Words Matter, Damn It

by Jaime O’Neill | July 9, 2021 - 7:07am

"Words matter." Those words are often uttered by people to whom they don't actually seem to matter all that much, people who are likely to follow that notion by adding "going forward," that superfluous filler phrase used so incessantly these days by politicians and the media people who report on them.

"Words matter" is often just another of those phrases we sling around, stock expressions that come to mind when we're low on linguistic fuel or much in the way of more substantive thought. You know, like "it is what it is," or "bottom line."

But words do matter. I gave a big chunk of my life's energy to advancing that idea, doing that thing English teachers are known to do, preaching the importance of precision in language use, warning against clichés that deaden thought, sharing examples of bad writing, explaining what made it bad, and doing the opposite thing with good writing.

Good writing, I told students, was good thinking made visible. Without good thinking, writing could almost never be very good, and without the "proper words in proper places" it would be unlikely to reach readers. Sorting out what we think, explaining what we think to ourselves, and marshaling the reasons why we hold the thoughts we struggle to express is how we refine or bolster opinions.

I talked to students about the word "authority," and how the word "author" was embedded in it. If you wanted to achieve some semblance of authority with readers, you'd do your best to choose the best words, and then learn how to spell them. In my first semester of full-time teaching, a student wrote an essay entitled "I AM NOT DUM." He was off to a poor start in making his case.

Words matter, but so does spelling, pain in the ass though it may be. In the larger sense, however, it seems the idea that "words matter" hasn't gained much of a foothold, despite the efforts of legions of people like me who nagged students to believe that they did. Note, for instance, how sloppy our political discourse has become, how illiterate or even "dum" so many of our leaders have sounded. In this young century alone, we've had George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump in our highest office. Bush read little, attended two of the nation's top schools, got in on a legacy admission and got out with a "gentleman's C" average. Any gambler likely to know a good bet when he sees one would surely wager that young Dubya didn't write all those papers turned in with his name on them. Nor, of course, did he finish his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard, the commitment that allowed him to evade service in Vietnam without damage to his future ambitions. The children of the plutocrats just aren't held to the same standards as the rest of us.

Donald Trump read even less than Dubya, and as for writing papers, why would we kid ourselves into thinking Trump would allow himself to be bothered with such a triviality? Writing papers was a hoop designed for the less privileged to jump through, ensuring future employees that the minions they hired were sufficiently trained to make their bosses look smart and appear literate. Trump's books on how to achieve great success didn't include much about the first step he had taken on his easy ride to fame and fortune. His books didn't emphasize what a great plan it had been for him to inherit a huge chunk o' change that made it unnecessary to work a paper route as a kid, or to start at the bottom and work his way up. The rich pricks already know that is largely a myth fed to the riff raff to keep 'em hopping and hoping. As we know, both Dubya and the Donald were "born on third base and thought they'd hit a home run."

My small contribution to spreading the word that words matter turned out to be yet another of the ways I was mostly out of step with my country. If words mattered, would we be hearing the news media constantly using an oxymoron like "moderate Republican" these days? If words mattered, how could people call themselves "patriotic Republicans" without being laughed at? How can you be an American patriot who doesn't believe in democracy? And how can you be a "conservative" when all you want to conserve, apparently, is Confederate statuary and plutocratic privilege?

In addition to oxymorons like those, euphemisms continue to be so popular because we really don't want to see things plainly. We can't handle the t***h, apparently, which is why politicians (not to mention advertisers) are able to lie to us so extravagantly. We collude with the liars, wanting to believe their distortions and evasions. Too many of us still fail to see that the words "Fox" and "News" are not only oxymoronic, but also a euphemism for f*****t propaganda. The idea that what is on offer from Murdoch's cable channel is "fair and balanced" has convinced far too many of a lie. Without that initial big lie from Fox & Co., the alternative reality Trumpers live in would never have been sustainable.

Americans used to think of themselves as no-nonsense straight talkers, people who spoke plainly and despised bulls**t and bulls**tters. That was probably never an honest assessment of our national character, but it surely doesn't describe the country I've known, or far too many of the people in it. We're drowning in bulls**t with most every avenue of American life specializing in its own brand of verbal manure, from psychobabble to educratese, from tech-speak to Pentagon evasions.

We've become inured to being lied to, having been fed a steady diet of lies since we were kids, a flood of fibs from advertisers in more TV commercials than we could ever count or recall. The steady diet of lies and evasions we've garnered then goes off to school with us where we're not likely to question the harm done by unbridled commercialism and unfettered capitalism.

I always encouraged students to be wary of abstractions, especially the nouns meant to describe things that were conceptual, not concrete. There were a limited number of ways a word like "tree" could be conceptualized, but words like "freedom" or "love" or "patriotism" often mean something much different to the person who utters them than is understood by the people who may have heard their utterance. Words that describe things we can't touch or see are much more likely to be misunderstood. Words like "liberty" get us into lots of trouble as people twist meanings of such words beyond recognition. So it is that we now have millions of people who think "freedom" means denying freedoms to other people, freedoms like the right to v**e, the right to choose, or the right to drive, though black, without being shot.

Do words really matter in a country like ours in times like these? How can we say "words matter" when one of our two political parties does all it can to undermine democracy with a studied plan to deny the v**e to targeted groups of people? And how can "patriots" cheer a violent assault on the building where our laws are made? How can people who have long proclaimed their support for "law and order" condone what was done on J****** 6th of this year.

In the "fun" house we've entered since Fox "News" and the backlash against Barack Obama gave us Donald J. Trump, the mirrors are all fogged and distorted. Words matter, maybe most especially when they are deliberately twisted or misused. The deliberate misuse of them has conspired to rob our words of meaning. For more insight into this phenomenon, just go ask Alice: "When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

Words Matter, Damn It

by Jaime O’Neill | July 9, 2021 - 7:07am

"Words matter." Those words are often uttered by people to whom they don't actually seem to matter all that much, people who are likely to follow that notion by adding "going forward," that superfluous filler phrase used so incessantly these days by politicians and the media people who report on them.

"Words matter" is often just another of those phrases we sling around, stock expressions that come to mind when we're low on linguistic fuel or much in the way of more substantive thought. You know, like "it is what it is," or "bottom line."

But words do matter. I gave a big chunk of my life's energy to advancing that idea, doing that thing English teachers are known to do, preaching the importance of precision in language use, warning against clichés that deaden thought, sharing examples of bad writing, explaining what made it bad, and doing the opposite thing with good writing.

Good writing, I told students, was good thinking made visible. Without good thinking, writing could almost never be very good, and without the "proper words in proper places" it would be unlikely to reach readers. Sorting out what we think, explaining what we think to ourselves, and marshaling the reasons why we hold the thoughts we struggle to express is how we refine or bolster opinions.

I talked to students about the word "authority," and how the word "author" was embedded in it. If you wanted to achieve some semblance of authority with readers, you'd do your best to choose the best words, and then learn how to spell them. In my first semester of full-time teaching, a student wrote an essay entitled "I AM NOT DUM." He was off to a poor start in making his case.

Words matter, but so does spelling, pain in the ass though it may be. In the larger sense, however, it seems the idea that "words matter" hasn't gained much of a foothold, despite the efforts of legions of people like me who nagged students to believe that they did. Note, for instance, how sloppy our political discourse has become, how illiterate or even "dum" so many of our leaders have sounded. In this young century alone, we've had George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump in our highest office. Bush read little, attended two of the nation's top schools, got in on a legacy admission and got out with a "gentleman's C" average. Any gambler likely to know a good bet when he sees one would surely wager that young Dubya didn't write all those papers turned in with his name on them. Nor, of course, did he finish his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard, the commitment that allowed him to evade service in Vietnam without damage to his future ambitions. The children of the plutocrats just aren't held to the same standards as the rest of us.

Donald Trump read even less than Dubya, and as for writing papers, why would we kid ourselves into thinking Trump would allow himself to be bothered with such a triviality? Writing papers was a hoop designed for the less privileged to jump through, ensuring future employees that the minions they hired were sufficiently trained to make their bosses look smart and appear literate. Trump's books on how to achieve great success didn't include much about the first step he had taken on his easy ride to fame and fortune. His books didn't emphasize what a great plan it had been for him to inherit a huge chunk o' change that made it unnecessary to work a paper route as a kid, or to start at the bottom and work his way up. The rich pricks already know that is largely a myth fed to the riff raff to keep 'em hopping and hoping. As we know, both Dubya and the Donald were "born on third base and thought they'd hit a home run."

My small contribution to spreading the word that words matter turned out to be yet another of the ways I was mostly out of step with my country. If words mattered, would we be hearing the news media constantly using an oxymoron like "moderate Republican" these days? If words mattered, how could people call themselves "patriotic Republicans" without being laughed at? How can you be an American patriot who doesn't believe in democracy? And how can you be a "conservative" when all you want to conserve, apparently, is Confederate statuary and plutocratic privilege?

In addition to oxymorons like those, euphemisms continue to be so popular because we really don't want to see things plainly. We can't handle the t***h, apparently, which is why politicians (not to mention advertisers) are able to lie to us so extravagantly. We collude with the liars, wanting to believe their distortions and evasions. Too many of us still fail to see that the words "Fox" and "News" are not only oxymoronic, but also a euphemism for f*****t propaganda. The idea that what is on offer from Murdoch's cable channel is "fair and balanced" has convinced far too many of a lie. Without that initial big lie from Fox & Co., the alternative reality Trumpers live in would never have been sustainable.

Americans used to think of themselves as no-nonsense straight talkers, people who spoke plainly and despised bulls**t and bulls**tters. That was probably never an honest assessment of our national character, but it surely doesn't describe the country I've known, or far too many of the people in it. We're drowning in bulls**t with most every avenue of American life specializing in its own brand of verbal manure, from psychobabble to educratese, from tech-speak to Pentagon evasions.

We've become inured to being lied to, having been fed a steady diet of lies since we were kids, a flood of fibs from advertisers in more TV commercials than we could ever count or recall. The steady diet of lies and evasions we've garnered then goes off to school with us where we're not likely to question the harm done by unbridled commercialism and unfettered capitalism.

I always encouraged students to be wary of abstractions, especially the nouns meant to describe things that were conceptual, not concrete. There were a limited number of ways a word like "tree" could be conceptualized, but words like "freedom" or "love" or "patriotism" often mean something much different to the person who utters them than is understood by the people who may have heard their utterance. Words that describe things we can't touch or see are much more likely to be misunderstood. Words like "liberty" get us into lots of trouble as people twist meanings of such words beyond recognition. So it is that we now have millions of people who think "freedom" means denying freedoms to other people, freedoms like the right to v**e, the right to choose, or the right to drive, though black, without being shot.

Do words really matter in a country like ours in times like these? How can we say "words matter" when one of our two political parties does all it can to undermine democracy with a studied plan to deny the v**e to targeted groups of people? And how can "patriots" cheer a violent assault on the building where our laws are made? How can people who have long proclaimed their support for "law and order" condone what was done on J****** 6th of this year.

In the "fun" house we've entered since Fox "News" and the backlash against Barack Obama gave us Donald J. Trump, the mirrors are all fogged and distorted. Words matter, maybe most especially when they are deliberately twisted or misused. The deliberate misuse of them has conspired to rob our words of meaning. For more insight into this phenomenon, just go ask Alice: "When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

Words Matter, Damn It

by Jaime O’Neill | July 9, 2021 - 7:07am

"Words matter." Those words are often uttered by people to whom they don't actually seem to matter all that much, people who are likely to follow that notion by adding "going forward," that superfluous filler phrase used so incessantly these days by politicians and the media people who report on them.

"Words matter" is often just another of those phrases we sling around, stock expressions that come to mind when we're low on linguistic fuel or much in the way of more substantive thought. You know, like "it is what it is," or "bottom line."

But words do matter. I gave a big chunk of my life's energy to advancing that idea, doing that thing English teachers are known to do, preaching the importance of precision in language use, warning against clichés that deaden thought, sharing examples of bad writing, explaining what made it bad, and doing the opposite thing with good writing.

Good writing, I told students, was good thinking made visible. Without good thinking, writing could almost never be very good, and without the "proper words in proper places" it would be unlikely to reach readers. Sorting out what we think, explaining what we think to ourselves, and marshaling the reasons why we hold the thoughts we struggle to express is how we refine or bolster opinions.

I talked to students about the word "authority," and how the word "author" was embedded in it. If you wanted to achieve some semblance of authority with readers, you'd do your best to choose the best words, and then learn how to spell them. In my first semester of full-time teaching, a student wrote an essay entitled "I AM NOT DUM." He was off to a poor start in making his case.

Words matter, but so does spelling, pain in the ass though it may be. In the larger sense, however, it seems the idea that "words matter" hasn't gained much of a foothold, despite the efforts of legions of people like me who nagged students to believe that they did. Note, for instance, how sloppy our political discourse has become, how illiterate or even "dum" so many of our leaders have sounded. In this young century alone, we've had George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump in our highest office. Bush read little, attended two of the nation's top schools, got in on a legacy admission and got out with a "gentleman's C" average. Any gambler likely to know a good bet when he sees one would surely wager that young Dubya didn't write all those papers turned in with his name on them. Nor, of course, did he finish his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard, the commitment that allowed him to evade service in Vietnam without damage to his future ambitions. The children of the plutocrats just aren't held to the same standards as the rest of us.

Donald Trump read even less than Dubya, and as for writing papers, why would we kid ourselves into thinking Trump would allow himself to be bothered with such a triviality? Writing papers was a hoop designed for the less privileged to jump through, ensuring future employees that the minions they hired were sufficiently trained to make their bosses look smart and appear literate. Trump's books on how to achieve great success didn't include much about the first step he had taken on his easy ride to fame and fortune. His books didn't emphasize what a great plan it had been for him to inherit a huge chunk o' change that made it unnecessary to work a paper route as a kid, or to start at the bottom and work his way up. The rich pricks already know that is largely a myth fed to the riff raff to keep 'em hopping and hoping. As we know, both Dubya and the Donald were "born on third base and thought they'd hit a home run."

My small contribution to spreading the word that words matter turned out to be yet another of the ways I was mostly out of step with my country. If words mattered, would we be hearing the news media constantly using an oxymoron like "moderate Republican" these days? If words mattered, how could people call themselves "patriotic Republicans" without being laughed at? How can you be an American patriot who doesn't believe in democracy? And how can you be a "conservative" when all you want to conserve, apparently, is Confederate statuary and plutocratic privilege?

In addition to oxymorons like those, euphemisms continue to be so popular because we really don't want to see things plainly. We can't handle the t***h, apparently, which is why politicians (not to mention advertisers) are able to lie to us so extravagantly. We collude with the liars, wanting to believe their distortions and evasions. Too many of us still fail to see that the words "Fox" and "News" are not only oxymoronic, but also a euphemism for f*****t propaganda. The idea that what is on offer from Murdoch's cable channel is "fair and balanced" has convinced far too many of a lie. Without that initial big lie from Fox & Co., the alternative reality Trumpers live in would never have been sustainable.

Americans used to think of themselves as no-nonsense straight talkers, people who spoke plainly and despised bulls**t and bulls**tters. That was probably never an honest assessment of our national character, but it surely doesn't describe the country I've known, or far too many of the people in it. We're drowning in bulls**t with most every avenue of American life specializing in its own brand of verbal manure, from psychobabble to educratese, from tech-speak to Pentagon evasions.

We've become inured to being lied to, having been fed a steady diet of lies since we were kids, a flood of fibs from advertisers in more TV commercials than we could ever count or recall. The steady diet of lies and evasions we've garnered then goes off to school with us where we're not likely to question the harm done by unbridled commercialism and unfettered capitalism.

I always encouraged students to be wary of abstractions, especially the nouns meant to describe things that were conceptual, not concrete. There were a limited number of ways a word like "tree" could be conceptualized, but words like "freedom" or "love" or "patriotism" often mean something much different to the person who utters them than is understood by the people who may have heard their utterance. Words that describe things we can't touch or see are much more likely to be misunderstood. Words like "liberty" get us into lots of trouble as people twist meanings of such words beyond recognition. So it is that we now have millions of people who think "freedom" means denying freedoms to other people, freedoms like the right to v**e, the right to choose, or the right to drive, though black, without being shot.

Do words really matter in a country like ours in times like these? How can we say "words matter" when one of our two political parties does all it can to undermine democracy with a studied plan to deny the v**e to targeted groups of people? And how can "patriots" cheer a violent assault on the building where our laws are made? How can people who have long proclaimed their support for "law and order" condone what was done on J****** 6th of this year.

In the "fun" house we've entered since Fox "News" and the backlash against Barack Obama gave us Donald J. Trump, the mirrors are all fogged and distorted. Words matter, maybe most especially when they are deliberately twisted or misused. The deliberate misuse of them has conspired to rob our words of meaning. For more insight into this phenomenon, just go ask Alice: "When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

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