A word about semantics
Another hill on which I will gladly die
Words matter. Deeply, in nuanced ways, and in ways in which selecting the right word can help shape the public conversation around a given topic.
Don’t believe me? Try these super contentious word-nuances on for size:
For the past few years it became common to refer to the period of time in which people were living under stay-home orders as “lockdowns.” And, if you think back to the pre-pandemic times, a lockdown used to refer to what happens in a prison when a fight breaks out or someone tries to escape or gets attacked. But, consider the difference between casually referring to this period of time as when we were "under lockdowns” versus saying when we were “staying home” or even referring to it as when we were following “public safety measures” or “fighting the pandemic by staying home.” A sea of difference! Lockdown implies zero personal agency and unwilling participants; “public safety measures” has a far more “was glad to do my part to save lives” tone to it. And, I don’t know about you, but I feel delighted and privileged to have been able to have done my part to not kill people by removing my self from the equation. (But, as I think we have all learned over the last two and a half years, it’s impossible to make people give a crap about anyone but themselves if they do not. Moving on.)
Related: “re-opening schools” versus “re-opening school buildings.” Subtle, but one implies students and parents and definitely teachers didn’t all try very, very hard to make some shit work when the pandemic spun up. Put another way, schools have been open; buildings have not. (See also “going back to work” as opposed to “returning to in-person work,” as if everyone has just been lying around doing nothing all these months. Oh, please. (In 2021, I began writing a lot about the topic of power dynamics and in-person work in my weekly newsletter. Read one of the editions that got the ball rolling on that, here.)
Also work-wise, the last few years have been and continue to be referred to as many things, ranging from “people don’t want to work” to “a labor shortage” to “the great resignation.” But, notice how a lot of the language around labor of the past couple of years has been explicitly framed around the needs of the boss and company, but not the worker. The pandemic prompted a lot of people to take stock of their societal contributions, to think about whether or not their lives look like they want them to, and, very importantly, consider whether or not they felt like the work they were doing lined up with the pay they were getting. Until 1968, the federal minimum wage not only kept pace with inflation, but it also rose in step with worker productivity growth. But since 1968, if the minimum wage had risen in step with productivity growth, it would have been almost $21.50 an hour in 2020. So, is it really a “labor shortage” or a matter of “people not wanting to work”…? Or, did people realize they are working for too little and started trading up for jobs that paid better, where they did work that was more meaningful for them, and/or where the team was diverse and employee policies weren’t built around the needs of white men of the 1960s with a housewife at home? (And, who can blame anyone for doing that?) Are bosses really “unable to find good talent” right now? Or, are they simply offering too little pay or too-crappy of an environment to make their job offer worthwhile? The term “the great resignation” is the more neutral shorthand for this conundrum, but its vagueness also allows it to be interpreted and exploited to suit the needs of the speaker and the listener, so it behooves us to explicitly say what we mean here.
The difference between saying “pro-life” versus “anti-abortion.” The same basic thing, referring to the same group, but vastly different implications in terms of framing the argument/discussion. (And, one, frankly, is the name a group coined themselves, so there’s a matter of parroting versus accuracy at play here, too.) The abortion debate gets nowhere because there are two different debates: one is about whether or not someone has the constitutional right to decide whether or not abortion is right for them, the other about whether or not abortion should be a thing. No progress will ever happen if two things are being debated under the guise of a singular debate.
Certainly, just in recently times have we started seeing widespread use of “weapons of war” in place of “automatic weapons” or “military-grade weapons.” One speaks to the impact of the weapons, likely to put the discussion focus on impacts and aftermaths, the other terms speak to the weapons themselves, and, as some have pointed out, in a way that could be regarded as making the weapons sounds more enticing to certain folks.
Saying “global warming” versus “climate change.” Show of hands if you have a relative who, when confronted with a chilly day, said something like, “whAt aBoUt gLobAl wAaaRmMmmiNg, huh?!?” Because saying “global warming” does imply, yunno, heat. Saying “climate change” refers to the myriad issues, increasingly dramatic weather patterns, and severe temperature changes we are experiencing right now in the climate crisis.
Which is all to say: accuracy extremely the fuck matters, not only accuracy of the details we are writing about, but the words by which we describe those details. Challenge yourself not to follow the intellectually easy (lazy?) path and simply assume the dominant narrative or word or phrase being used for something is the most accurate one or the most ideal one. Think hard about the language with which you frame topics and use the words that more accurately describe what is. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason this matters so very urgently is that the language we use is what ultimately shapes narratives, and narratives help shape history
A version of this was originally posted here in June 2021, but seeing as how the need for/stakes around precision of language has only intensified since then, I dusted it off and edited it to be current.