Fighting language policing

Why you should continue to use "commit suicide", "slave" and "actress"

I remember reading an article immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author recounted a cab ride she had taken when the USSR still existed. Some people had protested in front of the Kremlin and, naturally, had been arrested. The cab driver, telling this story, described the protesters as insane. The author noted, with some bemusement, that he was speaking literally, not figuratively, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Their cause was just, to be sure, and the cabbie probably sympathized with them. But the risk they were taking was so great that only an insane person could take it.

I am reminded of this piece when I reflect on how the craze for inclusive language has resulted in the exclusion of "committing suicide" from polite company¹. The theory behind the ban is misplaced, if benign. "Committing suicide" rhymes with committing a crime. Therefore, by using the phrase, you are judging those who kill themselves or attempt the act, goes the theory.

Now, it is true that when the term "commit suicide" was originally coined, people did use it pejoratively. But those who use it these days do not make that association until they are reminded of it by the language police. Orwell would call it a dead metaphor², and hence, allowed. But who will argue with the language police over such a trivial thing? Even if you do not agree with their diktats, it is safer to comply than to take pangas with them. It is not very difficult to find alternatives to "commit" suicide. People may kill themselves, take their own lives, or die by suicide rather than commit it. Most reasonable people end up slavishly following the proscription rather than challenge it.

Speaking of slavish behaviour, there's a new restriction that's come out. It is a ban on the use of the word "slave." So far, I've seen it being adhered to only in American writing. Articles referring to slavery use ugly sentence constructions to avoid using the word at all.

The theory behind this prohibition is as woolly as the previous one. Yes, often adjectives are used as nouns³, and sometimes they are inherently derogatory. "Cripple" and "leper" are two that come to mind. We should certainly avoid using such words. But other words are not so unambiguous. When we call an alcoholic a slave to his drink, we are using the term somewhat pejoratively. But in such cases, the context makes the intended tone clear.

The ban on "slave" seems to have come from a fad for using "person-first language." This is the same fad that gave us monstrosities such as "person with disabilities." If you call a person who has a disability "disabled," the theory goes, you are defining him by his disability, but if you call him a "person with a disability," we are reminded that he is a human being and that his disability is only one attribute of him. This is all nonsense, firstly because "person with disabilities" is so long to write. It may get shortened to "PWD," and it is used as a substitute for “disabled”. Secondly, this phenomenon is applicable only to negative or undesirable traits. If you call someone a “cricketer” do you lose the ability to remember that he has an identity outside of cricket, and will you regain it if you are forced to use "person who crickets"? Using the word "slave" while referring to a person forced into bonded labour will not make a reasonable person forget that the slave is also a human being.

The third word I have seen disappearing is “actress”. Again, there is some justification for avoiding that. We shouldn't go out of our way to call attention to the gender of a professional. It is a good rule that when we need to refer to a doctor, there is no need to call attention to the fact that she is a woman unless it’s relevant to the context.

But when it comes to actors, their gender is almost always relevant. I think that it is reasonable to retain the terms “actor” and “actress” for male and female members of the profession, respectively.

So, here are three perfectly reasonable terms that reasonable people may want to retain, but will not use any longer, as they are afraid of a scolding from the language police. As reasonable people will not use them, the task of protesting unreasonable restrictions falls to trolls; this of course means that reasonable people will fear to tread the path that trolls have rushed on to, lest they too be mistaken for trolls. This in turn means that the most absurd word bans go unchallenged, and now there is a cottage industry devoted to finding words to take offence to.

Having many words that cause offense is convenient when you want to trip up people rather than engage them in a fair fight over ideas.

It is not immediately clear what approach reasonable people should take to combat the menace of word-policing. Complying with the restrictions will bring about more of them while protesting them is crankish and takes time away from actually presenting and discussing ideas. Perhaps the right approach is to politely ignore the language police. Do not write rants or an essay about it (as I have just done), Where the context demands use of "commit suicide", "actor," or "slave," just use it.

1. The trigger for this essay is Karthik’s observation:

Outrage begets outrage

2. This is in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. The rule he put forward is that we should use vivid and fresh metaphors in our writing and avoid metaphors that are overused to the point that they are on the verge of death. But a metaphor that has been deployed so often that it has lost its meta-power is dead. It is no longer a metaphor and has become an ordinary word or phrase. It is acceptable to use it. He did not give any guidance on unnecessarily rejuvenating a metaphor and then killing it, as has been done with “commit suicide”. Also, it is not clear if “dead metaphor” is a dead metaphor or not.

3. Sanskrit does it a lot more than English, so much more in fact, that we need to use a term called “nominals” to refer to nouns, adjectives, pronouns and number. The rules of declension that apply to nouns apply to all nominals. For example, brave man - वीरो नरः becomes वीरा नारी when the gender changes. When the number changes and you need to refer to two brave men, it becomes वीरौ नरौ and when the case changes and you need to say, “A brave man’s”, you say वीरस्य नरस्य. This of course means that you can drop the noun नरः altogether and refer to the person by the attribute वीरः when you are so inclined. This is the single most important reason Sanskrit lends itself so well to poetry.