We’re Killing Our Language

We are! We’re killing our language. All of us! And as a marketing type, I have to plead guilty to aiding the process. Words no longer mean what they once meant. Take “new” for instance. In the language of marketing, “new” no longer means brand spankin’ new. It can mean just a different color, a different package, a slightly different formula. But truly new? Not really. And marketers aren’t the only guilty ones.

Management types have been killing the language since at least the industrial revolution. I remember a time – not that far back, though – when the newest management practice went by the acronym “MBWA.” What it stood for, really, was – are you ready for this? – Management By Wandering Around. Heck, management has been doing that for years, sometimes aimlessly, but always keeping an eye on employees. You walk, you watch, you soon learn who’s performing, who’s not. Seems that wasn’t really anything “new,” either.

Management has also come up with some nice names for things that already have not-so-nice names. But managers feel better using their nicer names. Take the word “problem,” for example. Problems are inherently bad. Always were. That’s why management likes to refer to problems as “challenges” and “opportunities.” They’re much nicer words. But you can believe that when a manager hears either one, he or she knows there’s a problem.

Then there are lawyers. OK, attorneys if you prefer. Books have been written about what they’ve done to our language – made it undecipherable. And in the process reduced the once powerful comma to little more than sticky tape with which to connect an endless series of disjointed phrases.

Now our elected officials and the bureaucrats in D.C. have come up with the mother of all language killers. We’ve known for a very long time that these officials have very little respect for our language. Add your own examples here, please. And it doesn’t make any difference which party label they‘re sporting, either. Could the cause be something in the air that hangs over D.C.? Or maybe something in the water?

Now they’ve taken a very powerful word – “hunger” – and decided to abolish it. No, not abolish hunger. That’s too difficult. What they’ve abolished – at least as it applies to people in the U.S. – is the word “hunger.” Because, they claim, it can’t be quantified. But, it seems, hunger can can still exist in other countries.

Anyway, some bureaucrat, with the blessing of our elected officials, have now said that in the U.S. “hunger” no longer exists. In its place they’ve chosen to use two clever phrases that closely resemble each other, perhaps to confuse us even more – “low food security,” and “very low food security.”

Why, because there’s less stigma attached to having millions of people go to bed at night experiencing “low food security” than there is to having them go to bed feeling hungry. Could it be that “very low food security” may actually mean they’re starving?

Who are these people who suffer from this… I’m sorry. “Suffer” is probably the next word our pals in D.C. will send into retirement. Allow me to rephrase: “Who are these people who experience this sensation of “low” or “very low food security?” Buried deep in the report that abolished “hunger” was a description of them: Families with an annual household income of $37,000 or less.

Moving right along, if we don’t watch out, we’ll soon live in a world where black means white, peace means war, up means down and rich means poor. Then those of us who earn our livings as wordsmiths, corporate managers, lawyers, elected officials and bureaucrats will have to find something else to tinker with. Or start saying what we mean.