What To Say Too

Sometimes it seems the Universe revolves around me. Previous week I blogged about words that get molested into carrying negative connotations and how it annoys me. Unbeknownst to me some other words with the same fate were presented in game format. With new interest new programs come in my line of view and with that a whole catalogue of new irritations. This game was part of a radio panel show. I love the radio show and the game within. The game was; find the connection between a list of given words or persons. One list was as follows: manhole, stewardess, ugly, lazy, stupid. The connection was that for all these words other politically correct words existed. Of course that annoyed the crap out of me.

The word “manhole” has a bit of a sexual sound to it, doesn’t it? It makes me laugh, really. No harm intended, surely. In California they were cautious though. They renamed all their “manholes” to “maintenance holes” out of concern for the equality of both genders. Bollocks. As if a manhole is something everybody wants to have permission to go down in. Not that kind of manhole.

According to wikipedia a “flight attendant” is historically known as “steward/stewardess” or “air hosts/hostesses”. Hahaha, "historically". I fail to see how calling a steward/stewardess is offending. Apparently, they felt their job was more stylish or glamorous than the job title suggests. Wikipedia also tells us the word “flight attendant” (replacer of steward/stewardess, because of its gender neutrality) is now slowly being replaced with the word “cabin crew” because of their role as members of the crew. As if we doubted they were members of the crew. For as far as I know, we passengers still call them stewards/stewardesses.

“Ugly“ and “cosmetically challenged” bear the exact same meaning; displeasing to the senses. Sure you can tell someone he’s “cosmetically challenged”. He will probably figure it out thinking: “Wait a minute, she just called me ugly.” Same thing, isn’t it? How is changing the word going to change the use or the meaning? It means what it means and should in all cases used with care. The only advantage the word “cosmetically challenged” has is that it takes people a little longer to figure out what exactly was said; you might be out of the way by the time they have.

The word “lazy” has loads of synonyms, all sounding as tiresome and negative as “lazy”. The only reason to use another word for the meaning “inactive or sluggish” is to have some variation. I’m not quite sure why this word was included in the game.

“Stupid” equals “unintelligent” and means “lacking in intelligence”. Not a very creative description, but the stupid people have to understand it as well I suppose. I don’t know, but I think it doesn’t really matter if you call someone “stupid” or “unintelligent”, the message is clear and will usually result in a negative response. Why bother using a bit fancier word?

This stupid (or unintelligent) way of dealing with words doesn’t help us nor our language. Like I said before it only results in fancy words we can’t write and almost no-one is sticking to the new rules anyway. Why bother with polluting our language like that? Use of these "politcally correct" words won’t make anyone more important or more right; it will only make our communication less clear. In the end we will all sound like politicians and enrage each other, because we’re assuming everybody is saying something bad about us.

I lost the lust for ranting. Charlie's language column is way more fun than mine: Buzzwords for Blowhards