Our Language is Shifting, Get Over It Already

Previously published July 22, 2017

Language is a funny thing. It's our way of communicating thoughts, ideas, feelings, concepts, theories, etc. There are many languages alive today, and many, many more that are "dead." I'm one of those people who's terrible at retaining any language other than my native tongue. I used to get frustrated by this, but realized I excel at (American) English. (That's a fair enough trade-off.)

I'll be honest. I don't care to have a massive vocabulary and I won't go digging into the etymology of every word (although the history behind some words is fascinating!). I'm a major fan of hyperbole (I use it ALL the time), and I just can't seem to shake my overuse of the passive voice.

Technical and academic is a creativity-killer for me, but easy. And if you were to sum up my writing and speaking in one word, that word would be "verbose." (Seriously, I spend way more time trying to shorten what I've written than I did writing it.) I'm not perfect.

But I do catch on quickly and try to adhere to rules of grammar when they're pointed out to me. Like learning that words such as "amongst" are archaic (the proper, modern form is "among") caused me to realize that in thinking the use of such words implied intelligence, they just made me look ignorant and uneducated. So I stopped. In all the corrections I've received over the years, my biggest pet-peeve is the phrase "due to."

Let's use an example:

The fire was due to an unattended candle left too close to the curtains.

Okay, what now? So an unattended candle—that happens to be too close to some curtains—is owed a fire? Who owes it and when was it due?

Confused?

The word "due" involves matters of deadlines and debts. For example, the amount you owe the cashier when checking out at the store is what is due. That report your boss wants by Friday is due on Friday. The phrase "due to" means nothing. (Unless you're saying the bill is due to the utility company. That would make sense.)

When people say "due to" what they generally mean is "as a result of" or "because" or even "caused by." This has bugged me ever since college when I was first corrected on it. I've been hypersensitive to it, and I can tell you everyone (there I go exaggerating again) uses it incorrectly. Newspapers, TV shows, scholarly reports, politicians, government entities, the educated and uneducated, rich and poor, borderline geniuses. What the fuck?

Why is this? Try as I might to educate others, I've watched people continue to use this and other words and phrases incorrectly. But I've finally stopped fighting it as I realize what's happening. Is our language dead? Is it the end of literacy as we know it?

No. Our language is shifting.

Here's another example: "That is blah blah blah." The "that is" means nothing even more-so than the "due to" thing. Yet try to break the habit. Go ahead and try it. Especially in verbal communications. It takes a lot of mental effort and practice to do.

Why? Because it's so ingrained in our everyday speech and modern use of our language that being told it means nothing is a difficult concept to wrap our heads around. (No joke. As much effort as I put into correcting my grammar, I gave up on this one.)

By itself "that is" or "it is" may mean nothing, but those kinds of phrases are necessary to convey meaning in most conversations taking place in our language today. We simply understand it regardless of what archaeologists thousands of years from now have to say about it.

My point here is our language is shifting as it always has because it is alive. We might not like the shift. Some of the shifting is caused by ignorance. ("Irregardless" is word now, right? *bangs head on wall*) Some of it is just sub-culture stuff and the good ol' "cool words" of the day.

But everything is so universal in communications that what would have been a temporary adoption of a silly phrase or word has the potential to be picked up and adopted across the language and stick around. Our language is alive and well, and in transition.

So this is where I bring in the topic of Political Correctness. I hate PC. I think it does real and lasting damage to every good cause out there. It makes people afraid to speak their minds because they can't quite figure out how to express what they want to say or ask without the risk of causing trouble. Or—on the other end of the scale—causes people to become, well, assholes who then have to embrace their assholishness just to speak their minds.

Had it not been for PC, I suspect at least some of the bigots, hate-mongers, and extremists would have turned out considerably more open-minded, rational, and adaptable. But I can see why they didn't. They see the whole "political correctness" thing for what it really is: passive aggressive censorship. (Speak about X this way, or don't talk about X at all!) It kills or stigmatizing all dialogue that would have been useful and brought some good into the world.

There's a thing about PC, though, that's important. It's a way to try to teach some damn manners. I could have simply written "You're an uneducated idiot who doesn't know how to speak properly and turning the English language into a cesspool of laziness." Setting aside the name-calling and clear use of judgement words, that sentence doesn't convey much of anything other than frustration.

A sensible person would know to dig deeper and ask questions to get to what prompted the sentence, but even the most sensible of people have vulnerable moments to which the typical response is along the lines of "Who are you calling an idiot, dickhead?" And then nothing is accomplished besides building tension, releasing cortisol, and all the not-so-lovely health risks that come along with it. (And we wonder why we're such a divided nation...)

So, if we're smart about it, we can (and I think should) do away with Political Correctness. But—and this is a very big butt, er, but—we need to do so only to take away the censorship part of it while still understanding the fine line between free speech and things like bullying, hatespeech, aggressive/threatening behavior, etc.

Express yourself, but provoke open communication in doing so, rather than anger or other not-so-helpful emotions. Be you while respecting everyone's right to be themselves.

And recognize the difference between PC matters (or manners) and language shifts.

The biggest thing right now that made me realize just how much our language is shifting is on the gender spectrum issue. We now know genders are not black-and-white limited to male and female and that an entire spectrum exists along with gender-related identity issues that make it all that much more complex. (I saw tricklings of this brought up in papers over the years, but no one wanted to talk about it. So a big thank you to the scientific community for raising your voices to a volume we all can hear.)

There's a lot of hangups on the whole "Do I say 'he or she or they' now?" It's confusing. It's frustrating. It's... time to actively seek a common ground on how we want our language to shift.

Me personally, I love that we are finally opening our eyes to what science has been telling us. I LOVE that this is part of our dialogue. And I am more than happy to use whatever pronouns someone else prefers. But I tell you what, I couldn't stand when someone kept telling me about "they/them" to find out it's in reference to a single person.

"They/them" is a plural pronoun and once I catch onto the context, I then have to go back and think through everything I heard to put it all in the proper perspective. Argh! This is not good for positive communications!

No wonder there's so much hate and misunderstanding coming out of it. We're telling people that everything they were previously taught, spent their lives thinking they understood, and based many of their morals, values, and beliefs around basically, "Oh, yeah. Turns out we were wrong the whole time. Sorry about that. Wait. Why are you so angry?"

Top that off with suddenly trying to change words that really don't need changing because they are perfect as they are and you've got one seriously disgruntled population.

So let's shift the language to create a common, positive, and equal basis for conveying our meaning. On this issue specifically, other languages have singular pronouns that are not male/female gender specific. What will ours be?