Does “freedom of expression” have the same meaning for everyone?

The world consists of 7 billion people and that means the world has over 7 billion opinions and attitudes because no two human beings are identically exact. This means that everyone can and will interpret or behave towards something either as they see fit or based on what they’ve learned. With this being said, “freedom of expression” does not have the same meaning for everyone. Freedom of speech is defined by Oxford dictionary as a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.

Freedom of speech is intended to allow human beings to say anything and everything they want without fears of legal action or retaliation of some sort. This means that there is protection provided to whoever is expressing themselves freely however the legalities of freedom of speech is what is dividing everyone with what “freedom of expression” means. The theory of relativism tells us that “views are relative to differences in perception and consideration. There is no universal, objective truth according to relativism; rather each point of view has its own truth.” (The Ethics of Universal Being, 2019) This means that we all interpret things differently.

Some people are of the thought that freedom of speech should be used carefully as it can easily be interpreted as hate speech. We’ve already stated that the laws on free speech allow people to express themselves in any manner they wish. These laws are effectively meant to regulate free speech, rather than limit it. The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 2000 describes hate speech as the publishing, propagating, advocating or communicating of words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to be hurtful, be harmful or to incite harm and to promote or propagate hatred.

Some people are of the thought that freedom of speech means carte blanch to utter any single word they wish. This school of thought is under the impression that if one thinks it, one can express it in any manner or form. “Just because you punish people for something they say or write, doesn’t mean that you’ll stop them from thinking it. Furthermore, you rob yourself of the right to hear it. So in the case for censorship and the punishment of words, everyone loses.” (Hogg, 2019) wrote Gareth Cliff from cliffcentral.com around the time he was facing his freedom of speech law suit. This school of thought does not believe in limiting freedom of thought and sees it as censorship rather than provisions. They believe that laws protecting free speech are there precisely to protect speech that is not socially accepted. They further believe that if it was only legally permissible to say things we already agree with, then we can neither expose ourselves to our own errors, nor learn about what other people think and develop the arguments to respond to their erroneous thinking.

Freedom of speech is divided into different schools of thought but mainly divided into those that believe in absolute freedom of expression and those that believe in regulating free speech. This constant tug of war is the reason for a plethora of court cases being halted because there are also some legal gaps surrounding freedom of speech and hate speech.

Not everyone has the same meaning for “freedom of expression” because of different schools of thoughts which can be derived from the relativism theory.