The Language we use

Marie from Waikanae

Some weeks ago some friends and I, tired of the same old empty political debates, decided to form a new political party. It was tongue in cheek - The CJD party, formed to provide endless explanations to people who Cant Join the Dots. There are millions of them around, many of them politicians, involved in both local and central government. But the media does not get out of jail free either. As we sat deploring our awful domestic violence statistics, the promo's for Criminal Minds were rolling on the telly:
"He's using the situation to manipulate women and lure them in" ran the text"
Previous weeks it was a women in handcuffs, being led away. I refuse to watch such programs, but even the promos are enough to set my teeth grinding. I know for a fact that these promos are disturbing, particularly for young people, and they run as early as 7 pm at night. They normalise violence against women and portray it as cool. Why are we surprised when some people emulate it? Why do we tolerate these programs when so many women are being bashed and abused in real life? Isn't it time we joined the dots?
Then there's this weeks Kapiti Observer. The back page on motoring describes the Infiniti Q50 (298kW of power, 0 to 100 in 4.9 seconds, yada yada yada) and then the clincher for me:
"......a handsome menacing thing, with a wonderfully violent engine to match".

"Oh oh oh, CJD" I howled loudly.

So now its cool to have a menacing and violent car, but why stop there. Why not say what they really meant to say - its a killing machine. How many young and silly boys will take that message on board and try and play it out in their own clapped out versions? Whoever wrote that description aught to be charged with incitement to violence. I wish there was a charge for gross stupidity.
Neighbourly is in the firing line too. The piece in this weeks observer describes people posting notices for lost pets, including "a sweet little old lady" This is about as ageist as it gets and woe betide anyone who ever referred to me in those terms!!!. Sweet little old ladies, you see,are unimportant, they dont have any contribution to make or anything intelligent to say and they sit in the background smiling sweetly. "yes dear" is their most commonly used phrase. grrrrrrrrrrr.
Maybe the CJD party is too negative. Only time will tell. In the meantime we are finding it quite entertaining, admittedly sometimes at others expense. Its not an attack on the people though, but a way of looking at things. We think we need to think more carefully about the impact of the language we use.