Language Does More: The Problem with Problematic Words
Firm. Obstinate. Pig-headed. Do those words mean the same thing to you? Almost, but you can’t use them interchangeably – they get worse and worse.
Back in the fifties, The New Statesman ran a write-in competition asking for word trios like this. And here are some examples of positive-neutral-pejorative trios that readers sent in:
I am a perfectionist; you are anal; he is a control freak.
I am frank; you are blatant; he is a Buchmanite.
I am beautiful; you have quite good features; he isn’t bad-looking, if you like that type.
That’s what it looks like when language has multiple terms that mean one thing. You still get shades of difference. Linguists call this variation, and it’s one reason linguistics is so fascinating.
Whether a word will become more positive or more pejorative is hard to say. Predicting language change is a lot like predicting the weather. We can see a little ways off but not far, and we need a lot of data and precedent just to get decently accurate.
However, there are a few conditions that are reliable for predicting pejoration, the most predictable of which is called the euphemism cycle, identified by linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor in 1970. She noticed a pattern when neutral terminology was introduced by professional communities, in this case doctors: “Euphemisms denoting low intelligence seem particularly susceptible to the sort of pejoration that the word retarded is undergoing. As these words become widely known and used, they begin to lose their euphemistic vigor and eventually come to be looked upon as basic terms. They are then liable to use as humorous or depreciative expressions and must be replaced in nonpejorative use.”
Half a century later, the example Taylor just gave has completed the cycle so thoroughly that now it is basically a swear word – people call it the r-word. If you are of a similar age to me, you may have watched another term, special needs, undergo this same cycle.
Steven Pinker goes so far as to call this process the euphemism treadmill, because the process doesn’t end unless the stigma associated with the original concept ends. Take cultural taboos, for example: we can tell death is taboo because of graveyard → cemetery → memory garden. We can tell relieving oneself is taboo because of privy → water closet → toilet → bathroom. Same thing goes for sex, jail, and body parts. Taboos stay on the euphemism treadmill.
Here’s where it gets disappointing: we see the euphemism cycle occurring for important, sensitive aspects of peoples’ identities, not just societal concepts: sometimes just being yourself is taboo.
You can probably list a procession of terms that have led us to person of color. We tell ourselves that this changing term is just the result of societal evolution: we’ve finally arrived at the most accurate terminology for this concept. But, linguistically, this is just the next term on the euphemism treadmill. A hundred years ago, colored person was the preferred term. That term is very offensive today, but if you just look at the words themselves you’d be hard pressed to find any difference in their literal meanings.
In the political arena, the word you choose for a charged topic or identity signals your allegiance to the right or the left, and it could even lead to possible legal action. The Trump administration has recently been focusing on particular words not to say, and they all fit in the euphemism cycle. Whatever your political leanings, this is another instance of people deciding it’s time to use a new term for a not-so-new thing. Sometimes it’s doctors, sometimes it’s grassroots, but here it’s politicians.
When people suddenly deem a word “problematic”, what they are trying to do is change the stigmatization/tabooness of the person or idea that word has represented. But the problem is that changing the WORD doesn’t change the THING.
Trying to change the word while ignoring the thing it means is futile, like mowing the weeds instead of uprooting them. You can’t get rid of the stigma by changing the word – you have to change the stigma itself. That’s true independent of your politics or your agenda. That’s true whether it’s a here-and-now real-world issue or whether it’s a Parks and Rec parody. It’s just a linguistic fact.
The only words that get to jump off the euphemism treadmill are those that no longer represent identities or ideas that are taboo. We can only know in hindsight that the cycle is broken, once we’ve - ironically - stopped needing new words for that thing altogether. This means we should extend some grace to the people of the past who used terms we now avoid, but it also means that we’re not there yet.