Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 25, 1990 TAG: 9005250509
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
What came up was an especially obnoxious brochure - not published by the group at the meeting, but by an associated enterprise - in which children were referred to repeatedly and exclusively as "kids." Since the enterprise is an educational undertaking that aims at the encouragement of reading and the use of books, not to mention the spread of literacy, a member of my group, a retired English professor at a prestigious Virginia college, objected to the use of such a slang word for children as "kids." He argued that usage like that reduces reading, and books, and indeed literacy, to the level of television advertising, thus a debasement of language. In short, the brochure ought to set a better example.
I happen to agree with him, though some of those present thought he was, as they say nowadays, "overreacting," as indeed so have a number of friends. They don't mind calling children "kids," and think it silly to make a storm over it.
My retired-professor friend did not exactly beat a hasty retreat - retired college professors are not given to hasty retreats - but, with his usual good manners, he dropped the matter when he ralized he was objecting in vain.
But he has a point. The slangy reference to "kids" in every direction is a cheapening of language, and if not exactly fatal to either the language or children, it is still tiresome - and still diminishes, even if by no more than a little, the effectiveness of speech. A "kid" is a baby goat.
As a matter of fact, it is on a par with - and exactly like - the identification of mothers as "moms" and fathers as "dads." Turn on the television anywhere you like these days and you will hear no one speak of his parents as anything but "moms" and "dads." Once these were private terms of address used between family members. Now they have become generic forms of identification. Next we will hear a TV interviewer ask the interviewee, "How did you get along with your mummy?"
These are, of course, only examples of the atrocities we are committing upon language daily, and only mild examples at that. Thanks to advertising, and to television's extraordinary ability to spread things around, especially tacky things, we are robbing language of much of its specificity, much of the remarkable capacity of English to make and maintain practice distinctions, much of the color and variety that give language its pith.
How in heaven's name, to take an especially odious case, did houses come to be described as "homes?" A house is a building, and when you buy one you buy a structure. A home is an idea in the mind of the resident, and it is something one makes - or, alas, often fails to make - over a course of time. But the infernal Realtors have called houses "homes" so successfully that now no one minds the offense.
A few other words in modern parlance that I could do without are "community" - used for everything from homosexuals ("the gay community") to spies ("the intelligence community") as a way of bypassing reality; "networking" (for getting together) as a way of making the merely mechanical sound important; and "added bonus," which conveys nothing but the fear of the speaker that only by being redundant can he make a fact sound better than it is.
George Orwell reminded us all a generation ago that the careless use of language leaves democracy exposed to demagogues. People who say things like "read my lips" illustrate the point. I shall urge my children, who were never "kids" anyway, to avoid them.
by CNB