Language Matters

The hard-left is losing the language wars. So far.

The New York Times commissioned a poll to learn what words and phrases Americans actually use and which ones have fallen into disuse, are being rejected or haven’t even entered the consciousness of most people. The results are below, ranked by most commonly used to not so much.

At the bottom of the list are a bunch of words that originated on campuses and which, thankfully, appear not to have escaped the laboratory, beyond NPR anyway. These include birthing parent, chest feeding, BIPOC, AAPI, Global South and the ever unpopular Latinx. (As in, do you have a cold? Do you need a Latinx?)

In addition, master bedroom continues to thrive, unless you’re a Realtor striving not to offend even the 16% who would be upset by your obvious endorsement of slavery.

You can even take a handy quiz to find out how in touch you are with the mainstream. I took it and discovered that I’m pretty in touch. I would use only one word that the majority wouldn’t and wouldn’t use only one phrase that the majority would. The forbidden word I would use (though I haven’t had much call for it recently) is powwow, to refer to a meeting. And the phrase I’ve retired that most Americans still find acceptable is illegal alien. So, that would be one to offend the left and another to irritate the right. Nice balance there.

The Times tacked on some commentary by some of their columnists. As usual, John McWhorter, who is a linguist at Columbia, had the most insightful comments: “This top-down approach to language is perhaps inevitable, as the people most committed to this kind of change tend to be more educated, given to thinking about groups and actions in the abstract – as opposed to those who may be too busy living an existence to be concerned about the labels for it. In any case, where we are headed is that a certain sliver of our population will control a rich jargon of prescribed terms, of little import to most people.”

The one concerning finding in the poll is that some of the silliest language is most popular with the youngest people. I don’t know, if I’m lucky I’ve got maybe twenty or thirty years left. May I not live long enough to hear chest feeding come into popular usage.