Words

I've shared before about George Orwell's "newspeak" from 1984 book.

Recent word salad is substituting "equity" for "equality".

Now we have a public date about "crisis" vs. "challenge" (at the border).

I expect there will be more examples over time.

JR

'challenge' gets a lot of mileage
how 'bout  "pivot" and "ramp up"
there will be more examples over time--that is how these things work

Oh, this is nothing new at all.

"Detainee" instead of "prisoner", for instance. 

It started here a long time ago, when "surface technician" subbed for "cleaner".

depending on which way the news was blowing,

Kids who were put in cages are now being put in camps. The structures and locations identical

abbey road d enfer said:

It started here a long time ago, when "surface technician" subbed for "cleaner".

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Too true. Such as waste disposal engineer for dust-bin/trash-can man. What really annoys me are all these young ladies who call themselves beauty consultants.

One thing I do envy Europe for is their I.Eng. qualification. You have to be degree qualified with several years responsible work under your belt before you can call yourself an engineer. In the UK anyone can call themselves an engineer.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

Too true. Such as waste disposal engineer for dust-bin/trash-can man. What really annoys me are all these young ladies who call themselves beauty consultants.

One thing I do envy Europe for is their I.Eng. qualification. You have to be degree qualified with several years responsible work under your belt before you can call yourself an engineer. In the UK anyone can call themselves an engineer.

Cheers

Ian

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Yes I noticed that when I went to the US in my early carreer, when I said I was an engineer nobody was really impressed, they thought I was some kind of greaser.

Newspeak was of course much more insidious; not just word replacement/inversion, but the complete replacement of epistemology...
(How many fingers am I holding up?!)

Think what we have today is more like neuro-linguistic programming

I think the master George Carlin explains it best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2PW1TqxQk

"associate" versus "employee"

I'm quite tired of "vibrant"....downtowns, schools, etc.  Though that one is a bit on the way out.

My 82 year old mother just railed about the use of that 'teenager' word "fantastic", hard not to laugh.  I guess she was teaching those 'kids' in the early '60's. 

I bet politicians pay big money for people to come up with phraseologies that dont get flagged up by the Pc crowd . Radio talk show hosts also seem to be watching their words even more carefully than before , not even because they could get sued for saying the wrong thing , but that now they get metaphorically hacked to death on social media if they get it wrong .

Our social group has will and should play a part in keeping us in line , the problem on social media is anyone can step up and take a pop at you , they dont need to know you or the context of your words , the whole thing reminds me of Penguins in a huddle in many ways, everybody following the person in front of them and no one knows where its going , stand appart from the madding crowd and they'll throw rocks at ya .

ruffrecords said:

One thing I do envy Europe for is their I.Eng. qualification. You have to be degree qualified with several years responsible work under your belt before you can call yourself an engineer. In the UK anyone can call themselves an engineer.

Cheers

Ian

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I stopped reffering to myself as an engineer when digital audio took over. Splicing tape was a right of passage in my day.

This is nuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/10/not-suitable-catalan-translator-for-amanda-gorman-poem-removed

living sounds said:

This is nuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/10/not-suitable-catalan-translator-for-amanda-gorman-poem-removed

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Yes, it even has a name "positive discrimination" - an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

Yes, it even has a name "positive discrimination" - an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

Cheers

Ian

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I use positive discrimination when selecting fruit & vegetables at the market.

As usual this has turned into a free association blog... but one of the original word pairs I offered ( crisis vs challenge) is still being staunchly defended (not a crisis).

This is the game of painting with words to create an image. BTW both sides are playing the same game.

JR 

This is the game of painting with words to create an image

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Hashtag rank hacking, seo manipulation, headline NLP is real too, not just the page content. Negative intuition pumps rolled out on a mass scale, especially during Trump.  Were we ever in control of deciding what's newsworthy?

boji said:

Hashtag rank hacking, seo manipulation, headline NLP is real too, not just the page content. Negative intuition pumps rolled out on a mass scale, especially during Trump.  Were we ever in control of deciding what's newsworthy?

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I am old enough to remember when the new reportage did not involve political activism. There has always been bias in news coverage and ratings provides some level of corrective negative feedback. I perceived a change in media gaining more power over the public discussion/policy during the Viet nam war.... Back in the 60s the evening news affected public sentiment anti-war by sharing negative images and reports about Viet nam.

Of course my observations may be a function of when I started paying attention, and personal experience (I was drafted near end of Viet Nam conflict).

JR 

observations may be a function of when I started paying attention

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Yes! Yucky feeling. Could it be programming turtles all the way down...

boji said:

Yes! Yucky feeling. Could it be programming turtles all the way down...

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I have been paying attention for several decades and I perceive some pretty dramatic changes relatively recently (like social justice amplified by social media).

I have always been aware of distortions and selective presentation of news by media since watching TV news or newspaper reports about anti-war rallies I attended back in the 60s (no twitter back then). 

I won't stir the pot any more than I have, but I see shenanigans.

JR

PS; I also recall how smart I thought I was when I was younger,,,,