In his 1946 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell lamented the decay in English usage that he believed was corrupting thinking itself.
He complained about stale imagery and lack of precision but was hopeful decadent trends would self-correct because ‘when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself’.
Fast forward 75 years. Would Orwell find stupidity in these sentences?
- This is my friend, Jay. I met them at work.
- They are a child.
- When a child cries, I hug them.
- Several pregnant people were present.
Groups promulgating the sentences above advocate ‘Ze’ and ‘zir’ as new gender-neutral third-person pronouns. With not even six tenths of one percent of Americans declaring themselves transgender, should this newspeak be endorsed to accommodate a tiny minority?
In their drive to prove themselves tolerant and inclusive, academics and media would reshape American English. But by promoting jarring, illogical usage they become out-of-touch elitists.
Pennsylvania State University is in the vanguard of language progressives. Penn State will no longer enroll ‘freshmen’, only ‘first year’ students. Similarly, ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ become ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ year. ‘Underclassman’ becomes ‘lower division’, ‘upper classman’ becomes ‘upper division’. ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ is attacked as restrictive.
To the surprise of many, Americans have long been amenable to sensible linguistic change. Soon after the Revolution, Connecticut school teacher Noah Webster promoted a uniquely American English freed from the rigidities of the king’s English. Webster’s 1806 dictionary discarded the silent ‘u’ in ‘honour’, ‘colour’, ‘harbour’, and ‘labour’. It also reversed the silly ‘-re’ ending in ‘centre’ and ‘theatre’. Webster believed language to be a powerful tool for building national unity.
Because they were logical and simple, Webster’s reforms quickly gained public approval. More recently other changes have caught on. Gay people in the 1960s grabbed hold of ‘gay’ and transformed it from being happy and carefree to a descriptor of themselves.
Civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson is credited for coining ‘African American’ to replace ‘black’. In 1988 Jackson declared that ‘we were called colored and we’re not that. Then came Negro and we’re not that. To be called “black” is just as baseless. To be called African American has cultural integrity. It put us in our proper historical context.’
Pejorative and demeaning
Similarly, cable news entrepreneur Ted Turner’s CNN in the early 90s crusaded against ‘foreign’, replacing it with ‘international’. Turner regarded ‘foreign’ as pejorative and demeaning. His opposition was total, with some CNN staffers enduring $50 fines for saying ‘foreign’ on the air.
There are other examples. ‘Chair’ is pushing aside ‘chairman’ and ‘chairwoman’. ‘Native American’ is making strides over ‘Indian’. Nikole Hannah Jones of the 1619 Project has won a number of converts to ‘enslaved person’ instead of ‘slave’ which she regards as needlessly dehumanizing.
Some time ago, dining in a north Harlem café, I heard two black men in the next booth speaking in a manner Noah Webster would have found appalling. In the course of 20 minutes they must have used the ‘n’ word two dozen times. Webster would be aghast not only at the vile language but the double standard whereby blacks can use the word but whites cannot.
In the heightened sensitivity to race that followed the death of George Floyd, the Associated Press stylebook, the arbiter of newsroom usage, decreed that ‘black’ should be capitalized when describing a group of people but that ‘white’ should not.
AP said blacks were a self-identified ethnic group or people while whites were not. Further, it said white people had much less shared history and culture and had not endured discrimination because of skin colour.
It remains to be seen whether capitalized Black with lower-case white will catch on. Likewise, it’s too early to say whether enslaved people will replace slave. After all, since slave is an animate noun, adding ‘people’ is redundant. Moreover, esteemed reconstruction-era historian Eric Foner opposes the new formulation, citing 19th century civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglass in his defence. ‘If slave,’ says Foner, referring to Douglass’s writing, ‘was good enough for Frederick Douglass, it’s good enough for me.’
Remorse and guilt
As the nation debates white privilege and critical race theory, it is useful to remember that it’s not only progressive whites who strive to do the right thing concerning race. There is collective remorse and guilt about past injustice. How else can one explain the proliferation of Black Lives Matter placards in leafy white suburban neighborhoods?
George Orwell argued that language ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish’.
Regrettably, many thoughts today are foolish.
* In an earlier career, Barry Wood taught Race and Culture at Western Michigan University.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend