When a spokeswoman for a textbook publishing company said last
week that her company would not “negotiate with
terrorists,” something was wrong.
She was referring to a campaign by the California Public
Interest Research Group against soaring textbook prices. The
quotation, repeated twice to a Daily Bruin reporter, was not an
accident. (Though she later apologized, at the time the spokeswoman
even asked the reporter to quote her using the word
“terrorist.”)
Rhetoric lends a tendency towards shock value, and it’s
tempting to choose words that resonate easily with the public.
But it’s sloppy. And lazy. And dangerous.
“Terrorist” ““ a word whose definition is
something of which people should have a keen understanding ““
loses its meaning when Osama bin Laden and CALPIRG are lumped
together in the same bag.
The spokeswoman’s remark makes the latest case for the
necessity of employing a more creative vocabulary. Certain
catchphrases ““ “outsourcing,” anyone? ““
have latched onto the public’s vernacular and simply refuse
to let go. “Terrorist” is just one of hundreds of
overly used and diluted words.
Other examples include holocaust and Nazi.
Here on campus, Bruin Republicans launched a campaign to label
MEChA as having Nazi-like ideas, and other students responded by
drawing caricatures of Bruin Republican members dressed in Nazi
uniforms.
The Bruin recently ran a story on the use of the word holocaust
““ a word that has referred to the organized extermination of
Jews in Nazi Europe, but which has increasingly been used to refer
to many different situations. A particularly egregious use occurred
when a baseball announcer referred to a “holocaust on the
field.” (Unless the field had suddenly become a portal to
Hell, he probably should have used another word ““ like
melee.)
Is it a problem of small vocabularies? Or are people simply
trying to maximize the shock value of their statements?
Whatever the case may be, people should ask: What happened to
elegant, precise speech replete with persuasive and comprehensive
arguments?
Compare one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime
addresses to one of President Bush’s most recent speeches to
see how far the language has fallen.
In a media environment defined by five-second sound bites and
one-line quotes, it is understandable that politicians and other
public figures try to maximize the impact of their words while also
keeping things simple and concise.
But this way of speaking has infiltrated throughout the language
and made it flavorless and imprecise. Just as
“terrorist” is misapplied, words like
“nice” and “cool” are often used when an
extra sentence or two could really reflect why something has
value.
Particularly at a place like UCLA ““Â where truth, in
all of its nuances, should be pursued relentlessly
““Â people should strive to be conscious of how language
is used. If it is misused, people will be poorly informed or
unnecessarily insulted.
Whether they are used in class, in social settings or in the
media, words are tools of real power.