There is a quiet power in language, a stealthy force that can humanise or erase, uplift or condemn, draw people in or cast them out. One of the most dangerous things we do, often without realising, is other . It is a mechanism that allows us to create distance between ourselves and those whose lives or suffering challenge our sense of comfort or complicity. Theories of othering remind us that naming is never neutral. Edward Said’s (1978) work on Orientalism revealed how lan