'Caucasian'

This post was inspired by a recent article in the New York Times about the politics surrounding the word "Caucasian."  I didn't think anyone else cared about the frequent misuse of this word.  People using it seem to think that it's a more politically correct term for "white," but the term's history suggests that those who think it is more "dispassionate" or "scientific" should probably dig a little deeper. "Caucasian" was first used to describe Europeans in the late 1700's by German philosophers and scientists who were in the process of creating modern definitions of race.  Bruce David Baum, in The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race, describes the belief, common at that time, that humans originated in the Caucasus mountains, as that was where Noah's Ark landed and hence the nexus of human repopulation of the earth after the Flood.  Noah's descendants were supposed to have given rise to all the civilized cultures of the known world, from the Indian subcontinent all the way over to Nordic Europe.  Other races then "degenerated" from the (supposedly) white people who were left stranded on Mount Ararat after the waters receded.  The early anthropologists saw humans through this racist lens, interpreting current conditions to fit these (now obviously discredited) origin stories.  For example, Georgians, as direct descendants of the forerunners of modern humans, were thought to possess exceptional natural beauty and intelligence.  Although many different racial distinctions and sub-distinctions were subsequently created, each schema had one thing in common: using bogus tools like phrenology and craniometry to set up "Caucasians" as the "superior" race, both in terms of physical qualities and innate intelligence.  Later racist theories about "Aryans" and the like are rooted directly in these early thinkers, most notably Christoph Meiners and Johann Blumenbach.

So, I cannot begin to describe how frustrated I get when I hear some third-year medical student describe a patient - thinking that they're being all officious and scientific - as a "63-year-old Caucasian gentleman."  First, how do you know he's a gentleman?  Did he hold the door for you?  Did he throw his cloak over a mud puddle so you could step across it without getting your satin slippers dirty?  Second, do you understand the background of what you're saying when you call that "white" guy a Caucasian?  Because unless you're trying to invoke three centuries of bullshit pseudoscientific institutional racism, I suggest that you just admit the essential arbitrariness of the racial categories and call your patient a "63-year-old white man."

Unnecessary Words

I just drafted a short research paper.  It went pretty quickly, about 2000 words in maybe 4 hours of actual work.  I’m not sure exactly how long it took as I was stuck on a slow train and kept getting distracted by birds and scenery along the wayside.  While working on the paper, I noticed a few words and phrases that I kept having to stop myself from using.  One of the major culprits was “utilize,” a word that is often used to add syllables to a sentence (because we all know that more syllables = smarter person) without a shred of care as to its actual meaning, which is something closer to “repurpose” than it is to “use,” at least according to the OED.  For example, “The cat utilized my denim-covered leg as a scratching post.”  (Of course, now when people want to say “repurpose,” they use the word “upcycle.”)  Many others have written about the increasing habit of writing "utilize" when "use" would work better.  I think that "utilize" may be a pet peeve of many fellow anti-jargonites because its misuse illustrates why we all hate jargon so much.  Much of the time, the person writing "utilize" isn't using it to convey the subtler shade of meaning between "use" and "repurpose" -- they just wanted to replace a simple word with a longer and more complex word that sounds "smarter" or "more technical."  This type of diction propagates the illusion that language that appears more complicated on the surface actually conveys deeper or more important thoughts.  And, it creates subtle shifts in the colloquial meaning of words, to the point where original meanings are lost on the majority of people.  I am well aware of the arguments that English is a living language, and daily usage is continually shifting the meaning of words, bringing new words into the vocabulary, and letting archaic words become extinct, and blah blah.  I'm OK with that in general principle, I just don't like change when it's driven by ignorance.  

SlammingTogetherness

I've often wondered why some corporate names seem vaguely sinister -- names like Verizon (communications oligopoly), CareFirst, WellPoint, AmeriGroup, Highmark, LifeWise, Thrivant, Assurant (all health insurance), Blackwater (security contractors), Veolia (transportation, trash disposal, water supplies), Accenture (outsourcing management), etc.

Part of the sinister feeling comes from a lack of correlation between the company's name and what it actually does or produces. (Compare the above-mentioned names to "China Ocean Shipping Company" or "General Motors.")  The private military/security contracting firm "Blackwater" - now known as "Academi," after a brief stint as "Xe" - has nothing to do with water, the eponymous national wildlife wetlands refuge, or academics.  God only knows what "Xe" means.  The corporate names provide a sense of sleekness and modernity, creating and manipulating images and emotions without any semblance of a clue about what the company actually does or produces.  To further confuse the issue, such companies often also provide a virtually content-free mission statement, as in the case of Accenture: "Our 'high-performance business' strategy is to use our expertise in consulting, technology and outsourcing [they of course eschew the Oxford comma] to help clients achieve performance at higher levels so they can create sustainable value for their customers and stakeholders."  (One is left to suppose that Accenture helps its clients make more money.)

The names are constructed of particles, each individually meaningless yet vaguely reassuring.  Particles include "Point," 'First," "Care," "Na" (cf. "Aetna," "Cigna," etc.), "Net,""Ameri," "Tech," and "Group." AmeriTechNaGroup? Sold!  These are not random syllables; an entire industry has sprung up around "corporate branding" and there are many online purveyors ("consultancies") hawking such names, which can be "evocative," "functional," "experiential," or even purely "invented."  In them we see echoes of "newspeak," the agglutinative language of 1984's Ingsoc.  Abbreviated and compound forms are an essential feature of newspeak: "...in thus abbreviating a name, one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it."  For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KFC.  Its chicken is no less fried than it was before the name change, but the association between fried/unhealthy food and the restaurant is masked.  This is a fairly obvious example of rebranding, and I can't decide if it's more sinister because of its total lack of subtlety or because of the fact that such strategies may actually work to improve public perceptions.

A moment for delightful words

Taking a break from posting about the misuse of language to link to a collection of "delightful" yet obscure words. Each with its own highly specific meaning. I think "monsterful" is my favorite. Or maybe "twattle."  Courtesy of buzzfeed UK.

Death with Dignity

When I saw the article title "Implementing a Death with Dignity Program at a Comprehensive Cancer Center" in a recent issue of a highly respected medical journal, I thought this might be a program that helped support patients and their families during the difficult times before and immediately after dying.  Perhaps the program facilitated discharge from the hospital so that patients who wished to die at home could do so.  Or maybe it provided an avenue for patients to express their preferences about end-of-life interventions like ventilators and feeding tubes, to avoid unwanted procedures and interventions, and to maximize pain and symptom control at the end of life.  The reader will perhaps forgive me my naivete; the article is actually about a physician-assisted suicide program at a large university hospital in Washington State.  So why wasn't the article titled "Implementing a Physician-Assisted Suicide Program at a Comprehensive Cancer Center?"

The answer is clear to even the casual observer.  Physician-assisted suicide is an unpalatable and controversial practice among physicians and the public alike.  As such, current conventions demand that the program's name be shrouded in euphemism.  Anyone reading the article will shortly discover the true nature of the Death with Dignity Program and the state laws, often referred to as "Death with Dignity Acts," which permit the existence of such programs and protect physicians who participate in them.  Such a death is not inherently more dignified than any other; the language of these laws and their clinical offspring does nothing but mask the program's true nature, if only for a brief moment.  This is doublespeak in its purest form: "language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words."

In 1945, George Orwell wrote "Politics and the English Language," an essay published in the now-defunct British magazine Horizon.  The essay discusses how language shapes thoughts, politics, and culture and describes the use of "debased" language to conceal painful truths:

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.  Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.  Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."

Although it was published in a medical journal, this article describes a political act - establishing legal protections for physicians who provide their patients with the means and guidance to commit suicide.  So it's not tremendously surprising that the name of the "Death With Dignity" program exemplifies doublespeak, since the phrase refers to a controversial political project.

Advice

advice (n): shit I wished I would have done

"Your Call Is Very Important To Us"

This is low-hanging fruit, as far as doublespeak goes. The example is so obvious that I hesitated to post about it. Nevertheless, the blog is young, and this phrase exemplifies doublespeak.  In fact, if "Your Call Is Very Important To Us" had a picture, it would very likely be next to the word "doublespeak" in the dictionary.

If my call were Very Important to the organization I am phoning, I would not be kept on hold for 10+ minutes waiting to speak to a Customer Service Representative.  Rather, the company or office would have sufficient staff to answer their phones.  If calls were Very Important, the company would not do everything in its power to get me off the line with them and onto a website or a live chat or something of that nature. Calls are obviously not very important when you are forced into an interminable tree of options ("Para espanol, marque el nueve") that inevitably results in either the call being cut off or being dropped into a voice mail box that hasn't been checked in months.

An invaluable resource in combatting the voice mail menace is the site gethuman.com. They have a nice iphone app too.

Ah yes. The Freedom Splint. A Limb Restraint, you say? Inconceivable!