It's not natural

lockstep language change

This culture has us as trained and docile as we can be. All of us. This is everyone across the political spectrum, though usage rates may vary somewhat.

What: The instant adoption of new words to replace the words we used just yesterday for the same mundane things that have always existed.

This is not “natural language evolution.” It has not “always been this way.”

Now, I’m not saying “language never changed until now.” I am saying “the rate at which we instantly adopt new terms, words, and brand names, is faster than we have ever experienced.”

I’m making an argument of degree, not kind. Although, I think there is a difference in kind, too. Several people have pointed out that the modern rapid language changes often seem directed from the top down (from academia, from media, etc.) in a way they haven’t been before recent times.

Language has always changed. Yes, new words come into the language all the time and always have. But, the rapidity with which we adopt the newly introduced terms is far greater than it ever has been. In some cases, it’s almost literally overnight. Everyone does it, yet no one mentions it. It’s weird.

Some examples. If you can place yourself about 10 years in the past, you’ll be able to recognize these shifts:

• “Embrace” replaced “adopt/accept”

• “Lean in,” one of the ugliest new phrases, has colonized all territory formerly occupied by “applied myself,” “took a new direction,” “changed our approach.”

• “Impact” (and its hideous stepsister “impactful”) has destroyed “affect.”

• “Folks” has replaced “people”

• “Consumers” has replaced “citizen” (that goes back farther)

• “Ratepayers” has replaced “taxpayers”

• “Gender” has thoroughly routed “sex” to the point where many of us are literally unable to think about what we actually mean. We certainly can’t communicate what we mean. (That’s the point).

These are just a few; there are many more.

Here are some perceptive comments in response to a version of this post that I placed on Notes.

Courtney Horton wrote:

Amen to this. I hope you say on this topic of language degradation. Some that have grown in offensive over the past few years have been:

-Microaggression instead of ill-mannered or rude

-Religious community instead of church or church family

-Spouse or Partner instead of husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, lover/beloved

-And, particularly loathsome to me, caregiver as opposed to parents or mom/dad.

While it is sterile and corporate it is also actually brutal. The “caregiver” one is especially awful. I noticed the trend a few years ago when I was getting my foster license. The terms “foster mom” and “foster dad” were slowly being replaced with caregiver. And this is especially bad for foster children because having a foster mom packs a different punch than staying with caregivers. The term “foster mom” communicates (or should communicate) to people that there is a mother relationship that has to be faked because something so bad has happened in the child’s life they have to go live indefinitely with complete strangers. It communicates (or should communicate) that the child is in a very unique and vulnerable place in the world. A caregiver could just be a babysitter for a couple of days.

Connecting The Dots wrote:

Spot on!!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to punch my screen, during a company all hands zoom call where the dumbass “new” and “agile” jargon is the norm.

My hated favorite is “local focal”, to which I yell “Oh Fuck Off!!”.

MaryH wrote:

“Enslaved people” is now replacing “slaves.” That change just hit my Roman research sites a few weeks ago. No. I’m done. “Enslaved person” is NOT better or “nicer” than slave. It’s just a way to check whether you’re still toeing the line.

That last sentence from Mary is key, and it supports what I have suspected. The changes in language are really just compliance tests to see if people are still taking cultural and political orders from their Betters.

It used to take more time for new terms to replace words that had been in common and longstanding use. Now, it’s months, sometimes weeks. And the replacements-for-the-replacements come even more rapidly. We adopt each one dutifully.

That’s what bothers me. This operates for us on a subconscious level; it’s not that we’re all thinking to ourselves, “As of today, I will use this new word.” We just do it automatically.

Deep down, we think we have to do this if we’re to be perceived as good and normal. That’s the problem. It reveals a passive, receptive turn of mind, a pliability we didn’t have so much of before.

You may say, “Why get so bothered if everyone can still understand the meaning?” Several reasons:

1. This is often going in one direction: children/youth→ adults. Adults are slavishly adopting youth lingo. The direction used to be the opposite for almost all of history.

2. The new terms are not just arbitrary sets of phonemes. They have emotional, political, and lexical connotations. Some of these are suspect and unsavory, yet we just adopt them immediately.

3. In so doing, we telegraph to the people who rule us through politics, commerce, or culture, that we are their servants, and that we will do their bidding. We flash our soft bellies to them.

4. Some of these changes have profound political and moral implications. “Gender” is the most obvious one.

5. Aesthetics-Here’s the one some people have the hardest time with. This is the one they can’t abide. It’s this one that provokes the “you’re a stupid cranky old hysterical man lol” reactions.

I live in words. Language is for me what form and color are for artists, what melody and harmony are for musicians, what athletic skill is for a professional athlete. I love language.

Beauty matters. Aesthetics matter. Not all taste is equal. Some things really are objectively beautiful, and other things really are objectively ugly. That most things fall into the middle area of subjectivity does not mean there is no such thing as a beautiful phrase or an ugly phrase. And every person reading this knows that; it’s why she chooses some authors and not others.