Headline, September 26 2024/ OPINION : ''' BLUNTLY LANGUAGE BLAZES '''

OPINION : ''' BLUNTLY

 LANGUAGE BLAZES '''

! FIRST AND FOREMOST ! : THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY is the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world. '' Welcome all Leaders, Grandparents, Parents, Professors and Teachers.''

THE ART OF PUTTING IT BLUNTLY : AT A TIME WHEN words are frequently treated as tools of oppression and means of resistance, charged with causing harm or spreading misinformation, we've all started watching what we say.

But for language to remain an effective way to communicate intent and meaning, we should consider the reasons - beyond kindness and sensitivity - behind our euphemisms.

Some words are brutal for a reason, and sometimes we need to deliver a pure blunt force.

The right euphemism not only removes blame, it also reassigns it. Thus, ''prisons'' become the ''carceral system'' or part of the '' carceral state,'' which suggests that the act of imprisoning people may itself be the crime. The implied question is : What gives the state a right to put people away?

One major goal of lexical reform is to humanize and dignify the person behind a simple label. This is exemplified by what The Associated Press calls '' person-first language, recommended in its latest guide book, issued in May.

Not all these rephrasings are necessary downgrades, or even wrong. There is inarguably a power, sometimes a necessary one, in reconstituting terms, especially when they refer to human beings.

As Toni Morrison once explained, '' The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.''

But euphemisms can inadvertently rob words of their moral force. '' Enslaved person '' humanizes the victim, but it also softens the indignity of what is a fundamentally dehumanizing condition.

When, for example, Ian Urbina writes about contemporary '' sea slaves '' in the South China Sea, the abject state of the world's victims is delivered in a verbal gut punch in a way '' enslaved people at sea '' would not.

Much ado has been made of euphemism inflation, the ceaseless efforts to reform the English language towards desired social or political ends. 

The well worn euphemism treadmill has fueled many a George Carlin bit, caused George Orwell to toss and turn feverishly in his grave and led even the most deeply sensitive among us to a grumpy grandpa '' What are we supposed to call it now? '' moment.

But while it's easy to make fun of the changes, its worth digging deeper to examine the underlying logic of what can feel like - but rarely is - arbitrary new terminology.

Active-descriptors can be substituted with passive ones in ways that rob people of power or agency, deliberately so : Obese people become '' people with obesity '' - those with a condition irrespective of action. Likewise, an ''alcoholic,'' which itself replaced the derisive '' drunk, '' is now a person suffering from an '' alcohol abuse disorder.''

In these cases, the obvious goal is to neutralize terms that have come to seem as loaded. '' Overweight '' becomes verboten because it assumes a certain body size to be normal.

Along the same lines, skin care companies like Unilever got rid of the word '' normal '' to describe skin that neither especially oily nor dry.

Many of these changes seem neutral on the face of it. The replacement of '' homeless '' with '' unhoused '' at first glance seems like a superfluous switcheroo. But key to the change is the implication that the government has failed to provide a home, not that someone has lost one.

Similarly, ''poor'' neighborhoods become '' under-resourced communities.'' And truancy, which feels like an accusation of juvenile delinquency, instead becomes ''absenteeism,'' which humbly left a box unticked on the attendance list, more the fault of the school than the student.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on The World, Language, and Affairs, continues. The World Students Society thanks Pamela Paul for her Opinion.

With respectful dedication to Leaders, the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society, and then Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the World.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !!E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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