Precision is hugely important in language. It isn’t important, though, when definitions are arbitrarily created without consensus, common usage, or governing body behind them. The social sciences is notorious for this. Equity versus equality is a big one. There is no etymological basis for a differentiation between the words. Yet somehow–very recently–they have two very different meanings in the social sciences, and that meaning now extends to society at large? Why? What was the process behind that? The continually morphing definition of the word ‘racism’ is another one. Is it institutional or individual? Adding more definitions to a word, by design, makes language less precise; adding new words increases specificity, broadening definitions does the opposite. Take the word violence, for example: that single word is now used to describe at least a half a dozen different concepts in the social justice movement. The same goes for the word power. These linguistic changes have no etymological or consensus usage basis. These are all arbitrarily created by one small segment of academia.
There is absolutely no way anyone that follows the social justice movement can claim it is about precision of language. Nor are virtually any of the positions and arguments deductively valid.
Of all the linguistic crusades that the social justice movement undertakes, this one bothers me the least. Language and perception have a lot of impact. I think changing the language makes logical sense and adds to precision of language, since we’re not simply broadening definitions, we’re narrowing them and adding more specificity.
That’s literally what retarded means, developmentally delayed. They used to call them idiots and morons, literally, so they developed the more politically correct and scientific word, “retarded,” which comes from the verb to retard, which means… to slow. It became a bad word because people used it as an insult… because we as a society view people with mental handicaps as less than human. Developmentally delayed doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like retarded, but I am sure the kids will be using these newly minted, ‘respectful’ words as insults soon enough. This isn’t rocket science. You can look at the etymological history of most of the insults we use today and they are often yesterday’s politically correct words. It is a never-ending cycle of cancer that erodes and impedes the natural, healthy evolution of language, and subsequently thought, that occurs with it.
I hope I don’t come off as hostile or too aggressive. My tone can get a bit ‘bombastic’ on these topics. I know these people generally mean well.
Edit: And the illogical demonization of language is terrifying, as well. The word niggardly is off-limits, despite having an entirely different Latin root. ‘Landrace’ now is off-limits. You can’t use the verb retard anymore. It very much comes off as a war on thought and expression at that point.
grown in Vermont my next door neighbor
