What could this mean? Old friends will recall I have a longstanding love affair with the English language. Being born an native English-speaker is a gift; it is an easy language to learn, but a difficult one to master. It is rich, so rich, because it borrows from everywhere and everything, and keeps growing and changing. But not everything is new and better. My daughter liked to complain about “new and improved” products as a redundancy, since a new product should always be improved and an improved product was by definition new. For my part, I fought the good fight against “impact” as a verb (because one hadn’t learned the difference between “effect” and”affect”), enormity (which means ONLY a great and evil thing, not large), and fulsome (which is fake, not real) praise. I can hear my friends and associates chuckling: the fight goes on.
Yet the degradation continues. “Fake news” would only mean something if it wasn’t news, that is, not new. If it’s false, it is simply a lie. Treason is a crime with very specific circumstances, and one should not claim it if one doesn’t know what they are (a declaration of war and two witnesses are among the criteria). The same goes for an “insurrection.” Racial equity is a new, friendly-sounding buzz-phrase on the left, which points to equal representation in outcomes. I doubt anyone would support it for their local NBA team.
Politicians have been masters in abusing language for a long time, and it has become a high (or is that low?) art form today. I waited for then-President Trump to tweet that Joe Biden was “a known bibliophile” hoping no one thought too much about what the phase really meant (Trump wasn’t smart enough to know the word, and Biden isn’t one, anyway). Maybe next time (shudder). Politicians brought us such wonders as “that statement is no longer operative” (as in, “we lied”), “mistakes were made” (“we were wrong”), and “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” (He “did have sex with that woman.”).
But many normal folks engage in the same sophistry (look it up). They share and re-tweet garbage because they agree with it, without stopping to think: is it true? Is it a dodge? Or better yet–what does it say about me when I endorse it? And so it goes. I can’t count the number of social media arguments I have been induced to engage in because the language was so indistinct (I know, it’s a personal failing: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!)
The effects (there’s that word) are many and not harmless. English is beautiful because it is so adaptable and has so many shades of meaning. This started to dawn on me when I first studied German and French, but really hit home as I learned Spanish. I asked my Spanish teacher what the equivalent was for the verb “to wait”? “Esperar,” he said. “To hope for?” “Esperar.” “To expect?” “Esperar.” Yes there are other Spanish words, but the general usage is toward a single verb. In English, even a child can express the very significant differences between “I wait for parents”, “I hope for parents”, and “I expect parents.”
Today, if you’re not anti-racist, you’re racist (from the left), while the right has taken to calling everything “grooming.” Unprecedented is an adjective which apparently means only “I haven’t heard of it.” I have yet to meet a person who would defend the degraded, modern usage of “love”: I would love to do so, if only to impact their vocabulary (ugh, it hurt to write that). Sloppy speaking or writing is a sign of poor thinking. It is the close cousin of vulgarity, where a rude term is used strictly to shock and offend.
Oh, and the title? It’s a riff on the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a philosophical story which also touches briefly on linguistic abuse. I originally used bulls!t, but it seemed to me to be a bit too vulgar. We’ve watched a lot of British crime dramas lately, and I like their use of bollocks (literally, testicles), which connotes complete rubbish or nonsense. I strongly recommend using it. You’ll affect your opponents, and no one would dare give you fulsome praise. And you’ll avoid the enormity of disfiguring the language of Shakespeare, Yeats, and Eliot.
It seems to me that your tolerance and inclusive acceptance doesn’t show the proper equity, compassion and diversity for the working-class. It borders on radical fascism and is equally harmful to the homeless, under privileged, minorities and children.
Pardon my now my sarcasm is dripping badly.😇
Forgive the typos, it’s 0500 & I’m 6 hours into a 12 hour shift. Only working part-time now.
No harm, no foul my friend. You get some sleep, and I’ll go to my self-criticism session!