that the opinion of students could have had great fluctuations in regarding to integration. The language program utilized by this program only shows the prevalence of a chosen word, and not its context, so doing some deeper analysis, most of the early uses of "walk out" were in reference to student government did not start to pertain to the Civil Rights movement until 1969, where there is a very obvious uptick in its usage that remains relevant throughout the remainder of the graphs covered timeline (Alligator).

The data above was included to give a more complete view of word connotation regarding the process of integration, as it would be disingenuous to not include an entry that covers an overtly negative word such as Riot. Riots use over time is remarkably low compared to the two previous examples, and shows a trend in more peaceful forms of civil unrest, which was a wider theme of the Civil Rights movement as a whole (Anderson, 56).

The graph above shows the relation between the use of the terms Negro and Black throughout the Civil Rights movement at UF. There is a very noticeable uptick in the usage of Black over Negro as time progresses. This correlates with the increase in Black enrollment at the University of Florida and subsequently the shifting in the view of Black Students. Negro has a decidedly negative connotation, and the shifting in terminology is conducive to a shift in the attitudes of UF students regarding integration. This shifting in wordage coicides with the Civil Rights movement's desire to distance themselves from the word Negro. "'Negro' was criticized as imposed on Blacks by Whites, as denoting subservience, complacency, and Uncle Tomism" (Smith, 499). The shift also coincides with the desegregation of the UF football team, which aided in the spreading of pro-integration thinking. "The Southern collegiate ideal was an all-white affair until the late sixties, when southern colleges moved to desegregate their football teams" (White, 476). The Term Black was also regarded more natural replacement to Negro, as the dichotomy between white and black, yin and yang was made clear, and it gave the impression that Whites and Blacks were two sides of the same coin (Smith, 501).

The use of "Colored" over "Negro" at UF is also a sign of the shifting ideas regarding integration at UF. "Negro", as stated previously, was a negatively charged word closely associated with racial slurs (Smith, 498). The term originated from a desire to create a word for the black community that originated from the black community, but it was coopted by racial prejudices. The Alligator's use of "Colored" over "Negro" during the Civil Rights Movement is indicative of the open-mindedness in which The Alligator approached the issue, as "Negro" was the dominant term used in both Black and White media (Smith, 499). The Alligator, based on the findings presented in the graph, were at the very least more accepting of the integration of Black students into UF than was common among media.

"African American" is the final evolution of the Civil Rights movements quest to find a term that they could identify with that was not racial charged. The usage of African American did not see widespread use until the late 1980s, but its inclusion here shows that the Alligator was beginning to realize what the greater Civil Rights movement would soon after discover for themselves, that the issue of terminology is constantly changing, and to find a term that could not be coopted is a task that takes monumental effort (Alpuim). By rooting the movement in America by using the term African American to denote ancestry, they give themselves a foothold into the zeitgeist of American identity, and thus empower their position by capitalizing on American patriotism and identity politics (Smith, 507).

Conclusion:

As shown above in the graphs, the usage of certain words over others was widespread in The Alligator and this contributed to the overall process of integration at UF by helping to alter opinions on the subject using more positive word connotations on certain words and doing away with the usage of negative words. The downtrend in the usage of Negro and Riot as well as Protest show a clear indication that the opinion of The Alligator was more favorable towards integration, and this could be inferred to the larger student body as a whole, as The Alligator was largest and most prominent student run newspaper during this time. In Hirata Masayuki's article on emotional connotation of words, she asserts that the emotional connotation of a specific word has the greatest impact on the formation of the opinion of the reader, and it is clear through observation of the data presented that The Alligator was engaged in some part with the changing of the opinion of the student body by utilizing word connotation to alter the perception of the reader to reach a more favorable position on integration.

Bibliography of Sources Used:

Anderson, Terry H. The movement and the sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Alpuim, Margarida. “The Power of Language: How Words Shape Thoughts and Emotions.” English, February 2, 2023. https://www.bonn-institute.org/en/news/psychology-in
journalism-2.

Hirata, Masayuki, Syunsuke Koreeda, Kotoe Sakihara, Amami Kato, Toshiki Yoshimine, and Shiro Yorifuji. “Effects of the Emotional Connotations in Words on the Frontal
Areas—a Spatially Filtered Meg Study.” NeuroImage 35, no. 1 (2007): 420–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.11.025.

Smith, Tom W. “Changing Racial Labels: From ‘Colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ to ‘African American.’” Public Opinion Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1992): 496.
https://doi.org/10.1086/269339.

University of Florida. The Florida Alligator. Distributed by The University of Florida Digital

Collections. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/title-sets/UF00028291.

University of Florida. The Independent Florida Alligator. Distributed by The University of

Florida Digital Collections. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/title-sets/UF00028290.

White, Derrick E. “From Desegregation to Integration: Race, Football, and “Dixie” at the University of Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 88, no. 4 (2009): 1–28. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4541&context=fhq.

Sources Referenced:

Mayzner, M. S., and M. E. Tresselt. “Shifts in Connotative Meaning of Words as a Function of Previous Restrictive Experience.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 55, no. 2
(1958): 200–205. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045991.

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