Some Words Are Meaning-Impaired
Summer is a good time to lie back and survey our ever-changing English language - what’s left of it.
For instance, Professor Bill Lutz of Rutgers, the premiere detector of awful euphemism and double-speak, notes the appearance of some interesting terms: “poorly buffered precipitation” (acid rain), “outside aerial technician” (telephone lineman), “the non-goal-oriented” (the homeless), “after-sales services” (kickbacks) and “pre-dawn vertical insertion” (the invasion of Grenada).
“Correctional facilities” (prisons) are unending gushers of euphemisms. How about these two for “solitary confinement”: “involuntary administrative separation” and assignment to an “individual behavior adjustment unit.”
Other modern euphemisms: “hemp activism” (trying to legalize marijuana), “fetal reduction” (aborting one or more fetuses which resulted from fertility treatment), “clothing-optional lifestyle” (nudism). And after Hugh Grant’s sexual adventure on Sunset Boulevard, many people thought he and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley, were thinking of breaking up. Not at all, according to the British Sunday Mirror: They were merely “considering downshifting into a platonic relationship.”
“Marginalization” is one of the fastest-spreading PC terms and can be used at any time, under any circumstances. If you go to a dinner party and you are seated toward the end, instead of the exact middle, or if you sit in the middle but nobody wants to talk about your pet gerbils, then it’s fair to say that you are being marginalized. If they keep this up, you can complain bitterly about being invisibilized and disenvoiced.
If they do pay attention to you, but they strongly disagree with what you say, then you are a victim of “non-traditional violence” (criticism). Lani Guinier was one of the pioneers of this usage, using the term at a women’s conference in Ohio last year to describe media attacks on her that she said distorted her ideas.
Attempts to define verbal and non-verbal expression as violent acts, are now pervasive in the culture. Ogling, for instance, is “visual rape,” and, according to an official report by the National Association of State Boards of Education, calling a classmate a “sissy” or a “bully” counts as “school violence.” Anything that results in the fear of harm, even the fear of psychological harm (which seems to be two steps away from violence), is also real violence, according to the report.
Anne H. Soukhanov, who runs the Word Watch column in the Atlantic Monthly, says that “grassy knollism” has passed into the language as a term meaning “persistent conspiracy theorism, substantiated by few, if any, hard facts.” As in, “The O.J. trial is awash in grassy knollism.”
Some deaf activists have begun to refer to the non-deaf with the faintly derisive term “hearies.” Under this usage, the non-limb-deficient would have to be called “armies” or “leggies.”
The name of the annual Easter Egg Roll at the Bronx Botanical Garden was changed to the Spring Egg Hunt. The obvious aim was to remove the religious reference. And “hunt” had to substitute for “roll” because people would show up for a “Spring Egg Roll” expecting to be fed Chinese appetizers.
The nearby Bronx Zoo is not the Bronx Zoo any more, because “zoo” has a negative connotation, as a place where animals are more or less jailed instead of being allowed to cavort freely as they do in nature. Jailing animals is bad, but conserving them is good, so the zoo is known as the International Wildlife Conservation Park.
Eventually this name will probably have to be changed as well, since many animal-rights people think “wild” is a nasty, speciesist adjective implying that all non-human animals are fierce or out of control. The World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland, apparently yielding to this pressure, is now the World Wide Fund for Nature. Does this offend anybody?
Two terms outlawed as hopelessly sexist have made comebacks - “chick” and “babe.” Many media women now use both words. A non-inclusive but well-meant baby shower invitation for Mary Matalin of CNBC’s “Equal Time” specified, “Chicks Only.” Margaret Doyle’s book, “The A-Z of Non-Sexist Language” described “babe” as “a derogatory and/or belittling term for women … now being reclaimed by some feminists.” Males can use either term in mixed company if they smile ruefully while doing so. This indicates that they know - and deplore - the former sexist usage but now wish to be thought of as sexually nonthreatening and hip.
Margaret Doyle’s book on non-sexist usage actually listed some terms that do NOT have to be destroyed as intolerable vestiges of the patriarchy. She says we can keep “Granny Smith” apples, “Tommy gun,” “Pullman car,” “manslaughter,” and “the Isle of Man.”
Topless women now insist on being called “top-free,” just as “child-free” replaced “childless” among those who don’t want children or can’t have them. The first Sunday of June, by the way, is Child-Free Adult Day.
Women who wish to shed their child-free status and have a baby without the services of a man are trying to banish the term “artificial insemination” and replace it with “alternative insemination.”