[ back ]
Saying what we mean isn't easy
(by Barbara Christian - July 09, 2012)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Saying what we mean isn't easy
Maybe you've heard the story of the American who won the lottery, decided to see Paris but, when he got there, found himself perplexed by what he experienced and, upon returning home, told friends he knew he was in trouble from the minute he got off the plane.
"They have a different word for everything over there," he announced.
You don't have to be an American in Paris to be perplexed by language. You can be an American in America and have the same experience. We are no longer a plain-spoken people.
We sidestep, embroider and trade relatable words for verbal concoctions whose meanings are vague. We resort to verbal contortions, jargon and wield euphemisms to imply what we want to say but are afraid to say for fear of being politically incorrect or "PC." In sidestepping or avoiding parts of our language altogether, we have forgotten how to mean what we say and say what we mean.
Many years ago, BPC, there was a social-service organization called the Society for Crippled Children and as kids we learned charity by dropping our pennies into the crippled children's donation box at our school.
We knew who benefited from those pennies, because it said so right on the side of that box. It was also the age of polio in our country. We understood exactly what "crippled" meant. The word had gravity.
Recently, we tried to find out if the Society for Crippled Children still existed in Cleveland but without luck. If it still exists, it does not go by that name anymore. That word, "crippled," is the problem, of course. But why? And when did "crippled" become a slur? Was there a memo?
"Crippled" hasn't been banished completely, because we found the word in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It is defined as "a lame or partly disabled individual." It also comes with the note: "sometimes offensive."
Political correctness is snatching perfectly good words from our vocabulary and replacing them with not misnomers so much as non-nomers. These days, crippled people are "differently abled." No one is blind or deaf anymore but sight and hearing "impaired."
There is a host of other words we can use to describe our problems. If we can no longer be crippled, deaf or blind, we opt for being "limited" or "challenged," and sometimes we can be "exceptional" in our limitations and challenges.
We also have become PC about our job titles. Have you noticed there are no secretaries anymore? The people who are employed to do office work are now referred to as "administrative assistants," and those who are hired to work for the big boss are no longer executive secretaries but "executive assistants."
And don't dare call a salesperson a salesperson. People who sell everything from burgers to cars are now "associates."
The new job titles add style and we suppose are meant to describe a level of equality in the workplace -- if not equality in the rates of pay. But that's a subject for another time.
We are told that words mean things. Yes, they do and some better than others. Or as Gertrude Stein famously explained it, "a rose is a rose is a rose."
[ back ]
