Woke and unwoke words.

Earlier this month a cri de coeur against “Orwellian Newspeak” in local government came from Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle.

He opened his salvo with a dig at a Guardian style guide a few years ago, “which seemed to recommend the banning of the word ‘grandmother’ in case it offended women of a certain age who did not wish to be defined by the fact that their offspring had themselves produced offspring. A whole bunch of other words and phrases were outlawed, such as ‘gypsy’ and ‘turn a deaf ear’. 

Now the Local Government Association has adopted a new guide prepared by Laurelle Brown . Apparently ‘mum and dad’ is replaced by ‘birthing parent’. The words ‘white, ‘Caucasian’, and ‘foreign’ are also proscribed – along with ‘homeless’, ‘expat, ‘deprived neighbourhoods, ‘second generation, ‘economic migrant’, and ‘a wheelchair-user’ or ‘able-bodied’.

The guide’s author, Laurelle Brown, runs a training and consultancy business. Her website offers many things including “Facilitation: Making group conversations easier by providing a fresh and neutral perspective.”

The desire to make conversations easier about modern, ‘woke’ issues is admirable. The problem with banning everyday language is that this makes communication harder. The woke phenomenon has provided a minefield for writing and speech. And, while some words and phrases are toxic in the modern context – by our commonsense understanding – others have a role.

1984’ Newspeak 
This was one the controlling methods of ‘Ingsoc’ (the dictatorial English Socialist Party) in George Orwell's 1984. Here are 5 examples:

 crimestop— To rid oneself of or fail to understand unorthodox thoughts that go against Ingsoc's ideology 
 crimethink — Thoughts and concepts that go against Ingsoc such as liberty, equality, and privacy, and also the criminal act of holding such thoughts. Frequently referred to as “thoughtcrime”.
 joycamp — Labour camp
rectify — The Ministry of Truth's euphemism for distorting a historical record
unperson — An executed person whose existence is erased from history and memory


Changes
Language develops and changes. That is welcome. But it is important that new meanings make communication and understanding easier for everyone.

As Liddle summarizes: “That is just one of the problems with wokespeak: it actively works against identifying problems.”