Since we throw around so many buzzwords without thinking, a little bit of linguistic reverse engineering can tell us a lot about ourselves that we might not otherwise have noticed. Let’s start with the buzzword “self-expression”.

Dressing, decorating, and defacing ourselves are called self-expression. So are choosing where to live, enjoying entertainment, playing games, making music, and, for that matter, making noise. Doing things, and not doing them, are both called self-expression. It’s self-expression to sleep around, but it’s also self-expression to be chaste. It's self-expression to go to church, but it’s also self-expression to avoid it.

Is there anything that can’t count as self-expression? Apparently not. In the narrow sense, we “express” an idea, a feeling, a judgment, or an opinion only by giving voice to it. But in the broad sense, we “express” something by manifesting or revealing it, and we manifest or reveal our “selves” in literally everything we do, whether or not we intend to. The murderer reveals or divulges his character by murdering; the sick person reveals or divulges his state of health by throwing up.

Seeking approbation

Even so, we don’t normally use the term “self-expression” for everything we do whatsoever. We tend to use it either for innocent things we expect others to applaud, or for unsavoury things we want others to applaud. For example, most people call writing a novel self-expression. But people don’t ordinarily call making a pornographic film "self-expression", unless they want us to tolerate or approve it, and hardly anyone would call a snuff film "self-expression". (Snuff films, if you aren’t familiar with the term, are films that depict real-life murders that are committed just in order to be filmed. Yes, that’s a thing.)

Logically, then, although everything we do is self-expression, we normally describe an action as self-expression only to say, “This is good.” Used that way, the term is powerful. For example, foul pictures and language weren’t formerly counted as free speech because they didn’t communicate ideas and arguments. Today, though, they are counted as free speech, just because we say they “express” the “self.” And, of course, logically, they do. If I spout a stream of profanities, I may be expressing nothing more of myself than an urge to blow off steam. But I may also be divulging my desire for attention, my craving to sound tough, my enjoyment of filthiness, or even my inability to express a cogent argument.

But why should the term “self-expression” have such power to connect itself with our approval? Probably for at least two reasons. The first is that the idea of expressing ourselves validates our narcissism. The second is that it shields us from criticism.